as small as a world and as large as alone

6:53pm July 23, 2014

madeofpatterns:

youneedacat:

femmefixe:

it’s “disablism”, not “ableism”

the second word presumes that disabled people are oppressed due to (not having) the ability to do something, not that the entire world is designed to make sure that they don’t have the ability to do something relevant to their survival

like, everyone who is alive has an “able body” because it is able to keep them alive, and everyone in the world is unable to do certain things relevant to their survival completely on their own, so trust me when I say again that “ability” is not the problem

and the more and more i hear enabled people use the word “ableism” the more i think that they also think that disabled people’s oppression stems mostly from their own inability to achieve something in the context of a neutral-slightly inconvenient world..

“ableism” is an inappropriate word for disabling oppression and it’s rubbing me the wrong way more and more

Disambiguation Post: On Language Dickery

This is written for the sake of anyone who might be reading the above post who has a language disability, more than it’s written for the sake of the original poster.  Amorpha&’s post explains what’s going on here better than I could right now.

But basically this entire post is ableist.  If you have a language disability of any kind, and are panicking right now trying to figure out whether you’re going to have to make a complete vocabulary change because “ableism” supposedly implies an entire philosophy… it doesn’t.  Most people use the first word they have heard for disability oppression.  Some such words are: disablism, ableism, ablism, handicapism, and disphobia.  They all mean basically the same thing and most people who use them mean basically the same thing by them.  People are not analyzing the structure of the words and forming entire philosophies of life based on them.  People may have different preferences, some people find some of these very offensive, some of them think they imply different things, but just use whichever one you have to use.  It is not worth it to twist your brain into knots to satisfy every person who comes along with an inaccurate analysis of why you’re using the words you’re using.

I usually use ableist, sometimes disablist pops out, and they both mean the exact same thing to me.  Exact same thing.  It doesn’t matter that someone can analyze them so that they mean different things.  When I use them, they mean the exact, exact same thing.  And the same is true of most people. 

I thought it was mostly that Americans usually say ableism and British people usually say disablism?

saying one is correct is bizarre

Yes, yes that’s exactly what it is.  Some people have chosen to read a lot more into it than is actually there, in both directions.  I’ve heard Americans say that disablism is somehow a more snooty or academic word, which… not really?  And I’ve heard all sorts of arguments in both directions that basically amount to “I’m analyzing this word way too much and picking my favorite and finding reasons why it’s my favorite and then telling everyone else to use my favorite word.”

And there’s usually quite a lot of language dickery involved.

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