I’m like just coming up on ableist language & trying to rebuild my daily word choices to not include it - and holy fuck do alot of us do a terrible job.
Can someone whip up an ableist language bot that just points it out when we do a boo-boo?
No scolding, no shaming, - just a bot that points it out with a simple reply. Hell, “hey my ableism detector is going off” and have it rotate through with some loving positive messages.
I think alot of us would be surprised at how much we could grow in this department
It perpetuates ability based oppression and hierarchy.
There are serious material forces behind oppression and hierarchy, someone calling someone stupid is not one of them, and focusing on language is a pretty liberal tactic. Everyone could stop calling each other stupid or dumb or lame or whatever and nothing would change, because no employer would change their minds about hiring disabled people, public services for them wouldn’t be better funded and they wouldn’t get better healthcare, because changing the language doesn’t change the structures, and it’s the structures that are important here, otherwise it is just putting the cart before the horse. Better language is good to make people feel included and to not emotionally hurt marginalized groups. For instance using autistic as an insult creates a hostile environment towards autistic people. Calling someone stupid more or less offends the person you are calling stupid and no one else really, because that’s just how it is used. Tbh I don’t know how everyone takes it, but as a personal anecdote, I know my cousin is mentally challenged and I’ve never gotten the impression words like that affect him at all, and he uses them himself all the time.
It’s good to police outright ableist slurs, but I don’t see this as fruitful. Should we police “fuck” too? Because when you say “fuck this” you are implying sexual violence and domination. There is an incredible wealth of words you can find some kind of problematic root to it. At some point I think it stops making a community more inclusive and just makes it more sterile because people have to constantly second guess themselves out of using extremely common words.
I don’t see the difference between calling someone autistic & calling someone stupid - they’re both rooted in their abilities or capabilities, no? If you call someone autistic in a hostile fashion, or you call them stupid in the same fashion how are the two different?
Or are you suggesting that stupid isn’t part of anyone’s identity? Nobody identifies as a stupid person? Nobody recognizes themselves as having reduced cognitive function?
Is it that “stupid” is a less concrete term than autistic? I have a hard time believing nobody identifies as a dummy, or a stupid person.
As far as the material forces portion, I agree - material is top dog. But words do matter, both to the people marginalized by them but also the people that use them. The language & rhetoric change shouldn’t be an end of itself, but I have a hard time believing that putting an end to demeaning people based on intellectual ability or whatever wouldn’t promote any meaningful change. At best its putting people down, when we need to build people up.
I’m not saying people have to do anything - im not suggesting any kind of policing, hell I expressly rejected the idea of having any kind of negative language whatsoever. I’m proposing a prompt that reminds us there are other more effective words that can be used in place of these habitually promoted words. Stupid is rooted in ability - it would be better to use something else if we’re using it in a negative connotation. Hell even as a self dis, it’d be better to say intellectually lazy or take ownership - as opposed to implying that it comes from a place of intellect lacking or whatever.
Ideally I want the prompt to offer suggested alternatives and just some kind positive message. Mostly around here I see people using stupid in the self depricating sense anyways
I don’t see the difference between calling someone autistic & calling someone stupid - they’re both rooted in their abilities or capabilities, no?
So is noob, is noob ableist too? Hell, even just calling someone incompetent insults their ability, is it to be taken as a nasty ableist term? If the difference is that one is inherent and the other isn’t, stupid isn’t necessarily inherent either. People say “stop being stupid” or “x idea is stupid” all the time. Stupid isn’t rooted to anything specific, unlike r*tard, which is the slur against mentally challenged people.
Or are you suggesting that stupid isn’t part of anyone’s identity? Nobody identifies as a stupid person? Nobody recognizes themselves as having reduced cognitive function?
I really don’t think many people identify as “stupid”. People with reduced cognitive function tend to think of themselves as having learning difficulties and they don’t necessarily consider themselves stupid.
I have a hard time believing that putting an end to demeaning people based on intellectual ability or whatever wouldn’t promote any meaningful change
I have a really hard time believing it would, because of the nature of these people’s issues. Again, I don’t believe language can do much more than make people feel more welcome and I don’t think many people with cognitive difficulties at all are made to feel unwelcome by casual usage of a word as common and abstract as stupid, unless you are calling them stupid of course. At least I don’t know anyone who’s said that. Similarly I haven’t heard of sexual assault victims or women in general argue that people shouldn’t say “fuck this” or “fuck you” or whatever. I mean, I’m sure someone somewhere has argued that because everything has been argued by someone somewhere but I don’t think it’s a common issue.
I’m proposing a prompt that reminds us there are other more effective words that can be used in place of these habitually promoted words.
The issue is that words like stupid, dumb, lame etc are used so frequently that any bot like that will just badly spam every thread and it’s gonna be very annoying. And, like, blind? That’s not even an insult.
