A theory of how to talk to other people about disability

[Kitty]

Socially I became experienced at turning the conversation away from myself and back on to them.

Very much so—but also steering it onto things where there is both shared interest and equality.

I do music, photography and wildlife surveying with different groups of people. We often have a laugh about tunes we just can't get on top of, or help each other with IDs, or what camera settings we use for something. Talk about things we'd like to do and places we'd like to go, or tell funny stories about how disastrously we once cocked something up. The stuff of normal friendships.

It almost sounds as if I spent time working up a strategy for navigating all this, but I didn't. I couldn't even have explained what I was doing in the way in the way I have here. It was just a natural inclination towards privacy, a tendency to look at things that make me uncomfortable from a social politics standpoint, and learning ways of dealing with things from other disabled people.