After recent discussions and changes to the Code of Conduct, the Disabled community would like to give some clarification on the use of ableist language. There has been a lot of debate on what is and isn’t ableist, and we would like to clarify some key points and offer some considerations for users when communicating here and elsewhere online. This is not a guide to what to say or how to speak. We merely wish to educate and provide examples around some of the language-related issues that impact people with disabilities, with the hope that we can encourage mindfulness when interacting with your fellow users, who may or may not be disabled.
"Language is inherently political. Both as individuals and as larger social and cultural groups, it is self-evident that the language we use to express all sorts of ideas, opinions, and emotions, as well as to describe ourselves and others, is simultaneously reflective of existing attitudes and influential to developing attitudes.
The terms that are listed below are part of an expanding English-language glossary of ableist words and terms. I have chosen to include words or phrases that I know of or that are brought to my attention that meet two criteria: 1) Their literal or historical definition derives from a description of disability, either in general or pertaining to a specific category of disability, and 2) They have been historically and or currently used to marginalize, other, and oppress disabled people."
-from Ableist Words And Terms To Avoid
For those looking for examples of generally ableist terms/phrases, the article linked above is a semi-comprehensive list the Disabled community refers to, linked under #9 in our community sidebar. There, you’ll find a list of words that are ableist in origin, but not necessarily slurs or insults. If you’re looking for alternatives, we’d suggest trying to be more precise in your language and clarify your meaning. One of the examples provided is “blind to / blinded by”, which is by no means a slur, but can be ableist in context. You can, of course, say you were blinded by the light of the sun/ headlights/ a flashlight and not be ableist, because this is what happens when you look into bright light. However, if someone misses an obvious detail and you say “You’d have to be blind not to see it”, it is ableist. Note that in the ableist context, you could also call that person “stupid” for missing a detail, when all you meant to say was “You missed this detail.” Using the phrase “You’d have to be blind not to see it” normalizes the idea that blindness is a bad thing that should be avoided. Blind people should have agency over the connotation of the word blindness and not be influenced by our negative usage of it to think that their condition is inherently bad.
Ableist slurs and expressions are commonly used to convey frustration and outrage. If a person is thoughtlessly hurting you and is seemingly not paying attention to how you feel, you would be rightfully outraged. Some people would call that person a psychopath, or sociopath. As most of us are not medically trained professionals who can tell the difference between a cruel person (or merely a cruel act committed by a person) and an actual psychopath/ sociopath/ etc., the disabled community would argue that terms like these, which pathologize certain behaviors, are ableist outside of a medically diagnosed context. Calling someone who commits something evil a psychopath/ sociopath/ etc., or using a descriptive word like insane/ crazy, assigns an inherent evil to anyone suffering from such associated conditions. Using it in this way implies that all people with these disabilities are evil. If someone is treating you cruelly, call them out on this, as is your right, but be mindful of how you interact with others. Some people are cruel, and some things happen by accident and/or with no ill intent.
Similar to how you wouldn’t mock or bully a blind person for their blindness, you also shouldn’t do this to someone who has a hidden disability. ADHD, autism, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, and a multitude of other physical and mental disabilities have an array of issues that are not always obvious to non-affected people. Some of us are sensitive to noise or bright lights, others are so restricted in their diet that they can’t eat vegan or vegetarian. The point of being less ableist both in deed as well as in word is to not judge someone for needing special accommodations, may that be offline or online. We as a community ask you to be mindful of each other’s boundaries and needs, our seen and unseen struggles.
It is on us to communicate, learn, and resolve conflicts amicably instead of using ableist insults or terms as a default. It takes effort, and no one is naturally good at this, but as human beings, we are able to learn, adapt and overcome our differences. The disabled community would appreciate if we made a collective effort to try and be less ableist towards each other, to make both the site but also our everyday lives more accommodating for everyone, whether we are ourselves disabled or not. If you find yourself using ableist language, please take a moment to examine how your perspective has been informed by ableism. We’ve all participated and been subject to ableist structures, and now more than ever it is essential for us to unlearn our conditioned acceptance of ableism.
If you are interested in learning more about ableism and the use of ableist language, we have a small, non-comprehensive list of reading materials you may want to check out. The last three links lead to external websites, the ones before to Anna’s Archive:
Constructing Ableism - Stephanie Jenkins
The Relationships Between COVID-19 Anxiety, Ageism, and Ableism - Amanda A. Arcieri
Ableism in the medical profession - Neilson, Shane
Cultural and Impairment‐Specific Stereotype - Michelle R. Nario-Redmond
Ly Xīnzhèn Zhǎngsūn Brown (Lydia X. Z. Brown) Ableist words/terms list as mentioned above
Language Style Guide - National Center on Disability and Journalism Disability
This post would not have been possible without the dedicated feedback and work put into it by the community of c/disabled, and I wish to extend the mods heartfelt thanks to all who pitched in to help make it better.
If anyone has questions, the disabled community is ready to listen and help explain. Thank you to you all for reading and caring enough to check the post out!
