Language Guide

Code of the Freaks speaks from a disability community and disability cultural position. As such, the interviewees in the film use disability identity language reflective of this position: disabled people, crips, autistic, and Deaf people. This is also the language that we use in the film. While we recognize that not everyone prefers or feels comfortable with these terms, we do ask that these language choices be respected and used when speaking about Code of the Freaks and the voices it captures. To that end, we offer a gentle reminder to avoid euphemistic terms such as “differently-abled,” “people with different abilities,” “special,” or any derivation of these phrases. We point folks to a discussion with one of our interviewees, Lawrence Carter Long, on his campaign: Disabled: Just #Say the Word: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/02/25/468073722/disabled-just-saytheword.

We would also recommend exploring Lydia X. Z. Brown’s discussion of Ableism/Language on their website, Autistic Hoya, for a full discussion of words to avoid and words to use carefully and with context: https://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html.