as small as a world and as large as alone

9:42pm July 20, 2014

this-reading-by-lightning:

youneedacat:

dendriforming:

theaubisticagenda:

dendriforming:

theaubisticagenda:

theaubisticagenda:

dendriforming:

theaubisticagenda:

dendriforming:

Intellectual disability is not being “literally stupid.” I have a lot more of a problem with people using that as an argument for “don’t say stupid,” than I do with people saying “stupid.”

Plus, that’s…

Because it’s used against d/Disabled people?

It can be. So can lots of other insults that aren’t disability-specific. That doesn’t mean every use of it is ableist.

The very reason why it’s an insult is that it’s viewed as insulting to be Intellectually Disabled, though? Like, just because people use gay to mean something other than gay for insulting people, doesn’t mean it’s not a gay-antagonistic phrase.

Not necessarily. Having an intellectual disability isn’t the same thing as being ignorant. It’s not the same thing as making choices that you should know better than to make. Assuming that these things are equivalent is exactly what I was objecting to when I originally wrote this post. And stupid is commonly used to mean both of those things. More commonly than it’s used to equate someone’s behavior with someone who has an intellectual disability.

And if you equate the meaning of stupid with the meaning of intellectual disability, then the common suggested “non-ableist” solutions I’ve seen, like using the word “obtuse” (which means, among other things, slow to understand) are just as ableist.

Yeah.  Exactly.  The insult “stupid” is not created based on any connection to intellectual disability.  There are times when it is used in an ableist sense against disabled people by equating it to an intellectual disability.  But that connection has to be made in a specific manner, it isn’t intrinsic to the word stupid.  There’s nothing about the word stupid that inherently connects it to intellectual disability or any other disability, at all.

It’s frequently used against people with intellectual disabilities and other cognitive disabilities.  This is because of a widespread prejudice that people with cognitive disabilities are stupid.  This is not the same thing as stupid meaning cognitive disability.

And none of the alternatives people give, actually mean the same thing as stupid.  In fact, everything that could possibly mean the same thing as stupid is always put on the list of words that people should be forbidden to ever use.  This makes it impossible to communicate certain concepts that are important.

Worse, the people who are the most against using the word ‘stupid’?  Are really fucking good at calling people stupid.  They do it all the time.  They just don’t use the word stupid.  But they call people stupid, and they do so in a highly disability-linked way, and nobody calls them on it because they aren’t using the word stupid to do it.  

And that kind of thing pisses me off a lot.

“Don’t say stupid, it’s ableist.  But I’ll continue to mean stupid, and I’ll mean it in the most ableist way possible, and I’ll wield the meaning of stupid against people with cognitive and language impairments most of all, all the while pretending that I don’t call people stupid.”

I’m not capable of that level of language manipulation, but I can certainly perceive it when it’s happening to me.  And I don’t enjoy it one bit.

I don’t think everyone who says “Don’t say stupid” is doing that language-manipulation stuff.  I think some of them honestly believe it’s ableist for a lot of different reasons.  But the ones who do the manipulation, I have zero respect for at all.

Also, there are people who insist that I haven’t been hurt by these words.  They say that if I’d been hurt by these words, I would automatically have the same response that they have to these words — which is to demand that nobody ever use these words again.  In fact, I have been hurt by these words.  I have been hurt by stupid, retard, crazy, psycho, tard, spaz, idiot, mong, all of them.  You name it, I’ve been hurt by it.

But I make distinctions.

I think there’s some words that should virtually never be used, and some words that should be used with caution, and some words that should only be used in some circumstances and not others, and some words that should only be used by some people and not others, and some words that can virtually always be used, and all of this has to be evaluated on circumstances.

And it can’t just be “Lots of people have been hurt so you’re an insensitive asshole if you even conceive of using this word ever again.”  Or any variant on that.  That’s not okay.

You have to also take into account the large number of cognitively disabled people who find changing our vocabulary anything from difficult to well-nigh impossible, who are among the worst affected by these change-your-language campaigns, which are supposedly done in our name in the first place.

"Don’t say stupid because it means cognitively disabled.  What, you’re too cognitively disabled to avoid saying stupid?  Are you stupid or something?  It’s easy to change your vocabulary.”  And they think we won’t pick up on the “Are you stupid or something?” which is always implied, never spoken, but implied so loud it’s deafening.

Oh my golly-gosh yes. Everything that’s been said. Yes.

I think that when many more informed/nice people talk about the word “stupid” being ableist, what they’re actually trying to talk about is certain uses of “stupid.” Because people often call another person “stupid” or “r******d” instead of pointing out what’s actually not okay about that person’s behavior, like that they were being racist, or condescending, or classist, or whatever. And one of the reasons people do that is because they’ve been taught that that being “slow” or “obtuse” or whatever is way worse than being racist, or condescending, or cruel. That is ableist, but it’s ableist specifically when used a certain way—and when “obtuse” or any other similar word is used in that same way, that’s also friggin’ ableist. 

So like, I know that I’m trying to slowly but surely lessen the amount I use “stupid” in conversation and writing…but I’m also trying to cut out words like “obtuse,”“idiotic,” and “dumb.” And the reason I want to not use those words anymore isn’t because they’re “ableist slurs” specifically associated with the oppression of disabled people. I want to use those words less because they don’t work very well. They don’t serve any real purpose in conversation besides putting people down by declaring them to be less aware, capable, or conscious than I am.

Instead of using those words, I try to be specific (when I have the brain-juice to do this) and to describe what I’m disagreeing with, or upset about, accurately. If I’m upset that someone is making statements that are really uninformed, I say that, and if I’m upset because someone is saying things that make no sense to me, I say that, and if someone is being racist, I say that, and so on. 

And the thing where people say they don’t use the word “stupid” but still put people down by calling them words that mean practically the same thing? Shit, that is such a thing. In my experience, people do that when they want to silence or dismiss someone’s opinions by relying on their educational, cognitive, or class advantage. It’s really quite gross in every way. Eugh.

So many of these things would be better if people made them a matter of personal choice, and we all made our personal choices, and nobody got too mad at each other about those personal choices unless they were doing something seriously wrong.  Because there are so many right choices that can be made, there is not one right choice, any more than there is one wrong choice.  And for many people, what is right is based on situations, not on an across-the-board decision made for every situation.

121 notes