Would you like this post site-pinned for a couple days, or no?
I’d appreciate it, yes, thank you!
Incredible post comrades!
I have struggled with saying something, realizing it is ableist, but not knowing what to say instead. Some stuff like the r-word I haven’t used in years, even prior to finding out I am autistic, because I knew it was bad to say, other people around me however refuse to drop that word from their vocabularies and it makes me mad, specially because it’s one that’s rather easy to just not use at all. I’ll make sure I check which words to avoid using from now on and find replacements for it.
Also to complement the quote about language being political, in the very first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon talks about how language is also a form of violence, in the book it’s in the context of colonization, but its still something important to keep in mind.
One thing that works well for my autistic brain is that when I notice I say something mildly ableist, I correct my language as I’m speaking and it really helps shift my monotropic brain that clings to habit like a baby monkey clings to its mother.
So I might say “That was a stupid thing for me to do… I mean foolish.” or “…foolish, rather.” because the more I associate saying foolish instead of stupid, the more likely I am to reach for the right word instead of the ableist one.
It’s also a process. If you try changing everything at once it’s overwhelming. My advice would be to start with the most over ableist language that you find yourself using, get comfortable with using better terms, then move on to the more subtle words over time. I deal with verbal shutdowns and communication issues already and if I had to ovethink my words even more than I already do I’d probably stop talking entirely. So, give yourself the space to change and be patient with the process.
in the very first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon talks about how language is also a form of violence
Frantz Fanon? Never heard of the guy! /s
Oh I see, thanks for the tip! Having a lot of social anxiety makes it kinda difficult for me to correct that in the spot, but I’ll try doing it anyway. I don’t really go non-verbal but I get overwhelmed rather easily, so I’ll make sure to give myself the necessary time and space to change.
That’s understandable. Trying when you are able to do so will make a big difference anyway, even if it only happens when you’re thinking out loud to yourself or you do it when you’re talking one-on-one to a person you’re comfortable with and the anxiety levels are lower.
I don’t really go non-verbal
I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t talk about this, especially given the topic of the post. This is a call-in not a call out.
The preferred term is “non-speaking” since non-verbal implies that only the act of speak words out loud “counts” as “valid” form of verbalizing and it doesn’t recognize that people can verbalize by signing, using AAC, or by writing.
But that term applies to people who do not speak and use alternative means of communication and this is essentially considered to be a persistent state. For yourself, it seems like you do not speak at times in a transient way and the preferred term for that is “verbal shutdown” because it’s important to make a distinction between people who are non-speaking and the people who lose their ability to speak temporarily due to certain factors. The (unintentional) harm caused by referring to oneself with the term nonverbal while being able to speak most of the time is that it creates a societal expectation that people who identify as nonverbal/nonspeaking or are labeled as such can speak, and that can cause all sorts of problems.
As a person who experiences verbal shutdowns myself I think it’s very important that we avoid colonizing that space carved out for nonspeaking people because it’s crucial that they have it and the recognition in society (however small) that comes with it.
There’s no need to apologize or to feel guilty over this btw. These misunderstandings are a product of the discourse within the autistic community, especially online, being of an abysmal quality and having a strong tendency to import a lot of ableism in from mainstream discourse while, intentionally or otherwise, talking over higher support needs autistic people etc. (Honestly, that shit gives me a migraine and it’s so difficult to drive culture change in that space.) You’re not to blame for picking up what prominent figures in the autistic self-advocacy community normalize without consideration for higher support needs people and others who do not speak. (Btw Sienna Stims is a creator on social media and they are really good at critiquing the internalized ableism and lateral ableism within the autistic community, especially from content creators, and I’d recommend you give them a follow so you see their stuff in your feed.)
Sorry for the long time to reply, my social battery was a bit drained for social interactions online on the past couple of days.
I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t talk about this, especially given the topic of the post. This is a call-in not a call out.
Thanks for the explanation comrade I was not aware of that at all, sorry for that, I’ll be using the correct term going forward and will keep that all in mind. Also just to be sure, I don’t feel called out or anything like that, I really appreciate you taking your time to write all this out.
I still have a lot I don’t understand about myself, like there have been times where under extremely stressful situations it becomes really difficult for me to speak for example, but it’s not to the same degree that it happens to so many other autistic people and I usually forget about these times at all because I haven’t been in such situations in a a bit.
(Btw Sienna Stims is a creator on social media and they are really good at critiquing the internalized ableism and lateral ableism within the autistic community, especially from content creators, and I’d recommend you give them a follow so you see their stuff in your feed.)
Thanks for the recommendation, I really need to follow more neurodivergent creators, it helps a lot not only for learning but to also feel like I’m not alone.
I can relate to needing down time to recharge. Take as much time as you need, seriously.
I’m glad you don’t feel called out. I am in a constant battle against tone and implication as I try to not come off like a complete asshole. Usually I do alright but sometimes people get really mad at me despite my best intentions.
