ABLEISM

noun Also written ablism (People and Society) Discrimination in favour of the able-bodied; the attitude or assumption that it is only necessary to cater for able-bodied people. Etymology: Formed by adding the suffix -ism (as in ageism, racism, and sexism) to the adjective able in the sense in which it is used in able-bodied. History and Usage: This is one of a long line of -isms which became popular in the eighties to describe various forms of perceived discrimination: see also fattism and heterosexism. Ableism was a term first used by feminists in the US at the beginning of the eighties; in the UK, the concept was first referred to as able-bodism in a GLC report in 1984 and was later also called able-bodiedism. However, ableism was the form chosen by the Council of the London borough of Haringey for a press release in 1986, and it is this form which has continued to be used, despite the fact that it is thought by some to be badly formed (the suffix -ism would normally be added to a noun stem rather than an adjective). The spelling ableism is preferred to ablism, which some people might be tempted to pronounce /--/. In practice, none of the forms has been widely used, although society's awareness of disability was raised during the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. The adjective corresponding to this noun is ableist, but its use is almost entirely limited to US feminist writing. For an adjective which describes the same characteristics from the opposite viewpoint, see disablist. A GLC report...referred throughout to a new phenomenon called mysteriously 'able-bodism'--a reference apparently to that malevolent majority, the fully-fit. Daily Telegraph 1 Nov. 1984, p. 18 Able-ist movements of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries regarded disability as problematic for society. Debra Connors in With the Power of Each Breath (1985), p. 99 I was at the national convention of the National Organization for Women. I consider myself a feminist...but I'm...embarrassed by the hysteria, the gaping maws in their reasoning and the tortuous twists of femspeak. Who else can crowd the terms 'ableism, homophobia and sexism' into one clause without heeding the shrillness of tone? San Francisco Chronicle 4 July 1990, section A, p. 19