The Clarke Forum and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center hosted a Love Your Body Week lecture called “Out of Time: Fatness, Disability, and Fat Crip Time.” The talk by Dr. April Herndon explored the relationship between society, fatness and disabilities.

Herndon impactfully discussed fat oppression in society. Western society’s view of fatness is a “before.” The stigma around fatness impacts medical advice, relationships and lives. There is a belief that fat people are not worth limited resources because their weight is difficult, especially in natural disasters. The discrimination fat people face is real and deadly; I felt these points brought up by Herndon were accurate and needed addressing.

However, I felt Herndon’s inclusion of disability within this talk was questionable. I thought her addition of the word “Crip” in her talk was unnecessary. While she claimed that the term is widely reclaimed by disabled people, it is not. There is heavy contention about the reclamation of the word. When you look up, “Is crippled…” on Google, the top results include “offensive,” “a slur,” “derogatory,” “ableist,” “politically correct,” “politically incorrect” and “a bad term.” These results demonstrate the contestation of the word.

Herndon’s explanations for the use of “crip” instead of “disabled” were that the word is reclaimed and is present in academic work. The inclusion of the term crip or crippled in academic work is not the indicator that it is a free and fair word. Academic work has been used for centuries to discredit marginalized groups, and is not always central to the idea of political correctness and compassion.

Herndon discusses the importance of context. She talks about how her sources describe themselves as crippled, so she will too. Consent is important, and if that is how these disabled individuals want to be identified by others, that is their choice. However, the inclusion of the phrase “Fat Crip Time” does not abide by Herndon’s reclamation reasoning. 

“Fat Crip Time” is the engagement with a person’s surroundings, allowing oneself to go at the body’s pace and see the things one has missed. I think the idea can be very positive, especially for someone like me who uses a cane. However, not all disabled people move slower than before they were disabled. Individuals in power chairs and electric scooters move much faster than they previously did walking. For example, Sam Ritschel ’26, uses an electric scooter that can go up to 25 mph. 

Ritschel states, “I have issues [with the word crip]…the word crip has historically been used against visibly disabled people like myself. I feel like non-visibly disabled people shouldn’t use the word crip, even if it is used in academia, because they don’t know what it’s like to have the word thrown at you…I also didn’t like how [Dr. Herndon] almost shamed people for wanting a cure, and when I asked her a question about this, she referred only to her sources. At the end of the day, I’m not only a source and that’s how she viewed disabled people.”

Herndon’s talk was surface-level and non-inclusive, though she was unable to make her understanding of fat oppression intersect with society’s ableism. If she is willing to use such a contentious word in her talk, it is necessary to understand the history and problems it will cause. The normalization of the word ‘crip’ is not something all disabled people want. When you engage in disabled activism, language must be considered. Herndon failed to consider the possible consequences of using this language. She considered what her sources and herself wanted, not the disabled students of Dickinson College.