One thing that really helped me understand my verbal shutdowns is thinking of it like a spectrum - generally I am able to at least squeeze out a few words and it’s rare that I’m without any words at all, except when I’m completely overwhelmed and usually that only lasts for a couple of minutes or less and I’ll vocalize "mmm-hmmm"s and stuff like that to scrape by until I can access some words again. But often I have a lot that I would say and that I know I can say, I just can’t get that past my mouth because it feels like an insurmountable effort. So I abbreviate and say something like “sometimes it can be hard to get words out” instead, knowing that I want to say so much more but there’s a roadblock there and the more overwhelmed or exhausted I am, the bigger that roadblock is.
So for me it goes all the way from vocalizing the uh-huh, uh-uh, and the humming version of idunno (even when someone asks me something that isn’t a yes-or-no question) to being very restricted to a few simple words to being able to speak a bit but running out of steam for it very quickly.
Obviously right on the other end of the spectrum is when I am able to articulate everything I want to say, often to the detriment to my need to take breaths and to the people around me who get subjected to a barrage of words (/semi-ironic). (I’m sure you can tell by now that I have a lot to say.)
Idk, that might be useful to you for understanding how verbal shutdowns work. It’s been really valuable for me to help understand how I’m going and whether my current conditions are conductive for my wellbeing and self regulation etc.
Also don’t take my criticisms of the autistic self-advocacy community too seriously - there’s a lot of work to be done and there are some pitfalls but all of those things can be dealt with. The most important part is that you feel connected and understood and that you have resources to understand your experience better so that you can live a good life. Problematic wording or the occasional shitty concept can be addressed but community always has a built-in level of mess because people are messy and that’s just how it is. If you wait for the perfect autistic community to come along then you will be waiting all your life and, in the meantime, you will deny yourself connection and deepened understanding and opportunities to make change. I know it’s trite to say it but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Ableist Language is still present in most media and as someone who learned English from Movies and Books, it’s definitely hard to know what may be ableist because I mostly ‘repeat’ lines of English than ‘speak’ English, if this makes sense.
Makes total sense. I learned english from mostly playing games then watching content in english, mainly youtube, so I totally get that, sometimes I still do just repeat some lines without really thinking about it.
good post
common disabled community W
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the ways people use the idea of others lacking empathy, and I’d be interested to hear takes on this. On one hand, there are societal factors that cause one group to have less empathy for another, but on the other hand, people definitely also use the idea to say “those who disagree with me on this must have a mental disorder”. The language used for these is basically the same, and I don’t want to silence voices when they are not academically correct enough, but also don’t want to good-faith interpret my way into spreading ableism.
I’m not sure if a lack of empathy should be considered a disorder. But I think saying that someone lacks empathy should be evaluated similarly as any psychiatric diagnosis: you can not look into someone’s brain so you shouldn’t use it lightly. However if you know what you’re talking about and have good reason to believe it might apply to someone and it is valuable to mention as it can explain certain behaviours then it should be fine to do it. Obviously it shouldn’t be done to insult or belittle someone.
I’m focusing on your second point, because I think the first one applies to a lot more groups than just disabled people and people with disabilities.
If someone disagrees with you and is not academically correct-ish, and is not ableist in the way they do it, you should make sure to engage in good faith and mindfully try to educate them. (That’s the easy one.)
If someone is ableist while they disagree, make sure to point it out to them, in an understanding but not overbearing fashion. There’s ableist statements that will immediately stick out to you, and others that won’t, but you can’t know them all, so don’t worry about it too much. The point is to keep it in mind and question both what others say, and what you say, which brings me to the last point.
If you find yourself disagreeing with someone and have that impulse to say something ableist, consider what you actually want to convey with your statement. Are you upset? Are you in disbelief over your conversation partner’s lack of knowledge on the topic? Are you just surprised to hear their take? Try to phrase this sentiment precisely, or, if it’s the other person who says the ableist thing, ask them what they actually want to convey with that statement.
The point of empathy, at least to me in the context you’re describing, is that you should just let it pass. It’s such a prominent part of modern day communication that most people don’t even know how their statements are or can be ableist. The empathetic point is to try and educate them in an understanding manner without being condescending or overbearing. It’s an useful but difficult to learn skill, and it isn’t one I have mastered myself either.
I feel like I went off topic, but I hope the take kind of helps you with your question.
Wanted to emphasize this point and elaborate on it.
The point of empathy, at least to me in the context you’re describing, is that you should just let it pass. It’s such a prominent part of modern day communication that most people don’t even know how their statements are or can be ableist.
It’s always best practice to assume good faith or, at worst, ignorance in person who says something ableist (except in cases where it’s patently obvious what they’re doing.)
There are people who use outdated terms or even deprecated, bigoted words who have their heart in the right place and they have good values. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. Jumping down someone’s throat over minor indiscretions just alienates people who are well-meaning. On the other hand, I’m sure you’ve experienced people who use pitch-perfect 100% woke language to communicate bigoted ideas as well.
Words matter but intent matters more in this case imo. It’s easy enough to correct well meaning sentiment that is worded in an ableist way but it’s much harder to work on someone’s values, especially if you’re the marginalized group they’re targeting.
