Stella Young Monday 28 November 2011 11:18am

• (187)
• (27)
• (94)

Stella Young

“Good Monging.”

This was a tweet from Ricky Gervais last month.

The reaction was swift and angry. The public were not happy and disability groups were up in arms. Gervais insisted that the  word “mong” had evolved and was no longer associated with Down Syndrome nor used as a term of hate against people with disabilities,.

And then he defiantly used it again. And again.

I understand why people get worked up about language. Really, I do. What we say and how we refer to people shapes what we think of them, just as what we think of them informs the language that we use.

Ricky Gervais posted a series of pictures of himself making faces. Along with his tweets

What I don’t understand is why people get upset about some words and not others. Why does someone who might happily use the word “gay” as a pejorative term get upset about those who use “retarded” in the same way? Or vice versa?

I am all for speaking out against hate speech. For me, it is not the words that matter as much as their intent. Using disability as shorthand for “crap” is what I object to, whether you say “learning disabled” or “retarded”.

Gervais has since engaged in a conversation with disability rights and learned that the word “mong” is in fact one that still gets flung about in schoolyards as an insult for kids with Down Syndrome, and used as a generally pejorative term and he’s apologised for using it. Good on him.

Do I believe Ricky Gervais when he says he wasn’t using the word “mong” in reference to people with Down Syndrome? Yep. Gervais – a man not known for his pussy-footing in any area – has done a great deal of work pushing boundaries and challenging stereotypes of disability, so I’d find it hard to believe his choice of language was anything more than ignorance about the term.

He made this fantastic and hilarious ad for JobAbility in the UK

He wrote a role on his show Extras for self-described wobbly comedian Francesca Martinez. And he’s just produced a sitcom about an acting agency for short-statured people called Life’s Too Short starring Warwick Davies and Australia’s own Kiruna Stamell. Gervais is a man on our side, and he’s apologised for stuffing up, so let’s leave him alone now.

Plus I’ve realised that there are words out there far more damaging to our fight for equality than “mong”, “retarded” or “learning disabled”.  I see them in print every day in articles about “disability pension cheats”, “welfare scammers” and “incentives” to get disabled people off the pension and into work.

It is this subtle language that reinforces the stereotype of people with disabilities as dependent, passive and lazy. Discussions in the media about how many people with dodgy backs are on the Disability Support Pension (DSP), or exposes on Today Tonight and A Current Affair about the lady down the street who claims the DSP yet trots off to Salsa classes every night, are just as harmful, if not more so. Because they simply do not reflect the truth.

What if that Salsa-loving lady lies down all day, conserving her energy so that she can do an hour of physical exercise recommended by her doctor? What if that person who “looks just fine” is hiding a chronic pain condition, or a mental illness, or Cystic Fibrosis, or Cancer, or any number of disabling conditions you can’t see on the outside? Just as we encourage our children not to judge people by physical difference, we also shouldn’t judge them for the lack of it.

While I have no doubt that there are some people on the DSP who shouldn’t be, I find it very difficult to believe that these people would be the majority.

I have been on the DSP, and it is not a glamorous life.

When I was on the DSP, it wasn’t because I wanted to sit around watching Oprah all day. It was because despite having been dux of my secondary college, going straight to uni and earning myself two degrees while doing a bit of volunteering as well, I could not for the life of me get a job.

I wasn’t spending my welfare payment on champagne and caviar. I was spending it on the minimum amount of food I could get away with buying (lucky I’m small and don’t eat much), rent, taxi fares to job interviews, wheelchair maintenance, a cleaning lady to come and do my vacuuming and medication to make sure I could stay healthy enough to eventually have a job.

The whole time I was treating getting a job like a job in itself. Having completed a Dip Ed in Secondary Education (after a journalism degree), I was all ready to head into a school and set about making sure young people were able to reach their potential in life. But I found those doors firmly closed. And up a huge flight of stairs.”

The reasons people with disabilities claim the DSP are complex and they are different for everyone. For some, it might be that they actually can work 20 or so hours a week, but their health fluctuates so much that they cannot tell an employer which particular hours those will be four weeks in advance to slot into a roster. For others, it might be discrimination and a lack of access. Some people are forced to move to areas where there are simply less job opportunities because the income they get from the pension just isn’t enough for them to live in a city.

But we don’t hear about these people in the media. We hear about how there’s “no incentive” for people with disabilities to get off the pension and into the workforce. We hear threats of reducing the amount of money people can access to “force” them to work. We hear about people spending their pensions on ciggies, booze and pokies – although I always have to laugh at that stereotype, because I know a lot of people who are on the DSP who would LOVE to have some extra cash to party with, but they have to buy things like medication and wheelchair tyres.

So now that Ricky has apologised and “mong-gate” is over, has anything changed? Well, one man won’t say one word anymore. And a whole lot of people who didn’t know the word “mong” was a disability slur do now. Some of them might even delight in using it. But I’d be willing to bet I’ll still open the paper tomorrow and read all manner of things that paint my people as lazy, burdensome people who take and don’t give. Where’s all the outrage about that?

Stella Young is a disability activist, comedian, obsessive knitter and the Editor of ABC Ramp Up.

You can catch Mia’s interview with Stella here

What words do you find offensive and why? Do the words matter as much as the attitudes behind them?