(CW: Ableism) Should we start banning ableist language here?
(CW: Ableism) Should we start banning ableist language here?
Unknowingly, most of us say many ableist things regularly. Here's a guide to help you be aware of those words and what you can say instead.
We already do this with some slurs, right? We can start enforcing these words, too.
Not calling anyone out, I’ve been guilty of it too. And we don’t have to do it all at once. Like, we can start with these:
Ableist words and alternatives.
Stupid, R€tarded, Idiot(ic), Cretin, or Moron(ic): People say this to imply something, or someone isn't intelligent or worth their time, but the words refer to people with intellectual disabilities. Instead, say that a situation or person is frustrating, ignorant, dense, unpleasant, cheesy, or awful.
Dumb: This word refers to a person who doesn't speak verbally, but people often use it to mean that something or someone isn't intelligent or wise. It's listed separately from stupid and its synonyms because it references a physical disability instead of an intellectual one. Try using any of the non-ableist synonyms like irritating or uncool.
Crazy, Nuts, Mad, Psycho, or Insane: "Wow, that's crazy!" may not seem like a harmful statement, but if you think about someone with a mental health condition hearing that statement, it's easy to realize that it is. So instead of using one of those words, try outrageous, bananas, bizarre, amazing, intense, extreme, overwhelming, or wild.
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Try using any of the non-ableist synonyms like irritating or uncool.
Can you suggest a word that actually replaces the meaning people are using it for?
The issue most of the time here is that idiot or stupid or dumb are used in context to functionally mean "a person making a [decision/action/statement] that lacked proper thought" and while I agree that in various contexts these words are ableist, and that they carry ableist sentiments because of their usage in those contexts I have failed to find useful synonyms that replace the functionality of these words when their intent is still just "that was a decision/action/whatever made by someone not giving appropriate thought to the situation". Wew that's a badly written run on sentence.
To properly address this problem in language an appropriate substitute must be given to people, or one must be created. The issue I see with creating words to fill this niche however is that they will last just months before beginning use by reactionaries in an ableist context where they will quickly then become tainted.
I think there are good alternatives depending on the situations like frustrating, unwise, thoughtless, even evil when it’s capitalism doing something very egregious.
There are alternatives out there. We don’t use them because these ableist words act as a convenient filler, but if there common usage causes some people to feel discomfort, then imo we should look into removing these from our vocabulary.
Convenient filler how though? Because they are short and convey the intent of the user in the shortest way possible.
This is the problem. When I make a mistake and say "I'm dumb" like leaving my phone in the fridge because I was half asleep this morning, I'm not being ableist to myself am I? "I'm half asleep and have sleep walked into a silly action" is the intent. The problem is that the words are ALSO used by ableists in an ableist way, to actually harm the recipients.
We clearly need very short words to communicate these hiccups and mistakes we do. What we need if we're going to make ground on this front (outside of niche hyper-aware communities) is short words that aren't also capable of being used by reactionaries to harm people of varying ability, thus tainting them.
I've seen someone say that my above example could just be "Doh" and I've seen others turn around and ask the question of whether Homer Simpson is an ableist caricature that makes that word ableist. The topic is... Very difficult.
I'm not even saying that we shouldn't approach this with the aim of fixing it in society. What I'm saying is that we should approach it with tactics that will actually work, and right now I don't think we've figured out how to replace this little communication niche properly. I think we can, and that we should approach doing this when we've actually worked out how to replace it linguistically. Without proper replacements people engage in a lot of pushback and even in leftist groups I've seen it cause pretty bad splits. I think especially in a dirtbag left setting there's going to be splitting over it.
Great post comrade.
To give some theoretical oomph, the chain of metonymy is the problem here -any replacement for your example will also be inextricably related to the term it's replacing. So "doh" is a great example since it's in theory harmless, but its associations (with both the word replaced and the caricature) mean that we can't ever imagine a "pure" word completely divorced from its problematic versions.
However, I think that there's a degree between calling something "dumb" (perhaps the least offensive of all of these? It hasn't been in the ableist usage for a long time...) and then more problematic ones like specific conditions (for conditions in the DSM now) or other more "charged" terms.
Should we still recognize the history? Yes. But as Fred Jameson says, history is what hurts, and we can never get out of it. I don't think it's worth fighting over some of these more benign ones that history has sanded down, at least not when there's more appealing targets.
Yeah like, don't get me wrong, I do recognise the problem here that some people are trying to solve...
The issue I see however is that there's a tactical issue with this specific part of the ableist lexicon that they want to remove. It's filling a language niche that is genuinely harmless and only ends up ableist by association and misuse. The pushback that occurs, the splitting that occurs over this topic, seems to come from the fact people know they're intuitively not using these words to be ableist and understand the function that they're serving in the context so they end up feeling insulted and confused about how to continue filling this niche without a suitable alternative presented.
As communists I feel like we need to be as close to "normal" as possible, especially in the language that we choose to use. My current feeling here is that if we want to solve this problem then we need to find a way around this. The intent people have with this anti-ableist language stuff is good but I think the right tactic isn't being deployed yet. Far more penetration into the mainstream would occur if we could solve this.
Real shit: should we be "normal," bring about communism, and a better life for disabled people everywhere but occasionally call something stupid?
Or should we legislate every aspect of language before we do anything material.
This isn't to say we shouldn't strive for both, but you're totally right that if we alienate ordinary people (who don't see calling actions "dumb" as ableist) before a revolution with the most labored HR language, what the fuck are we doing?
I know we're not actually doing praxis here but this is a great thing to keep in mind. Self crit is good though, this has been a really interesting thread.
Edit a good point was made elsewhere on the thread that the forum is really good about apologizing when called on shit, and I think self policing (i.e. if a comrade were actually mute irl and felt specific offense at "dumb" and expressed it I'm sure all of us would apologize to them and try to do better)
Speaking in an entirely tactis-based mindset without moralism - A multi-channel approach is probably useful here.
Groups should exist that explicitly ban this. Groups should exist that do not. There are different types of people that this appeals to and it provides method for us to reach them all.
I know we’re not actually doing praxis here but this is a great thing to keep in mind. Self crit is good though, this has been a really interesting thread.
I agree we're not doing praxis here, but we are doing propagandism. A bunch of stuff on hexbear does make its way out into social media.
Edit a good point was made elsewhere on the thread that the forum is really good about apologizing when called on shit, and I think self policing (i.e. if a comrade were actually mute irl and felt specific offense at “dumb” and expressed it I’m sure all of us would apologize to them and try to do better)
There are instances where I self-police and some where I don't. I definitely use replacement words like "ignorant" when talking about working class chuds for example, particularly because I think their characterisation as "stupid" is harmful to us in reaching out to them. Someone who is "stupid" is being characterised as incapable of understanding what we understand, making it worthless to reach out to and educate them, whereas someone who is accurately labelled as ignorant is very much still someone we can reach - assuming their economic class position is correct of course.
I think the kind of debate we're having on this is probably similar to the kind of debate some communists in the global south end up having over lgbt issues. Being pushed by the conditions to try and be "normal" in those conditions and address them more openly at a better time. It is useful to have activists pushing the topics for change while also having groups that are not doing that. This doesn't mean throwing them under the bus of course, not fighting AGAINST them, just not being overt about it and leaving it to other groups to push the boundaries so that they can maintain their focus on attracting a certain type of people without alienating them.