The empathetic point is to try and educate them in an understanding manner without being condescending or overbearing.
Personally, I try to refer to my own experience rather than labelling the other person. “You are ableist and you are a bad person because of that fact” doesn’t win people over and it doesn’t open up opportunities for dialogue and introspection and learning so it’s counterproductive.
On the other hand, if you focus on your experience then I think it works a lot better. For example: “*When I hear people say the word ‘neurodivergent’ as a placeholder for the term ‘autistic’ it sits uncomfortably with me because it feels like my diagnosis of autism is a taboo that must be avoided and that it’s a shameful thing to be autistic or to even speak the name of the condition. I completely understand why people do this and I know that it’s not your intent to make me feel this way but it’s okay to say that I’m autistic and, just like with the topic of mental health, if we make room for discussions on it and we are comfortable with speaking its name then it makes a big difference in tackling stigma. We don’t say ‘those who are insulin-challenged’ because that’s silly and we can just say ‘diabetic’ which is totally fine. In the same way, I don’t want be spoken about in hushed words and euphemism while people tiptoe around it. I’m okay with being autistic and I would like others to be okay with it too.”
It’s an useful but difficult to learn skill, and it isn’t one I have mastered myself either.
Let me know when you do because I could use mentoring in this.
Thank you for that addition, Fanon, I appreciate it a lot!
Let me know when you do because I could use mentoring in this.
Wanna make a little club to practice this in a safe environment?
Great post! Thank you to all the comrades who have taken the time to think about this.
Trying to be better with this every day.
Thank you too, comrade, and we’re all trying to be better with this
Good post.
I wish I had saved it but one person in the comments of one of the rules change posts had a nice effort post on the issues with insults generally. It sounds obvious to say it but it’s demeaning by nature and almost always involves a comparison to some group that shouldn’t be viewed negatively, whether the insult is racist, sexist, ableist, etc. The “acceptable” insults tend to just be facts, i.e. “they’re a fascist.” Don’t want to go too deep into it since this is a post about ableist language and that can extend into more than just insults ofc.Good post
I’ve been seeing a lot of people here say things are “lame” lately
Wish search actually worked
I don’t want to see every “blamed” Fun search trick, you could include a space before to exclude first letter “conjugates” unless the search will strip that trying to be helpful
pub fn fuzzy_search(q: &str) -> String { let replaced = q .replace('\\', "\\\\") .replace('%', "\\%") .replace('_', "\\_") .replace(' ', "%"); format!("%{replaced}%") }(% here means what * usually does, any number of anything)
As things are right now, you need your own instance (literally me) and connecting to the database manually and searching through it to get what you want
If someone can make a better search, please do go help!
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
I tried searching for
" lame "earlier and the very first result was for “blame”
Nooooo
does it apply to you? if not, kindly don’t speak for those of us with impaired mobility who do not and have never understood “lame” as meaning anything other than uncool outside of the extremely dated biblical use.
I think people should really consider the etymological fallacy when it comes to this stuff. There are words which obviously have ableist undertones like stupid, the r-word, dumb, etc., but even these words have undergone a transformation over time through semantic bleaching to the point where the original meaning is considered archaic.
Words like “idiot,” “moron,” and “imbecile” used to be genuine medical terms and were once considered neutral (albeit during a problematic period in medical history for other reasons). They were transformed through pejoration into generic insults, and we now view this new meaning as ableist because these words are currently used to mock someone’s intelligence.
There was a time when the word “silly” meant someone was blessed or happy, and “villain” used to refer to a peasant or farmhand. What really matters is whether a word is being used in an ableist way today, either based on context or the word itself if it’s strong enough. I also don’t think “lame” qualifies unless someone is going out of their way to use it in an old-fashioned way because, as you said, it broadly just means something is uncool or boring.
I can’t really speak on the word ‘lame’ as I don’t know a lot about its origin, but I do want to say that the harm of ableist language is relevant for all of us and not only the people who these are intended to describe. It is good to listen to disabled people and take their consideration very seriously on this matter, because their experience and often personal research are very valuable. However we should also base our actions on content based arguments instead of authority or anecdotal arguments. Your personal understanding of a word does not contest the potential oppressive structures behind it which could be reinforced by continuous usage.
but I am the affected disabled people here. there are elder lgbt+ people who don’t like “queer” because of how it was weaponized against them in their youth but the consensus is that queer has been reclaimed, people use it to describe themselves, people ask to be described by others as queer, and you can literally get a degree in queer studies.
i have time for someone who is directly affected by lame somehow, but not for able people patronizing and condescending to us what we should consider ableist or not. I have friends who say the n-word a lot and some who don’t like it even from other black people and i’m not taking a side in that because it’s definitely not my place.
If the word lame has actually been reclaimed by those affected then that’s fine. But I think that the comment you were replying to was specifically referring to the usage of the word lame to describe something that is boring or uninteresting or uncool. That usage of the word associates people with a walking impairment to being boring uninteresting or uncool and I can not think of any reason why that should not be considered ableist. But if you can give me one the I’d be happy to change my position.
