Ethical tensions in a disability label?

This paper explores the ethical tensions that happen in community education when we name and label people. The Victims of Crime Disability Training Program is a small state wide non government agency funded by the Department of Communities in Brisbane. Our role is to provide community education on the issues that make people with intellectual disability vulnerable to crime and ways to work with them in the criminal justice system. In our practice we know that there is no homogeneous grouping of “intellectually disabled” yet we are constantly imposing a homogeneous identity when we talk about “them” in training. This paper draws on the work of Judith Butler and Stuart Hall to examine how language brings people into being in ways that they may not recognise themselves. Here we are exploring the constant tension this creates in the work of an organisation that strives to work alongside people and rejects notions of ablism.