So this might be opening up a CAN OF WORMS but as a physically disabled person I just wanna throw out a clarification that I personally think is useful to have explicitly articulated. These two words are DIFFERENT:
Crip: a reference to crip theory and its friends. Refers to ALL disabilities (not just mobility/physical). Similar to queer, it's a way of seeing the world: disability is socially constructed, fuck eugenics, fuck capitalism, fuck colonialism, being disabled means you HAVE to be creative to navigate a world not built for you, disabled people are the OG makers/hackers, and so on. "Crip" is used as a verb to apply to this way of seeing the world to analyse different facets of society (e.g. cripping the arts, crip technoscience). Seen in academic terms like cripistemology and eco-crip theory but also nonacademic contexts like krip-hop and crip time.
Cripple: refers to physically disabled people ONLY. Seen in terms like cripplepunk, which is exclusive to physical disabilities. (Punks with other disabilities are encouraged to use other terms like dyspunktional.)
Yes, "crip" was coined as a shortening of "cripple". Yes, they are both reclamations of the same slur. But I think it is productive for us to understand these two words as distinct, and to be mindful of the difference.
Crip at this point has a very well established usage that is pan-disability, while at the same time we physically disabled we need space to talk about cripple-specific stuff.
I hope this clarification is helpful! I know the two words sound similar and share a root but I think it's a nuance that matters. <3
How can chronic pain patients be “addicted to pain meds?” That’s like telling someone with a prosthetic that they’re addicted to their prosthetic. Or a cardio patient that they’re addicted to their pacemaker. Or a diabetic that they’re addicted to insulin. What is the thought process here?
Genuinely cannot stress this enough to celebrate the lives of the people (activists, cultural workers, points of connection in your care web, friends, comrades, kin) of your community now, especially if your community is small. Watching the dj community lose people like Mel Baggs, Stacey Park Milbern, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Patty Berne and now Alice Wong is so beyond crushing. Cherish them. Treasure their brilliance. Show up when the people you care about need you. Be there even if they don’t.
What do colours on pride flags mean when it comes to disability? Here's what I found!
I assembled a data set of 624 queer & disabled pride flags, containing a total of 2060 colour choices. I tagged each colour choice based on its known meaning(s). There are 41 disability-related tags, with 403 colour choices from 134 different pride flags.
On the left are the names of the tags. To the right of each tag is a series of squares, representing all the pride flag colour choices that were given that tag. The more squares there are, the more pride flags I found which had that meaning.
I then calculated a median colour for each tag. Every colour was converted into okLCH colourspace, where colours are represented with three values: lightness, chroma, and hue. I took the median lightness, median chroma, and median hue, and used those to create the colours on the left (the backgrounds of the tag names).
Detailed results are under the cut, and at the very bottom is a simplified & condensed colour-meaning association list that should be easier to remember & keep track of.
RESULTS
Disability in general came out as purplish blue. I kinda expected it to be blue, but guess more people think of it as purple!
Medicine & madness
Only a single flag - the Crohn's disease flag - had anything positive to say about the medical establishment. The Crohn's flag uses white to represent the doctors/nurses/researchers/etc who help Crohn's patients.
Most often if disability pride flags had something to say about the medical establishment, it was negative. There are five entries under underdiagnosis/misdiagnosis (mostly black/grey), and six for undiagnosed (mostly white).
And nine entries that I tagged with "iatrogenesis" which is the term for when medical intervention causes disease/disability.
The most common form of iatrogenesis was psychological trauma caused by the medical establishment. In particular, psychiatry was most often implicated for this, as seen in the psychpunk, systempunk, and traumatic psych experience flags. These were mostly purple, probably because mad pride is pink/purple.
Also related to mad pride was the psychosis+schizo spectrum, also using purple. (See: psychosis+schizospec flag, schizoaffective flag). Plurality also tended towards magenta but had a large range.
On the flip side of mad pride were flags that talked about mental health/illness as a negative thing. These tended to use blue or green. For example, the HS flag uses blue for "the toll that HS takes on mental health". This chronic pain flag uses a bluish green for how chronic pain messes you up emotionally.
