Bravo to commentary writer Jonathan Tiong for saying what I have felt for some time (“I am disabled and you can call me that”; July 5).

There are times when we must call a spade a spade.

Why, indeed, should we waste energy saying or typing out eight syllables (person with disabilities) when we can use five (disabled person)?

This is particularly so when we need to conserve energy or are enduring extreme pain.

Political correctness on overdrive leads to tokenism and virtue signalling. Why must I accept the label you chose to give me so that you can feel better about yourself?

Typically, unless one has walked in another’s shoes, one would never know how that person feels.

I discovered that no amount of classroom training, library research and even participant observation could make me understand the constant physical pain that the people I was researching were going through.

Then I found myself suffering persistent pain — sometimes dull, sometimes sharp — for several weeks because of a frozen shoulder. Sleeping at night was impossible until exhaustion set in, but I was wide awake in about two hours when the pain seeped back into my consciousness.

Had I been in such pain alongside my respondents, I am sure the resulting ethnography would have had a different focus.

Many people, albeit with good intentions, try to “do” empathy. But one group of people (able-bodied, white, black, brown, straight) telling others (the media, people who care, policymakers) how to describe another group (disabled, of a certain skin colour, bisexual, old) is often nothing short of patronising.

When I am in great pain, distressed, depressed and fatigued, and when the prospect of self-harm is so appealing, do not tell me how to describe or think about myself.

Words — your words — and virtue signalling do not help to pay the bills, cook the meals and clean up afterwards.

How you describe me does not get me from A to B when such journeys are necessary.

Ask questions by all means. As Mr Tiong said: “Listen to what the person with the disability is telling you.” Never assume you know better.

I must plead guilty, however, to thinking that people like Mr Tiong are inspirational.

According to my physiotherapist, there are many people in the United Kingdom who strive to be “qualified disabled”. Just as people qualify as accountants and doctors, so too have many with indeterminate pains whom he has met tried to qualify as “disabled” to claim generous welfare benefits. These claimants make it more difficult for those with genuine disabilities to get the help they deserve.

From this perspective, I find people like Mr Tiong truly inspiring. I imagine he is also magnanimous enough to forgive me for thinking that.

ABOUT THE WRITER:

Dr Lee Siew Peng researched older Chinese migrants as a social anthropologist, and now teaches Esol (English for speakers of other languages) as a volunteer in Harrow, United Kingdom, and English for academic purposes at the UK’s Warwick University.

Have views on this issue or a news topic you care about? Send your letter to voices [at] mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and phone number.