ableism

plural ableisms · alternative ablism

1. uncountableDiscrimination or prejudice against individuals with physical, intellectual, psychiatric, or other disabilities.First known use late 20th c.

   [from late 20th c.]

   1 more example

   Ableism is your ability to find reasons to push us aside to keeps us in cages, leave our struggles out of the history pages … pretend we never existed. Ableism is when you say I'm the only disabled friend you've ever had. Ableism is when you say that and still don't understand why we feel invisible. Ableism is when you think I don't have a disability because you can't see it.

   2019, Michelle R. Nario-Redmond, Ableism: The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN

   Synonyms: able-bodyism, able-bodiedism, ablecentrism, disablism, handicapism

2. countableAn instance of ableism.

   Developing guidelines around which ableisms and favoritisms of abilities are ethical , e.g. which form and shape of competitiveness might be ethical and which might not, can be a useful tool for the governance of S&T.

   2010, Susan E. Cozzens, Jameson Wetmore, Nanotechnology and the Challenges of Equity, Equality and Development, page 101

   2 more examples

   And, as a media and communication PhD, I know this is because the English language itself is a media so biased, with ableisms so deeply built in, that roads (which seem to lead away from ableisms) in fact, lead directly back into them.

   2023, Dr. Bernadette "bird" Bowen, I have been the bad guy, page 242

   Ultimately, NTWH mobilieze Stanislavsky not despite the ableisms that Sandahl identifies but on the basis that a critical rehabilitation of those ableisms might create the very conditions of authenticity in which people with disabilities could enter both the theatrical workforce and the braoader affective labor market.

   2024, Patrick McKelvey, Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation, page 198