Psychological trauma and dissociation was usually dark - often a dark grey. Red, purple, and teal were all used. The median winds up being a dark purple.
Mood disorders wound up with a median being blue but it had a bunch of subthemes. Red was used for anger & manic episodes. Yellow was also used for manic. Green and teal for panic/anxiety. Blue for depressive. Purple and black used for general negativity.
Neurodivergence
Autism was almost equally split between red (#RedInstead started in 2015 by a Canadian ASAN activist) and yellow (#GoingGold started in 2018 by AutisticUK). These are two prominent colours used as alternatives to the blue of Autism Speaks. I went into this personally inclined to the gold because of the Au=Autism pun, but splitting the difference and being orange actually is kinda nice. Feels inclusive.
Being non-verbal was reddish brown. It overlapped a lot with non-verbal autism but wasn't 100% autistic so I kept it a distinct tag.
ADHD had a bunch of variety. Orange was the most popular colour (7 out of 22) but purple (6) also got used a bunch. Some flags made a distinction between inattentive ADHD & hyperactive, usually with violet for inattentive and orange for hyperactive. But both orange and purple were used for all ADHD types.
Dyslexia was navy blue. Dyscalculia was dark green. Less common learning disabilities/differences which only had one pride flag representing them (e.g. dysorthographia) I lumped into "other learning-disabilities". It also came out orange.
Borderline PD had equal amounts of yellow and blue, yielding a median green because green is in between yellow and blue.
General neurodiversity was green. Yellow and blue also got used. I don't think the blues (like in this dyspraxia flag) in my data set are references to Autism Speaks but I personally would avoid using blue for neurodivergence regardless.
Cognitive difficulties was where I lumped together brain fog and memory problems. These were generally coming from chronic illness flags, like the chronic migraines flag. These were generally grey or greyish and a bit purple.
Sensory & communication disabilities
In @capricorn-0mnikorn's original meanings for the disability pride flag, green is used to represent sensory disabilities. I recently proposed some new meanings for the stripes, but I've felt least sure of my suggestion for the green stripe, so I wanted to find out if existing sensory flags really use green.
Blind & low-viz tended to be black/grey, like this one.
Deaf/deaf/HOH was blue, which is popularly used in Deaf culture (including the deaf flag). Stuttering, which isn't a sensory disability but is a communication disability like deafness, was also blue.
Sensory processing issues, such as auditory processing disorder (flag1, flag2), tended towards the cool greens & teals. This is probably in line with how neurodiversity in general was green.
So it's kind of a mixed result. As I already kinda suspected, it doesn't seem like Deaf/blind folks were really using green. But sensory processing like auditory processing disorder does use it. 🤔
Chronic illnesses
The tag for chronic illness in general was a mix of blue, purple, and red. The median winds up being a pinkish purple.
Chronic pain and chronic fatigue both wound up as bluish purple, but with some notable reds. Autoimmune conditions like lupus were also purple, but a pinkish purple. Epilepsy was purple.
Sleep disorders were also bluish purple, like in this narcolepsy flag. This makes sense to me: there's a connecting theme here of sleep and rest, and bluish purple being considered a colour of the night.
Respiratory conditions were sky blue - probably a reference to air and breathing (e.g. the blue in this long covid flag).
Gastrointestinal conditions such as gastroparesis were generally lime green or chartreuse (the colour between yellow and green). This is probably a reference to bile & gastric juices having these colours.
Reproductive disorders were about half yellow (e.g. this endometriosis flag), about one quarter purple, and one quarter red (e.g. this endometriosis flag). The median wound up being yellow.
Invisible disabilities were usually white, but a bit of teal.
Mobility & physical differences
Low mobility wound up as brown. Red was a common choice, but yellow/brown was more common, such as in this disability flag.
Within the mobility tag, motor coordination/coordination tended to be yellow (e.g. this autism flag), body weakness tended to be green (e.g. this ME/CFS flag).
Physical differences such as deformities also wound up as a warm yellow. There's the red from this congenital amputee flag, and the greenish yellow from this radial dysplasia flag.
