cripabled

Personally, I don't think Clare would define himself as Supercrip in a public setting. He does say that he has supercripdom within himself, but that is not him. He does want supercrip to be dead, as you stated -- as he stated -- and it is not really a slur or identity to reclaim. Instead, it is a falsehood, a societal creation that does nothing but harm and erase disabled people. It is not a term that has been used against anyone as a negative term, like, say, crip, that can be flipped on its head and held up instead of being a tool to put down.

This leads into what I chose his username to be --

Because of his focus on naming and terminology around (dis)ability, I wanted to really examine the terms Clare uses for himself as well as what makes him feel like himself – so while he does not call mountains home, for example, climbing mountains are a major aspect for his feeling like himself.

Interdependence, I think, is associated with home to Clare, with community (instead of “independence”, a concept that is associated somewhat with exile in how it is a loss of community and friendship). As a step further, he is “abled” by, or enabled by, his crip community and friends (like by his friend in the mountain-climbing story in the beginning). I wanted to focus on that sort of play with what ability really means, while still making it very obvious that he is disabled. So, his ability is disability; that is his abled status. Crip ability. Thus – crip abled. Therein, the username: cripabled

As for the image, I chose this image above – the edge of the ocean meeting mountains nearby – because it combines so many of Clare's identities.

In the portrait of Clare, he is represented with his disability less/in- visible to the portrait's viewer. Since this is the representation of himself that he likes, a representation that focuses more on his gender and as a person in transition, that's what I also focused on in the image. The image has transitions of landscape that aren't necessarily obvious jumps however, such as a tree blooming. Instead it is about the different parts of his identity blurring together into a landscape of himself. Of home and of pride.

Home – he mentions his love of trees (especially firs), the ocean, and the things that are associated with both [pg 11, 27, really like tons of places].

Pride – his ability, his own sort of Supercrip story, to work and climb and hike mountain sides. This place is not his home, not a place of refuge.

This image slams together home and not home, this sort of contact zone within himself that is where his desires and passion, and maybe even societal pressures, collide with his impairment.