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4:19am May 21, 2014

I still feel like there’s some hypocrisy here.

Like it’s perfectly okay to run around saying there’s ableist origins to words that… don’t actually have any ableist origins at all… just because you don’t happen to like the words and want to find a reason that they’re bad.  But when you actually know ableist origins to another word, you’re not supposed to talk about them, it’s offensive somehow to even tell people there are ableist connotations to a word.

The difference?  Whether a certain group of people happens to like the word or not.  Some words are sacred and not allowed to be looked at and examined (unless looking at and examining them shows something good, of course).  Other words are horrible and must be examined to death even if the examination is based on faulty etymology (see “stupid”).

Of course one reason people are probably offended is that most of them draw no distinction between examining ableism involved in a word, and saying that the word has to be out of bounds for everyone.  So no matter how many times I say “I’m not telling you not to use this word”, they’ll take it as meaning that I am telling them not to use it.

But honestly I’m as sick of that post as everyone else is, I had no intention for it to get hundreds of notes.