supercrips

Noun

supercrip (plural supercrips)

1. A disabled person, particularly an athlete, who achieves exceptional success or accomplishments, whom others view as inspirational.
   • Roosevelt was the quintessential American "supercrip," to use a term coined by disability activists.2001, Ellen L. Barton, “Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way”, in Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, James C. Wilson, editors, Embodied Rhetorics...
2. A disabled fictional character with extraordinary abilities or superpowers.
   • Yet because of the history and proliferation of the supercrip in films in television shows – not only with autism but supercrips with other disabilities as well – viewers are primed for the supercrip autistic and are therefore not expecting (in some ways) a view of autism that comes across to many...2016, Katherine Lashley, “Displaying Autism: The Thinking Images of Temple Grandin (2010)”, in Benjamin Fraser, editor, Cultures of Representation: Disability in World Cinema Contexts, page 130