Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment
[A] remarkable and unprecedented paradigm shift has recently occurred which represents a historic break with the traditional perception of disability as a sick, abnormal, and pathetic condition. This shift posted a fundamental challenge to the ideological oppression of people with disabilities. For it sees disability as normal, not inferior, and demands self-determination over the resources people with disabilities need.
Disabled folk: rise up and take control over your own lives! Down with Tiny Tim and Captain Ahab—they make us nauseated!
Basically, Charlton here is blowing up everything we think we know about disability and in the process destroying thousands of years of stereotypes casting disabled people as pitiful, despairing, dependent, and/or vengeful.
Charlton is suggesting that disabled people are equal to those with more normative bodies (notice we didn't say "normal" because as we know by now, there's no such thing!), that the disabled are neither below them, requiring paternalistic care, nor above them, as saints and martyrs.
This sense of equality brings with it a demand for equal rights, the freedom and opportunity for disabled people to take charge of their own lives and to be leaders of the political movements designed to fight for this equality in communities, workplaces, and schools. This is opposed to the old-school way of doing things, in which non-disabled people spoke for and fought on behalf of the disabled. After all, who better than the people affected to know what is needed?
In short, nothing about us (the disabled), without us (the disabled)!