supercrip

English

Etymology

super- +‎ crip

Noun

supercrip (plural supercrips)

1. A disabled person, particularly an athlete, who achieves exceptional success or accomplishments in spite of the challenges they face, serving as an inspiration to others.
   • 2001, Ellen L. Barton, “Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way”, in Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, James C. Wilson, editors, Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture‎^[1], page 185:

     Roosevelt was the quintessential American "supercrip," to use a term coined by disability activists.

   • 2008, Marie Hardin, Brent Hardin, “Elite Wheelchair Athletes Relate To Sport Media”, in Keith Gilbert, Otto J. Schantz, editors, The Paralympic Games: Empowerment Or Side Show?‎^[2], page 29:

     The athletes also believe that the supercrip model is good for the able-bodied public because it shows disabled individuals in a "positive" light.

   • 2015, Danielle Peers, “From Inhalation to Inspiration: A Genealogical Auto-ethnography of a Supercrip”, in Shelley Tremain, editor, Foucault and the Government of Disability‎^[3], page 341:

     In other words, there is the remarkably healthy inspirational and independent supercrip that I became at the height of my Paralympic career, and then there is the sickly, dependent, revolting gimp that I became as I transitioned to using tools like oxygen, a backrest, and attendant care.

2. A disabled fictional character with extraordinary abilities or superpowers.
   • 2016, Katherine Lashley, “Displaying Autism: The Thinking Images of Temple Grandin (2010)”, in Benjamin Fraser, editor, Cultures of Representation: Disability in World Cinema Contexts‎^[4], page 130:

     Yet because of the history and proliferation of the supercrip in films in television shows – not only with autism but supercrips with other disabilities as well – viewers are primed for the supercrip autistic and are therefore not expecting (in some ways) a view of autism that comes across to many in the autism community as more realistic or honest.

   • 2016, Todd R. Ramlow, “Queering, Cripping”, in Michael O'Rourke, Noreen Giffney, editors, The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory‎^[5], unnumbered page:

     Another potential siting of disability masquerade connecting the superhero and 'supercrip' is M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000), which establishes a kind of disability continuum between the villain Elijah Price/Mr Glass, who lives with osteogenesis imperfecta, and the hero David Dunn, who is seemingly impervious to physical harm.

   • 2020, Yoshiko Okuyama, Reframing Disability in Manga‎^[6], page 152:

     As I have argued throughout this book, the supercrip model represented by a sword-fighting blind masseur or a shoot-from-the-hip, deaf gangster is very entertaining but does little to advocate the critical needs of this particular minority group.

See also

• inspiration porn