Another thing that bothers me about labels — some people identify too strongly with the label.
I am thinking about two women I know with limited mobility. One is a vibrant woman, who has made a name for herself in her field, travels around the world as part of her profession, and just incidentally, uses a scooter. The other does not work, asks people to wait on her, and is constantly talking about how her disability makes it impossible to do anything.
The first woman has a disability, the second is disabled. Tiny semantic difference, big attitude difference. Some people use labels to describe their weaknesses (or strengths, gifted is a label too), others become their labels.
We want our kids to be multi-talented, productive, interesting human beings, who, incidentally, have some additional challenges related to a learning disability. We don’t want our daughter to say “Hi, I’m Susan, I’m Aspie” and stop there … we want our son to say “Hi, I’m Joe. I just sold a book of poetry, and am studying political philosophy, and speak 4 languages. I don’t write them because I have visual processing issues related to my NLD.”
I think this label issue is very complex. As you mention in your first post, access to services is dependent on labels in our system. As you mention in this post, it would be better to see the label as a key that opens doors, versus your primary identity. Unfortunately, this is a tendency of many people, whether or not they carry a disability label, and something a lot of people have to work to overcome.