People First Language

I literally added this extension to chrome so I could give it 1 star and then get rid of it again. It seems that no matter how many times disabled people express our truths, the rest of you continue to ignore it or don't educate other ableds or some other failure of communication happens, and you all keeping claiming PFL is the only acceptable way. I'm so tired of constantly having to correct y'all on this, and I *KNOW* I'm not the only one. This isn't even the first time I've had to educate ableds on this exact issue this *week.* So I'm begging you, PLEASE, listen to what I say next and then start educating yourselves and each other, because this should not always be on us to explain over and over again. NOT ALL DISABLED PREFER PERSON FIRST LANGUAGE. THERE ARE MANY INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES WHO ACTUALLY PREFER IDENTITY (disability) FIRST LANGUAGE BECAUSE WE SEE OUR DISABILITIES AS AN INTRINSIC PART OF OUR EXISTENCE. There's a very simple way to know which form to you. If you DO NOT know what style the individual prefers, then default to what the majority of the community in question prefers until you can ask the individual themself. EX: The majority of the Autistic Community prefers Identity First Language. However, there are also a minority of Individuals with Autism who prefer Person First Language instead. So if you didn't know which, say, your classmate preferred, the appropriate language to use would be something like, "My Autistic classmate, Sara, was saying that [rest of sentence]." If you later learned that this person prefers being referred to by PFL over IFL, it would be inappropriate to continue to do so when speaking about her individually. However, it would still be inappropriate to call the whole of the Autistic Community as "the Community of People with Autism" based solely on what your one classmate prefers. It boils down to this simple rule: You default to what the individual prefers unless their preference is unknown, in which case you default to what the community prefers until you are told differently. If, for some reason, the community's preference is ALSO unknown, you then default to Person First Language until you are told differently. And yeah. Doing all of that is a lot more to think about, and takes a lot more effort. But all this I laid out for you is how you can ACTUALLY treat us like humans, instead of deciding what language to use FOR us without even asking us about it first. Forcing PFL on those who don't want it is no different than any and every single other time throughout history, including recent times, that disabled people have been abused and treated as anything less than fully human by the rest of the world. And the same is equally true of forcing IFL on the people who don't want it, and for the exact same reasoning. So if, after all of this, you can't even give us the freedom and dignity to honor or respect the terms and self-images that we claim for our own selves? And if, as we present to the world as our various truths and identities as individual people- rather than a one-size-fits-all mass, you somehow think you have any right to disagree or voice an opinion about any person's stated preferences? If any of that's the case, than you're unwilling to do even the bare minimum and clearly cannot be counted on to stand by us against any of the other mistreatments and discriminations we fight against every single day, because all the rest of it is somehow even worse.