I notice a lot of people use terms like “psychotic” or “psychopath” as insults and negative descriptions on here. These are clinical terms that are used to describe real people with difficulties, not boogeymen! I don’t disagree with the sentiment that these people are doing wrong, but if you wouldn’t use the r-slur or “autistic” as an insult (which you shouldn’t) then you shouldn’t use these words either. And I get the idea of calling someone delusional, but take care that you don’t just mean “I disagree with them.” Though by posting on neurodiverse I imagine I’m preaching to the choir.
Sincerely, a casual schizoaffective disorder haver.
This thread makes me think that maybe we could brainstorm a post which has common ableist terms to provide suggestions for alternatives to drive a bit of gentle culture change.
I use words like ridiculous, laughable, senseless, absurd, and wild (e.g. wild idea/let’s not get wild) a lot in the place of crazy. I could do better but I’m reasonably good on it.
I need to do better on terms like stupid and dumb. I know on the slur scale they’re very mild but that’s not a good excuse.
This sounds like a great idea! I don’t know a lot of slurs, but I know the ones that bother me. (Most of them were in the post already) But we could invite others to share ones that bother them and we can hopefully achieve this!
we’ve tried a few times but it’s basically impossible to find drop-in 1:1 replacements that are concise and evocative. Scatalogical is usually safest but even something like shithead is ableism if we’re strict about it.