I’m also not patronising anyone as I care a lot about the bigger picture of the dehumanisation of disabled people and eugenics and every example of ableist language plays into that.
i’m saying there’s a third thing besides active prejudice and reclamation and that lame = uncool != people who can’t walk. it’s disassociated from us unless you’re literally quoting about jesus.
policing lame because you think it invokes us is backsliding and you shouldn’t do that. if i am lame in some way it’s not because my knees are fucked.
Thanks for explaining again, I didn’t really get the argument before. It makes sense but since English is my second language I really don’t know the association most English speakers have with the word lame.
The translation for lame in my native language is still very commonly used and often to make fun of people so that’s why the association is still there for me.
I’ve never met a disabled person who claims “lame” is a reclaimed word and this one person claiming that is liberal idealism. One person speaking for themselves is not an authority on the subject and I’ve seen countless disabled people ask people not to use it
i’m not saying it’s reclaimed. i’m saying it’s disconnected and not associated with us. reclaiming is different, but there’s another kind of meaning drift that can happen and i argue that is the case for lame, like how over a much much longer time period “bad” lost its misogynist or homophobic connotation.
over a much much longer time period “bad” lost its misogynist or homophobic connotation
I have actually never heard of that, can you elaborate a bit? I’m curious
That usage of the word associates people with a walking impairment to being boring uninteresting or uncool
Only true if people still associate ‘lame’ with people with walking impediments, which I don’t believe to be the case in the 21st century.
Yes it does and lame literally means disabled you clown.
Why don’t you just call uncool things crippled? That’s really disabled of you. Do you see how maimed you sound?
These are all synonyms for lame. Just because you decided you are okay with ablelist language doesn’t mean it isn’t ableist. You sound like the many disabled people who go on Kill Tony and use the r-slur to prove how cool you are.
It’s also funny to see how many people removed their upvote from my original comment because of your post, essentially cosigning your ableism because you are disabled and spoke up in favor of an ableist word.
we have very different experiences then. I have literally never heard anyone called lame on that basis, and it’s been over 20 years since i heard a person called “a cripple” rather than inanimate objects or systems.
substituting words as you have doesn’t mean much when nobody uses those synonyms that way.
That isnt the point and is not how language works. Lame is on the list linked in the fucking OP. This isn’t a thread about slurs actively used to denigrate people, it’s about ableist language and how it has become normalized as not slurs but every day language, just as you are displaying here and further normalizing which is proven by the people removing their up votes from my original comment because of you.
The idea that as a disabled person you can’t be contributing to this issues is exactly the same argument zionists use with anti semitism
i disagree with the maximalist position on ableism that says a word is forever tainted if it has ever in the past been such.
my contention is that the determining factor should be common usage and i think any effort to reassociate lame with not being able to walk is not liberatory. It is not used on us (where i live and have lived, anyway, and in the dominant english culture) and the vernacular meaning has no connection to mobility. This is unlike all the mental ability words where the invocation is directly to mental faculties or “sanity”.
you can make your own post about it with your own list of words you personally think are bad but this whole post is about how pervasive ableism is in language and how normalized it is. You can go on a crusade about your personal preferences about when ableism is okay for you personally but able bodied people are only going to use your opening of the door to find some way to justify whatever they want and there will be plenty of disabled people like you signing off on each and every word you think is bad and making it okay to themselves.
To me, lame being “uncool” is probably extension from something being “crippled” to “slow” and “slow people” being “uncool” so you are really doubling down on something that doesn’t do you any favors
language that is ableist is prejudicial, others us, or contributes to our marginalization. you’d have to do a hell of a lot more work to show me that in the present day or last few decades that lame meaning uncool has any impact on us or our social condition.
you see an antiquated and retired usage and think it’s normalized ableism, i think it’s not ableist at all. I think highlighting a usage and meaning that was on the way out when my grandparents were in diapers does more to harm us than every time something is said to be lame.
i doubt there is any more productive discussion to be had here, but i’m happy to be surprised.
This post was literally how I discovered that “lame” has ableist origins. Had it not been, I would have continued using the word casually, never understanding how it may impact people. It is not obvious that it means anything other than “boring”
you clown
What is it with Hexbears and expecting everyone to be completely educated on every topic and responding with hostility?
Isn’t assuming good faith of long time users a rule now? This user is literally disabled, treating this situation as if they’re handing out the nword pass to honkies is definitely not assuming good faith.
For many of us, English isn’t even our first language. Going off on someone like this feels like rules lawyering non-white and ESL people out of leftist spaces because they don’t know the origin of some word in common parlance. I assume this was not your intent.
fwiw I also have multiple disabilities and will not use the word going forward.
The usage of clown was because they challenged my level of disability to further normalize their use of ableism. I did not initiate the hostility, they insulted me off the bat by trying to challenge me in an attempt to defend ableist language, which the continue to do in the ensuing exchange. It is absolutely clown behavior.
