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8:18pm July 27, 2013

➸ : Grr, just saw a post on the ableism tag where someone asked if stupid...

allies-person:

Grr, just saw a post on the ableism tag where someone asked if stupid is a slur because “some people are genuinely stupid (low IQ).“ To the asker: No, people with intellectual disabilities are not, in fact, “genuinely stupid.” Attitudes like yours are precisely the problem, not somebody using…

Oh for the love of… yes that.

Stupid means something. What is ableist is applying it to cognitively disabled people (whether intellectually disabled or not). Or hurling it at disabled people as an insult.

Doing that is ableist. But not a slur. And it has non-ableist uses. (In which anyone can be stupid, or not stupid, regardless of disability.)

It’s sort of how lazy isn’t a slur. Even though it’s misapplied to disabled people with cognitive or physical stamina problems.

Laziness and stupidity exist, what’s wrong (or not) is how you apply them.