Definition of "supercrip"
supercrip
noun
plural supercrips
A disabled person, particularly an athlete, who achieves exceptional success or accomplishments in spite of the challenges they face, serving as an inspiration to others.
Quotations
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: Disability in Language and Culture, page 185
The athletes also believe that the supercrip model is good for the able-bodied public because it shows disabled individuals in a "positive" light.
2008, Marie Hardin, Brent Hardin, “Elite Wheelchair Athletes Relate To Sport Media”, in Keith Gilbert, Otto J. Schantz, editors, The Paralympic Games: Empowerment Or Side Show?, page 29
In other words, there is the remarkably healthy inspirational and independent supercrip that I became at the height of my Paralympic career, and then there is the sickly, dependent, revolting gimp that I became as I transitioned to using tools like oxygen, a backrest, and attendant care.
2015, Danielle Peers, “From Inhalation to Inspiration: A Genealogical Auto-ethnography of a Supercrip”, in Shelley Tremain, editor, Foucault and the Government of Disability, page 341
A disabled fictional character with extraordinary abilities or superpowers.
Quotations
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 in the autism community as more realistic or honest.
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
Another potential siting of disability masquerade connecting the superhero and 'supercrip' is M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000), which establishes a kind of disability continuum between the villain Elijah Price/Mr Glass, who lives with osteogenesis imperfecta, and the hero David Dunn, who is seemingly impervious to physical harm.
2016, Todd R. Ramlow, “Queering, Cripping”, in Michael O'Rourke, Noreen Giffney, editors, The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, unnumbered page
As I have argued throughout this book, the supercrip model represented by a sword-fighting blind masseur or a shoot-from-the-hip, deaf gangster is very entertaining but does little to advocate the critical needs of this particular minority group.
2020, Yoshiko Okuyama, Reframing Disability in Manga, page 152