This user is literally disabled…
This is no different than when Jewish users were using liberal zionist logic to police Muslims about wanting the israel cool emoji
I made a comment pointing out an ableist word I see used here a lot which is on the list in the OP, I didn’t even look at the list when I said that because I already knew it was ableist. That user responded policing my pointing that out by assuming I am not disabled enough to point something out. Then they continued to double down on it.
The usage of clown was because they challenged my level of disability to further normalize their use of ableism. …
Agree entirely, not disputing any of that paragraph besides maybe their intent. Either way it’s definitely infuriating.
This is no different than when Jewish users were using liberal zionist logic to police Muslims about wanting the israel cool emoji
Very different. The context of the holocaust and its relationship to Judaism is universally understood here. I think your comparison is uncharitable.
(I wrote a long post detailing my thoughts, but figured it isn’t a hill worth dying on)
My greater point is that language is dynamic, and maybe other people have different understandings of context surrounding it. Educating people of your perspective will accomplish more than scolding other disabled people for expressing theirs.
If they just expressed their opinion I would have been more interested in sharing mine in kind but doing this hyper online policing of others is fucking annoying, especially when trying to defend ableist language, and a word that specifically and literally describes a physical impairment.
There was a thread a few months ago that used the word autist and as a person who is not diagnosed with autism I asked if that word was okay to use because I only heard it used insultingly by people who are not autistic. Many autistic people said they use it, many said they don’t. It’s fine to have differeng opinions about language but to have someone arguing that a word that literally and definitively describes a disability is not ableist is fucking absurd.
Irt to the Judaism thing, my point is that it is an idealist fallacy that someone being from the group in question allows them to misuse their identity to defend abuses towards that identity. Someone being disabled isn’t immune from perpetuating ableism, someone being Jewish isn’t immune from perpetuating anti semitism, etc
Yeah, I’ve noticed this site feeling more contentious in the time since I first joined. I think part of the everyone constantly assuming the worst in each other stems partly from us being more widely federated and getting used to dunking on bad faith libs then going to being more closed off, and applying that same level of antagonism to their comrades on this site. Having your status as a disabled person called into question seems like a particularly hurtful consequence of that phenomena, partially because we definitely would see .world libs coming in here to speak on our behalf.
Idk “autist” feels very much like a slur to me. I’m surprised that autistic people defend its use at all. Like yeah, we all have our thoughts on what we find offensive, but there is some stuff that is pretty clearly used as a bludgeon against marginalized groups for their innate characteristics.
Pickmes of all kinds exist and do a great service for the oppressor class. I just wish that we would assume that less of well established users of this site. Most people here are solid people who may be quite clumsy with their rhetoric or wording or analysis of intentions, so I try to give the benefit of the doubt.
One that is confusing is when someone calls another “psycho.”
Like, do they mean psychopath? Or psychotic, as in someone that’s in psychosis? Or that someone’s angry? Or aggressive? Hyperactively happy? Out of sync with people around them and being a sore thumb? (Etc…) Because there’s a big difference between these all.
Always thought/felt like people mean psychopath, usually some kind of pop sci idea of psychopath too. Someone is a “psycho” if they kill an animal in a brutal way, or shameless cheat, etc.
I wonder who popularly did that first, horror movies or the general public?
I think it’s fair to assume that the movie Psycho is both a symptom and a cause for the spread of the term in everyday language. It had a wide societal impact when it released and is still remembered to this day.
In all the contexts I’ve come across in person is has always been something about a “person acting in an extreme way that endangers themselves/others” and in other instances “making others concerned there is a potential of being put into extremely uncomfortable and/or dangers situations.”
Basically all ableist terms carry a slew of connotation with them and it acts as a mirror for how our society relates to and represents that particular disability.
If we take a common ableist term like crazy, the connotations are that it’s out of touch, ridiculous, foolish, naive, counterproductive, ineffective, exploitable (and in fact that it’s virtuous, or at least beneficial, to take advantage of, e.g. “Our prices are completely crazy” [!!!]), harmful, wasteful/a waste, dangerous, laughable, best to ignore, against the common good and so on.
And how do we see society treating people who are deemed “crazy”? You already know the answer.
Society treats those people as dangerous, out of touch, foolish, to be ignored, a waste, against the common good, that they know better than the people deemed crazy, and in a huge way as people to be exploited. I’m not gonna quote crime stats at you but I find it extremely implausible that there could be no connection between how common it is in mainstream discourse to use “crazy” as a selling point to encourage exploiting something and how exploited people with psychiatric disability—“crazy” people—are in society.
You’re not wrong to say that there’s a wide variety of implications with how a word like that is used but the connective tissue here is that all the way the word is used is a lens into the way society views the particular disability being referred to.
that they know better than the people deemed crazy, and in a huge way as people to be exploited.
I remember I was having social anxiety while talking with a much older man and his mix-aged crowd of friends that I just met at the park. The topic of age had come up. I mentioned I was insert multiple decades-old. (So keep in mind that this man’s behavior, was NOT at all because he was so elderly he mistaked me for a kid. There was a guy around my age who he seemed fully respectful of.)
