Political Correctness
Or Virtual Non-Discrimination

In order to change the reality of something, it is not enough to change its name

Rodolfo Cattani

There are matters about which one should not be ironical, but there are times when the desire to do so is simply irresistible. The Latin saying Nomen Omen indicates that names, common or proper, often seem to represent or predict a situation, a condition, or a destiny for which they are in a way the bearers.  The name of an entity is certainly conventional, tough not coincidental, and sometimes even extremely appropriate.
In today's society where the image predominates and where an important part of the information is filtered through the media, names have taken an even greater importance and a sort of virtual existence. This may explain the movement obligating one to carry a politically correct discourse, meaning that it excludes terms which could condemn, stigmatize. 
The use of politically correct language dates back to the 70's when in the United States, and later in Europe, emerged the human rights movement, which carried along a series of events heavily marked by democracy and antidiscrimination.
Then emerges in society an obligation to brush away connotative and discriminatory terminology, substituting expressions perceived as offensive with others more impersonal or straight out nasty.
This is how are disappearing blacks, whores, pederasts, junkies, vagrants, beggars, and so on, letting in coloured people, sex workers, gays, drug-addicts, and homeless people. The previous names are used today by those of little culture and no scrupples to insult and belittle.
But it is not enough. In the whirlwind of linguistic reform were also dragged along the cleaning or service ladies reclassified as domestic help; the glorious sweepers of noisy stairways, lowered in status as sanitation men, or better yet, ecological operators; the dishwashers, labourers, dockers, all people whose linguistic traces we have lost.
A sector which has particularly benefitted from this linguistic revolution is the one relating to persons with physical, sensorial or psychological disabilities. Before the revolution, there were the blind (direct descendant of the orbs, the one-eyed), the deaf, the crippled or lame, the deficient or idiots or mentally retarded, all in all, heaps of unfortunates we were to have mercy on.
In this new aura of sensitivity were then rebaptized the visually impaired, the hearing impaired and hard of hearing, people with limited mobility and persons with a psychological disability.
A word, which would put in common these various types of disabilities, was needed; a term which had to provide social status as well as personal dignity.
The concept of handicap was borrowed more or less consciously from equestrianism where it occurs that certain horses, which are too strong, are penalized at the start because they are not perceived objectively as favorites during a race.
Persons with disadvantages were then again considered in relation with their penalty.
According to the World Health Organisation's classification, which was recently abandoned, persons with a handicap experienced a loss or a weakness (impairment), which caused a functional limitation (disability), from which resulted an incapacity to relate with the environment they live in (handicap).
For purposes of briefness, I am sorry to summarize information that is so delicate and sensitive, but I wish to point out that the accent was always put on the so-called handicapped person and not on the environment that person lives in.
Even the term handicapped was put aside in order to adopt the apparently more correct disabled, in the sense of differently abled. The problem is that as soon as those words started to get around, they were right away carrying a stigmatizing connotation. But why? The fact is that the linguistic evolution does not correspond to a similar cultural evolution. In fact, though it is true that in these past years acceptance and tolerance in regards to persons with disabilities is greater, their social inclusion is still far ahead. Remain the prejudice, the  
impediments, the fears of throwback, the instinctive refusal of difference, behaviour that is more difficult to change than a word in a common language. Many persons with disabilities maintain that instead of working on definitions, which might end up generic and misleading, we must look at the substance, working on the real issues which must be faced daily.
This means above all that it must be recognized that there is a will to really garantee persons with disabilities full participation and equal opportunity, and that in order to achieve this, action must be taken on the life environment to eliminate behaviour and barriers that are still in opposition today.
What is called the Social Model on disability states that the disability itself is not only a person's attribute or characteristic, but rather the social and environmental results, widely influenced by attitude and social behaviour, and conditioned by limitations created by the human environment people live in.
Consequently, each step taken to obtain better conditions and encourage integration of persons with disabilities requires a social action; society has a collective responsability to carry out the necessary changes in attitude and in the environment in order to allow full participation in every aspect of life.
In 2001, the Word Health Organization has drawn up a new International Classification of Functions, Disability and Health, which represents the social model described above. In fact, the new version of the classification is quite different from the previous one which referred essentially on the medical and individual aspects of disability. According to the new approach, the functionality of persons with a certain limitation is an interactive process between health conditions, activities and concomitant factors.
I.C.F.'s classification does not only concern persons with disabilities, but it can be applied to a certain extent to everyone. Technically the term person with a disability is now considered obsolete and is substituted by the expression person with activity limitations.
It means: a person of any age who is not in a position to accomplish, independantly or without help, tasks or fundamental human activities due to a health condition or a physical, mental, cognitive, or psychological limitation which is permanent or temporary.
This very large definition can apply to many types of persons, many of whom would not have been categorized as disabled in the past. In such case, the real persons with disabilities may disappear since there are no longer objective criteria to define them.