ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the meaning of hate speech and offers a more holistic approach that is more flexible to the everyday experiences of disabled people. It considers some of the stories shared by participants in the research project, and reflects upon how hate speech is understood, experienced, and also resisted. Hate speech may be defined as the expression of derogatory vocabularies and personal prejudices that aim to dehumanise the target and provoke discrimination. Disablist hate speech should be understood as part of wider social processes of disablism, whereby ‘a hierarchical structure of power in society is based upon notions of “difference”, with the “mythical norm” at the top and those who are “different” assigned subordinate positions’. This process of identity demarcation is bound to the relationship of stigma and explains how acts of hate are justified when the target is presented as unworthy.
