http://goo.gl/1pYAEj
It bears explicit saying that every time the disabled body is used as a source of metaphor for being less, being broken, or being wrong, that metaphor violates these three principles. In that moment, the negative metaphor eliminates curiosity about the experience of others. After all, everyone can run, right? Or run in their minds? What does that even mean? (protip: No. I don’t run in my mind. Running doesn’t communicate an experience or emotion to me because I don’t do it. In those moments, I end up waiting for the conversation to include me again.) The negative metaphor confuses the boundary between the disabled person and the one observing them, allowing the observer to overlay their own meaning on the disabled body and describe the quality of the disabled experience. My experience is that walking is hard. Part of using metaphors skillfully is being accountable that having the experience that walking is hard is distinct from running a difficult race. Mashing everything together isn’t the best approach. It is a way to obliterate or assimilate the stories of those voices at the margins.