Models of disability
I did not include the new proposed meanings for the disability pride flag in this data set. I wanted to see if the proposed meanings are in line with pre-existing flags.
Social model wound up as blue, in line with my proposal. 🩵
Ableism came out as dark grey, with a bit of teal. This includes both fighting ableism and being victims of ableism. If I were to match it to a model of disability, the radical or social models seem most relevant.
Disability visibility & pride came out as yellow. This is in line with yellow being culturally associated with happiness and joy. I consider this to be in line with the affirmation model and my proposal. 💛
Disability caused or amplified by racism/classism came out as dark brown/red, but there also were only four entries (purple/red/brown/black). The black and brown I assume are in reference to the brown skin of POC (e.g. this fibromyalgia flag).
My proposal has red as debility (disability caused by violence). This arguably lines up to the racism/classism, but I think it's kind of weak because of how few disability+racism/etc flags I found. I'm considering this inconclusive.
The economic model showed up as olive (between yellow and green). The economic model was presented as ableist. For example, the bad disabled flag has a green stripe for "being useless/uneconomic" in a context that makes clear that this is a way of "sham[ing], discredit[ing], denigrat[ing] disabled people".
As mentioned at the top, the only pro-medical entry was a single white stripe from the Crohn's flag.
This has me now second guessing the white & green in my original proposal - maybe the medical model should be under the "other models" of the white stripe? 🤔 And change green to something that would more easily include sensory processing disabilities? Like maybe the human rights model? 🤔 IDK, would like feedback! 💚
***
SIMPLIFIED RESULTS
The feedback I got from @queercripintersex on my analysis of gender/attraction colours is it'd be easier to have results that are clustered around a small set of colours with memorable colour-meaning associations.
So I did another round of clustering to simplify things down. I brought the 41 tags down to a more manageable 18. And I've added how I personally would remember each colour.
White: medical model. White like the lab coats doctors wear.
Off-white: invisible disabilities. Off-white like you're barely visible against a white background.
Grey: confusion (brain fog + un/misdiagnosis). Grey like fog.
Black: blind/low-viz. Black like absence of light.
Dark red: trauma. By this I mean both physical trauma (injury) and psychological trauma. Red like blood.
Dark brown: oppression (ableism/racism/etc). Red like blood plus brown like black/brown skin.
Reddish orange: autism/ADHD spectrum. Orange is opposite of blue on many colour wheels, so is a good option for being the opposite of Autism Speaks. Orange is also used in a lot of safety equipment and the like because of how it catches the eye's attention, and the association with attention -> ADHD.
Orange-ish yellow: reproductive disorders. Gold like the intersex flag.
Yellow-brown: physical disabilities. I don't have a good memory aid here, best I'm coming up is it's like the colour of wood, which is used for making mobility aids like canes but also "wooden" is used to describe some motor coordination impairments. If you have a better way to remember it let me know!
Yellow: positivity (disability pride + mania). Yellow is often associated with happiness.
Yellow-green: gastrointestinal. Like bile and vomit.
Green: neurodiversity. Because these are natural differences and green is associated with nature.
Teal/cyan: negativity (depression/etc, negative aspects of disability). Teal is has the same first three letters as tears, and we say people have the blues.
Blue: communication (Deaf/stuttering/etc). Blue also gets associated with openness and clarity.
Purplish blue: social model. Honestly the way I'll remember this one is that social attraction was a similar colour. Blue is often associated with society, conformity, and tradition.
Bluish purple: disability in general. Indigo is a good colour for not fitting in: we're neither blue nor purple.
Purple: chronic illness (pain/fatigue/etc). Purple is associated with the night and sleep, and chronically ill people need rest.
Pink-purple/magenta: madness. Pink and magenta aren't "real" colours in the sense that there do not exist wavelengths of light that make pink and magenta specifically. Those colours are made by our brains, which seems apt!
(Everything here is Creative Commons Sharealike 4.0, so you're free to reuse and build on my visualizations, tables, etc. Enjoy!)
EDIT (2024-07-24): earlier version of this post incorrectly wrote that the median hue for reproductive disorders was red. It was yellow.