Later, he invited me to step away from the crowd sitting in the sun to sit with him and his dog in the shade. I was treating the dog extra nice because he told me it was dying of cancer.
About 10 minutes later, probably deliberately while he had me isolated from his group, he said, “Have you ever been to the looney bin?” I said, “Why, have you?” because I was wondering if this was a lonely guy who was looking for people to relate to him. He said no, but he knew people who have been 51/50’d.
So he was plain nosey and felt entitled to know just because he felt I was… something, based on my social anxiety? Idk. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of a yes or no on something highly not his business, I responded, “That’s private.”
Then he immediately starts interrogating me asking “What direction is your house? Where exactly do you live? You’re so young and you’ve been in here in this park for hours.” (A park that many people recreationally hang out for hours in.)
Later on this site, I made a post asking about why someone would do that. Someone made a good point that some creeps pretend to be saviors as an excuse to creep. Especially on much younger people.
Anyhow, I feel like this relates to what you’re saying. Even though idk all the ways how.
I’m learning to ask about manipulators, “What is the game thats being played, and what’s the purpose of this thing they’re presenting?”
I’d say the game he was playing was pretending he’s only interrogating me as a kind favor towards me. And the purpose of this game was to successfully interrogate me for my home address and other personal information. To stalk me in plain sight.
Thank you so much. I apologize and regret my recent use of ableist language. It was in ignorance, not malice, but I recognize it’s offensive.
Damn I really liked ‘bonkers’ and how it sounded. I always associated it with getting hit on the head (no idea if that’s how it relates then to ableism or not) and always imagined a ‘bonk’ effect. Thought it was super harmless, but I learned something new today! Good post, thanks for the info!
Also super happy to find “dipshit” on the list of acceptable replacement words. That’s one of my top ones that are at least still mean to use on fascists.
bonkers is unknown etymology.
also it looks like the usage is divergent between commonwealth and american english. on a website we might choose to be more strict but if you’re in the states it’s contextual rather than ableist by default.
I’m neither, thankfully! Just gonna be on the safe side and not use it anymore.
Thanks for the post I appreciate it.
I find myself often unable to express my extreme distaste for things without resorting to ableist language.
Is there a good lists of insults somewhere?
Atrocious, antithetical (to…), awful, appalling, craven, cowardly, classless (the bad kind), despicable, dreadful, dire, deplorable, detestable, ghastly, ghoulish, gall/galling (personal favourite), horrific, horrendous, hateful, heinous, inimical (to…), ignorant, insipid, Milquetoast, mealymouthed, loathesome, laughable, nasty, odious, obnoxious, objectionable, reprehensible, revolting (the bad kind not the good kind), rotten, risible, repellant, tasteless, tactless, vile.
Loredrop:
One time in grade school my teacher threatened us with having to read the dictionary if we forgot to bring out book during reading time.Me, having been raised by wolves and needing to test boundaries in order to feel some sense of security and to establish trust in authority figures for being consistent and reliable while not acting punitively, did what I did and tested the boundaries. So I ended up reading the dictionary during the reading period. Turns out I found it fascinating. I didn’t do it every reading period but I definitely did it for quite a few of them. So now you know where this comment originated from.
Question, what does classless actually mean? English is not my native language so I often find out that meanings of English words are slightly different than I assume. My assumption is that being classless means that you are not part of the elite gentile posh class and thus appear rude to someone who does. It seems classist to me that way.
Yeah, it can definitely be used in a classist way. I was putting little in-jokes in the list to make it a little bit less boring because classless can sometimes mean impolite or distasteful in some contexts as class can refer to things being respectable and refined and decent etc., but it’s more of a secondary meaning than the primary one that you are already familiar with. (There’s a term for a word that has multiple meanings that have overlap like this and it’s “polysemy” but you’re never gonna need to know this.)
So in some dialects of English, telling a person “that’s not classy behavior” means that what they did was really rude or socially unacceptable and that there is strong disapprove for it.
There’s an argument that classy refers to “upper class” behavior and aesthetics and so on but it’s not that simple because the way that it’s used by proles doesn’t actually align to bourgeois decorum and aesthetics, and often it’s used without any regard for it either. You could get into a heated debate over this and there’s good arguments on both sides but I am of the opinion that it’s a term that is in the process of being reclaimed.
I really like how you describe things as it’s easy for me to understand, so I hope you don’t mind me asking a follow up question:
In another comment you described how blindness can be used to replace a word that describes lack of awareness, and how that associates blindness with a lacking of awareness. Can the same be said for the word ‘class’ in this case, where it replaces the word decent and thus associates people of ‘a class’ (usually upper class) with decency?
That’s very kind of you to say. I could talk all day about language and I have all the time in the world for comrades, especially if I can assist with their learning, so ask as many follow up questions as you want.
Can the same be said for the word ‘class’ in this case, where it replaces the word decent and thus associates people of ‘a class’ (usually upper class) with decency?
