3:26am August 5, 2013

➸ Urocyon's Jaunts: andreashettle: socialwustice: I’m disabled and there really are words...

socialwustice:

I’m disabled and there really are words I can’t stand, but I just don’t get the importance placed on them.

People rarely called me a retard to my face, but they did amongst themselves. Even when they did call me that, though, the fact they treated…

Retard was never a kinder gentler anything. Retarded was. Retard was always an insult. Idiot was an insult long long before it was a diagnostic term.

I do see a point in changing the words when they become true slurs. Because at that point they’re too hurtful to a lot of people to be of any use.

But.

The obsession with calling everything remotely insulting and remotely connected to disability an ableist slur, I can never get behind. Ever.

Nor can I get behind the obsession with changing words and claiming that it’s more important than any other consideration.

Not while disabled people are living under bridges, dying in all sorts of horrible and unnecessary ways, going without pain treatment, being abused in every conceivable way, being “disappeared” into institutions and other places like that, and a million things more important than the words people use while doing it.

Also I find the focus on changing words and thoughts disturbing in itself. I don’t care what someone is thinking or saying as long as what they’re doing is ok. Yes I know saying is sometimes a form of doing. But usually it’s just saying.

And the problem with trying to make sure nobody thinks the wrong thoughts, is who decides which thoughts are wrong? I’m a disabled person and I rarely agree with the most common words and thoughts considered wrong

Also the focus on words causes a lot of uninformed people to believe that “ableism” == “finding long lists of words to condemn” == “not really a genuine thing at all, just something to piss and moan about” == “something privileged people decide they face just so they can claim to be oppressed”.

The focus on ableism as a language thing just makes it harder to stop actual ableism. Which is usually but not always, about something entirely different from language, and a whole lot more dangerous

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