I don’t have much on it yet, but I’m currently working on a concept I’m calling Realcrips. For some time I have been thinking about a way to differentiate between people like myself, who were born with disabilities and who grew up around other disabled people; and the growing numbers of people who seem increasingly eager to define themselves as disabled for political purposes, despite having never previously done so, or the fact that they will never have faced any of the hardship or discrimination people with severe physical disabilities face throughout our lives. Such people weren’t forced to go to special schools, have never been mocked or stared at by kids in the street, and are perfectly able to care for themselves, yet seem to like the sociopolitical aura of being defined as disabled.

Of course, I realise how contentious such a demarcation will be, and so far I’m struggling to think of anything even remotely academically rigorous. After all, people can become disabled at any point in their lives; and disabilities aren’t just physical, but can be psychological or neurological, and can take a vast range of forms. As I wrote here, however, it just seems to me that guys like me are gradually being pushed out of our own minority, our political voices usurped by people who know nothing of what we go through. Whereas it was obvious that I have a physical disability from my birth, just as it was clear that my school friends were disabled usually from their infancy, people seem to now be identifying as disabled for more and more tenuous reasons, at least in part simply for the political cache. Thus, from now on, I’m not just a cripple but a Realcrip.