Yes, absolutely. I think there’s a good argument for this being correct.
My take on this is based on this concept of the reclamation of language. I get the impression that you’ve read quite a bit by other comments of yours that I have read so please excuse me if I’m explaining things that you already know but the idea of reclamation is when a term which was used to insult a group gets repurposed by that group and the meaning gets changed.
The biggest example of this in English is the word “queer” which used to be a slur against LGBTQ+ people. Over time that label started getting used positively by the community and it became a label of pride and celebration rather than being one used to insult and shame people.
It gets tricky because the new meaning of the term queer is still directly connected to the old way that it was used and it’s always going to carry that history with it. Often older queer people still don’t like the term queer because they remember the older meaning of the word and it’s hurtful to them when they hear people use it.
I think this captures something really important for this discussion because language is always changing and it can have completely different meanings for different people. This makes it really hard to make any absolute claim about a word.
For me, I’ve seen people use the word “class” or “classy” as a compliment for things that an upper class person would be horrified by and I’ve seen terms like “no class” being used to insult the things that upper class people do. That tells me that lower class people don’t care what upper class people think about what’s good and bad, instead they make their own judgement and they use the same term but in a way that has no regard for what the upper class thinks. In one sense, there is a battle being fought in culture over the meaning of this term and the lower class people are saying “You don’t own this word and you don’t get to define its meaning for us. We can do that ourselves and we have the numbers on our side.”
In the same way that “queer” can still be used as a slur if it’s said in a hateful way and it can be understood as an insult, especially by older people, using a word like “classy” or “classless” can definitely be used in a classist way. But on the other hand, the term “queer” is often used without any concern for it once being used as a slur because the word has been taken back and a new meaning has been written over the old one. Similarly, terms like “class” often get used with a new meaning that surpasses the old one.
Ultimately, I lean towards this position but your position is still valid and it’s correct in plenty of examples that I can think of. I wish we could fast forward 20 years into the future to find out exactly how this develops.
Thank you! This is important context that I was missing, and it explains why you put ‘the bad kind’ in parentheses. My communities don’t use the word class in this way at all so I wasn’t aware of popular usage by working class people repurposing the word.
No worries.
The other joke in that comment was where I said “revolting (the bad kind)” because revolting can mean disgusting or it can mean when the people are rising up. My hope was that it would make that boring list a bit more fun by putting in a little political humor.
That’s just the thesaurus copy pasted. Milquetoast? kidding me.
You don’t talk that way and neither will I.
It’s really not - I just went through the alphabet and came up with as many words as I could for each letter. You can see the patterns where I bounced off one word and came up with other similar ones. And, yeah, I do use words like ridiculous or absurd instead of crazy or stupid in my day to day life.
I talk this way because shit’s not gonna change unless we start making change. I’d rather sound, whatever, odd or archaic or something than to join the chorus of ableism that is the background radiation of society.
Comrade I’m sorry. Thank you for answering my question. I shouldn’t disparage it.
Look, I get it. I’m autistic and I’m a word nerd so I can understand why it would give the impression of being a copy-paste of a thesaurus entry.
No harm, no foul.
Lotsa people do though? Just search milquetoast on hexbear: https://hexbear.net/search?q=milquetoast&type=All&listingType=All&page=1&sort=TopAll&titleOnly=false
“annoying”
On the blind usage, another way to phrase it if you want to be snarky or show you think the person is intentionally missing something is asking if they are being deliberately obtuse or just calling them obtuse
This is a very good example too! Thank you for sharing it <3
others are so restricted in their diet that they can’t eat vegan or vegetarian
I appreciate the acknowledgement! it sucks because you can try your best, but your body ultimately determines what they will eat and not your mind 😩
I feel you comrade, I am myself struggling with this exact same problem, and I would like to go full vegetarian at the minimum. However, recent developments in my own health now force me to stick with eating specific types of meat. It’s frustrating, it makes me feel bad even though I know it’s not my fault.
On a personal note, and not as a moderator, I would like to point out something that struck me while reading the comments all of you made in this thread. There are a lot of terms both on and off the Ableist words/terms list that don’t feel insulting to some but feel (immensely) insulting to others, and that is okay. We all perceive things differently, some words are always slurs, others depend on the person and/or context. The point I wanted to make is that I feel it’s important that we give each other grace when it comes to terms that we perceive as hurtful or not. If someone doesn’t mind using a term or being spoken to with that term, that is fine, but at the same time, if a conversation partner does not appreciate or tolerate being addressed with the same term, we should not use it. Making conversations and language accommodating doesn’t mean that words are forbidden from being mentioned. But it is important to understand that just because something is okay for you, it doesn’t have to be okay for someone else.
Anecdoctal mention of my own experience: While I am disabled, I severely dislike being called disabled by other people. I’ve been bullied in school for having a disability pass, and people would mock and tease me for needing special accommodations. To me, being called disabled by other people still feels like a slur, even though “disabled” is by no means one.
