I used to work with a fellow who had a younger sister with cerebral palsy. He often spoke with pride of her high intelligence and academic achievements, and also of her occasionally mischievous nature.

I remember one occasion when he told me, with some excitement, that she had been chosen to be interviewed by a journalist from a major magazine on behalf of the students at her university.

The day of the interview came, and he waited for her phone call to be collected from the magazines' office. When it came, it was from a thoroughly disappointed and mildly enraged young woman who had just been subjected to the press’s idea of ‘political correctness’ for the first time.

His sister explained that the interview had begun smoothly enough, despite her intimidation at the groomed-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life 30-something female journalist facing her. The first few questions had involved the university newspaper, and were relevant and well thought out.

However, when it came time to discuss the on-campus requirements particular to students with physical or intellectual disabilities, things quickly turned pear-shaped.

Apparently, the journalist was so addicted to political correctness that, despite the entire point of the question being to discuss aspects of  her subjects’ unique needs, she descended into ‘PC speak’ that utterly alienated the younger woman by avoiding the facts of her disability.

When the journalist referred to her interviewees’ disability as “your condition”, and to the disabled students (as a group) as “the otherly abled”, the girl pointed out that the correct term for her was ‘a spastic’.

The woman was shocked, and said “I beg your pardon ?”, so she repeated her statement: "I am a spastic, ok ?. It’s not an insult”. The journalist then went silent, and this silence was quickly filled by the young womans’ careful explanation.

She explained that the word ‘spastic’ has a medical meaning, despite its being so stigmatised that she was thinking of having a t-shirt made that said ‘spastic is not a dirty word’ to make it plain that political correctness was making us all sugar-coat everything or else be thought callous (even those it was designed to protect).

I learned a big lesson that day, and I continue to learn them from another dear friend who, at 26, has been wheelchair-bound by spina bifida for 20 years.

The way he looks at it, if people don’t get the chance to look at you and see who you are, rather than which way you’re ‘arranged’, then they’re likely to make the mistake of assuming that you’re as uncomfortable about it as they are.

The (Australian charity) ‘The Spastic Centre’ has long fought the mild ridicule that prejudice has attached to its name. We’d all be much better off if their name inspired visions of hope and joy, as opposed to the image of a ‘spastic’ as a soulless drooling moron, and the term ‘spastic’ being regarded as a ‘forbidden’ slur.

Then, rather than more sniggers and misconceptions, they may have more funding to do their vital work, as unattractive connotations rarely attract the ‘glamorous’ funding of  media ‘pet issues’.

The myth of the ‘stupid spastic’ is one that deserves to be shattered by young and confident people with the nerve to be what, as well as who, they are, just as this young woman did.

Kudos to you, little sister. You’re one of lifes’ trailblazers.