A TRIBUTE TO STELLA YOUNG

She was slight of stature and made her way through life on wheels, but she was a force to be reckoned with.

 

Stella Young was a feminist, disability activist, comedian, writer, atheist, Aussie and avowed knitter. She embraced the term “crip,” turning it back on the establishment. She refused to play the role that society tried to impose on her: the cute, demure, little girl in a wheelchair.

 

Young once wrote: "I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilizing symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death."

 

Sadly, her death came all too soon. She recently passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, at age 32.

 

Young lived with the challenges of osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition that affected her connective tissue and made her bones vulnerable to fractures. But that was hardly the thing that defined her.

 

She didn’t shy away from and the truths she knew needed to be told.

 

Young often spoke out against "the soft bigotry of low expectations" people with disabilities encounter.

 

"It speaks to this kind of assumption that people with disabilities are 'brave' because our lives are horrible and that's not true at all," said Young.

 

In a TED talk, Young referred to the trite phrases -- such as "your excuse is invalid" and "don't quit, try" – that accompany photos of disabled people online. She found them annoying, labeling them “inspiration porn.”

 

"The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, 'Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.'"

 

In her TED talk, Young expressed disgust for the bromide, "The only disability in life is a bad attitude:"

 

"No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into Braille."

 

But Young didn’t lambaste only greeting card-worthy clichés. In an open letter that she wrote to her future 80-year old self, she spoke of her struggle with disability identity and self-acceptance. 

 

“Remember those days back before you came out as a disabled woman? You used to spend a lot of energy on 'passing'. Pretending you were just like everyone else, that you didn't need any 'special treatment', that your life experience didn't mean anything in particular. It certainly didn't make you different from other people. Difference, as you knew it then, was a terrible thing. I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.”

 

Thank you, Stella, for reaching out to disabled people struggling with the shame we’ve internalized from society’s devaluation of us. Thanks for your fearless advocacy. For not pulling punches with your words.

 

Stella is the Latin word for “star.” Although Stella Young has died, her ideas will burn brightly for eternity.