10:33pm November 23, 2011

“

One day, I was thinking about which terms were permissible to describe people who don’t bother using their brains when they should, and I discovered to my shock there isn’t one. “Stupid” describes someone who lacks cognitive capacity. There’s no shame in that. I want a term that shames someone who has cognitive capacity but refuses to think out of laziness and irresponsibility. The problem is not simply that “retard” or “idiot” are ugly because they refer to actual neruological conditions and “stupid” also technically refers to someone who lacks some cognitive ability; it’s that English doesn’t even bother having a word for people who can’t be bothered to apply their cognitive ability.

Question: what does that tell you about English? Answer: that we, as a culture, think the best way to insult someone who deserves an insult is to equate them with a person who has a condition and does not deserve insult. That’s pretty sick.

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http://whatprivilege.com/on-changing-the-name-to-what-privilege/ (via snarkmatter

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You know, I use some of these words, and I actually kinda agree. We need some better terms.

(via geekybitch)

Incorrect etymology for “stupid” and “idiot” above. Even when names *don’t* originally refer to disabilities—“idiot” is a classist term turned diagnostic label, and “stupid” is a reference to being to overcome to speak and neither on the same level as “retard”—we make them that way!

I suspect that many classist terms actually carry the connotations this person is looking for.

And in my experience, attempts to use words describing intellectual laziness and dishonesty are often rebuffed by cries of “ableism” anyway.

The whole thing is a gross oversimplification of some potentially really interesting stuff. It’s unfortunate.

Retard is offensive in nearly all contexts. Stupid and idiot are only offensive in limited contexts. And I’m saying that as someone who had “idiot savant qualities” in my original autism diagnostic papers – a rare modern use of the word idiot in a medical context. Also stupid has always seemed to be a good word for not using what you’ve got, rather than for limited capacity in some area. FFS we don’t need another neologism to sear my neurons with.

I’ve been building up for a long time to a post on my main blog about what the tendency towards lots of neologisms combined with the tendency towards shunning common words, does to the brains of people with certain language problems.  With understanding that similar language problems can be why people familiar with the neologisms can’t abandon them either.  But… when everyone seems to be using the same new words, while telling people off for using certain old words, it creates an image in my head of a place my brain cannot fit into.

Mind you again I’m fine with telling people off for using retard or retarded in most contexts. Just did it on Twitter.  But as someone else said these other words just aren’t on the same level.  And yet people are treating them the same… which warps my mind in certain ways.

Also definitely there’s interesting stuff in there. But it’s being overshadowed by the way people are treating it.  I long ago noticed most words for rudeness are class based. Doesn’t mean I’ll say it’s classist any time someone uses them. It’s not like that.  I’ll certainly talk about classism if there’s classism in the context of what’s considered rude. But not most usage of the words themselves.

All this just smacks of ideology to me.  And my brain can’t do that either – literally if I try to make a web of beliefs in my head it falls apart. (Note:  Am not saying I lack bias.)  So I have to take reality and ethics situation by situation rather than having strict rules.  This stuff also reminds me of people who think fuck you is equivalent to a rape threat.  Fuck that.

“The tight weave of traditions that makes a comfortable hammock for some just as surely makes a noose that strangles others.” -Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto

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