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All Quotes by author - Stella Young

" Apologies are great, but they don't really change anything. You know what does? Action. "

" As a wheelchair user, I am utterly obsessed with toilets, and all my friends know it. A simple invitation to the pub is consistently followed by, 'Do you know if they have an accessible toilet?' "

" As disabled people, we are taught from a young age that those who are attracted to us are to be regarded with suspicion. "

" Believe me, people with disabilities are just as concerned about benefit fraud as anyone else. Money spent on those who are not in need is money that isn't being spent on vital services to support us in the community. "

" By far, the most disabling thing in my life is the physical environment. It dictates what I can and can't do every day. "

" Death is not treatment, even if it's medically facilitated. "

" Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does. "

" Disability informs almost every part of my life. It's as important, if not more so, than my gender and sexuality. It's certainly a great deal more important to me than my religion or whether or not I caught a tram, ferry or bus to work. "

" Disability is often framed, in medical terms, as the ultimate disaster and certainly as a deficit. "

" Disability simulation fails to capture the nuance and complexity of living in a disabled body. And it certainly fails to give a deep understanding of systemic discrimination and abuse faced by disabled people. "

" Doctors are not fortune tellers, and neither am I. Having lived with disability since birth does not afford me immunity from illness. "

" Even those among us who are lucky enough to love our jobs would have to admit that at least part of the reason we work is to earn money. In between all this work, we like to eat out at restaurants, go on trips, buy nice things, not to mention pay rent and meet the cost of living. "

" For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire. "

" For me, and for many other people with disabilities, our status as disabled people is one of which we are fiercely proud. "

" For me, disability is a physical experience, but it's also a cultural experience and a social experience, and for me, the word 'crip' is the one that best encapsulated all of that. "

" For me, in some ways, my whole life is a bit performative and always has been - because I'm stared at and looked at everywhere I go. "

" From my first days in Washington D.C., where I rolled a whole four downtown blocks without seeing a single shop, cafe, bar or restaurant I could not access, to the beautifully accessible buses in New York City, I was in heaven. "

" From pink water bottles for breast cancer to dumping a bucket of ice water on your head for neuromuscular conditions, it seems we're bombarded by requests to be 'aware' of one thing or another. "

" From time to time, people pat me on the head. It happens on public transport, in the supermarket, in bars. It's a common enough occurrence that it very rarely takes me completely by surprise. "

" I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death. "

" I am repeatedly asked in interviews exactly 'what's wrong' with me, and I always give them the same answer; I don't identify the name of my condition in an interview unless it's relevant to the context of the story. "

" I currently live independently without any funded support. I'm educated, and I'm employed. I enjoy paying my taxes and contributing to the economic life of Australia. "

" I do not identify as a person with a disability. I'm a disabled person. And I'll be a monkey's disabled uncle if I'm going to apologise for that. "

" I don't generally talk about medical terms when I discuss my position as a disabled person. I take a social rather than medical approach to disability, and so long Latin names for congenital conditions are not relevant. "

" I do sometimes painful things to my body in an effort to conform to culturally imposed beauty ideals. "

" If everyone's looking at me, I might as well say something interesting. "

" I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low-key kind of upbringing. I went to school, I hung out with my friends, I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal. "

" I have a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), which has affected my growth and bone strength. In short, people with the kind of OI I have generally experience hundreds of fractures in their lifetime and use wheelchairs for mobility. "

" I have a condition that is included among the 200 or so classified as Dwarfism. "

" I have always felt like a loved, valued and equal member of my family. "

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