I hear that this has been tried before but it didn’t really land because finding viable substitutes for particular terms can be difficult. I’m fascinated by language though and I wanted to take a shot at this myself.
Just a disclaimer that I’m not trying to drag anyone over using any of these terms and I’m not going to pretend that I’m some paragon of anti-ableism myself - I have work to do on this front, you probably do too and if we all work together we can make some positive change and establish better habits and a more supportive culture in our communities.
Here’s a list of words that are more socially acceptable in their ableism and some suggestions for alternatives:
Crazy, Stupid, Dumb, Moronic, Idiotic
[In the sense that something is incorrect or bad]
Silly, foolish, absurd, ridiculous, laughable, nonsense/nonsensical, illogical, incomprehensible, inscrutable, irrational, contradictory, hypocritical, self-defeating, naive, ill-conceived, inane, asinine, counterproductive, unbelievable,
Crazy, Mad
[In the sense of letting loose or being enthusiastic]
Going wild, getting stuck into something, in a frenzy, on a rampage, being engrossed, head over heels, obsessed.
Psychotic, Psychopath, Psycho
[In the sense that something is cruel]
Vicious, bloodthirsty, monstrous, horrific, sadistic, heartless, brutal, ruthless, horrendous, reprehensible, despicable, depraved.
Crippled
Hamstrung, moribund, incapacitated, impaired, ineffective/ineffectual, hog-tied (lol).
What are some other ableist words that are pretty commonplace even amongst the left that you’ve heard?
Are there terms that I have overlooked or any ones that you use yourself that you’d like to replace?
Okay I’m a bit curious about this one, why is it considered ableist? Terms like “moron” and “idiot” were actually used to refer to people with intellectual disabilities in the past, but looking up “stupid” it appears it just comes from a Latin word for a comic relief character in plays. As far as I can tell it was never used in any official medical context and was just a generic insult for “low intelligence”.
It’s not that it was ever a medical term, the issue is disparaging someone based on their perceived level of intelligence rather than anything that they’re actually doing wrong. Almost everyone with learning disabilities will have been called stupid for their conditions hundreds of times, even if they aren’t doing anything morally wrong; meanwhile half the time us Hexbears call something or someone stupid, it’s completely off base because it’s mostly not an issue of intelligence but an issue of morality and class interest. It’s a little like calling someone fat to offend them, when they’re not even overweight.
Okay but wouldn’t that mean any insult based around intelligence is ableist? So calling someone “ignorant”, “dense”, “oblivious”, “incoherent”, ect.
Also not all lack of intelligence is caused by disability, sometimes it’s born of laziness and lack of curiosity.
Ignorance has nothing to do with intelligence, nor does being oblivious or dense, those are a lack of knowledge and personality traits respectively, and incoherent is just a subjective descriptor, something is or is not incoherent it’s not a value judgment, and not related to intelligence either
We need a word that specifically targets the sort of person who is chronically incurious, but who constantly feels the need to speak their nonsense opinion, which if you read between the lines usually boils down to “that’s scary, let’s just keep doing the same thing” dragging the entire conversation down because they neither know what they’re talking about nor care to find out. I think that specific situation is what we mean, at least on hexbear if not generally, when we say someone is “being stupid” or the like.
If you literally meant to tell someone that you think their brain is bad because of consequences of their birth, then you should reevaluate whether you really want to do that, which is where this post comes in.
Why do we need a word to target someone.
Having a descriptor for a specific genre of shitty people can help with organizing against them. It’s why terms like “gusano”, “kulak”, “Burgerbrain” and “kkkrackkker” exist.
I mean yes, and that’s why terms like removed exists. I’m probably thinking too rigidly about this…
I come up against this wall often. Sometimes I do something myself that I would consider “stupid” and frankly the only thing I’ve found that feels like a good replacement is “ill-conceived” and “thoughtless”
. Depending on the scenario being whether I feel rather negative about it or positive about it would determine whether I lean more towards “stupid” over “thoughtless” though. Maybe that’s self-ableism but I sort of don’t think it is, without viewing my own actions and determining whether they were the application of good or bad ability-wise I would not improve at a given task, so some sort of analysis of ability at various things is a necessity in basic life.
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This is the thing. For me it’s “stupid” when I feel particularly negative about my action, like when it’s definitely my fault and I should feel bad about it. Whereas it’s “ill-conceived” or “thoughtless” when I’m neutral or positive about the action. Like with the blob-no-thoughts emoji. I wouldn’t necessarily try to change my action in the latter, whereas I would in the former.
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Interesting! I can see that interpretation, I’m genuinely struggling with an interpretation of this that doesn’t use something like that too. Taking an action that is intentionally and knowingly self harming for entertainment is very difficult to describe in any way other than self-deprecatingly.
Honestly I would love to find perfect replacements for things but it’s hard. Maybe we lack words or something. Perhaps borrowing words from other languages would help here.
Ignorance and intelligence are different things. I think willful ignorance would denote lack of intelligence, however.
The most willfully ignorant people I’ve ever met were quite smart
It’s bad faith. If you have to go back to a dictionary and say “look see this isn’t offensive you’re wrong” then maybe take a step back
In past the logic being presented to me for why all the other terms are harmful is that they historically referred to actually developmental disabilities. If the actual argument is that they are just words that make people feel bad that’s fine but I think we should be consistent then, really this could be applied to most non-specific insults then.
It’s a way of trying to get people to grasp an issue they couldn’t normally. It’s a tool for bridging a communication gap. It’s a specific type of example of a structural problem. You are looking at trees and not the forest.
Yes, and it should, but that’s an intersectional issue
Okay, that makes sense.
Just to be clear, I am a big believer the left should try and have a consistent logic about these things, because if we don’t I think it leads to assholes, wreckers and weirdos co-opting and abusing our arguments. You end up with people arguing that “gusano” is a slur and that Israel is a “indigenous nation” and getting more pull with baby leftists than they should.
Yes that’s fair, definitely.
Where I don’t agree is that we can find a way to fight fire with fire without burning innocents.
Agreeing on a basic framework of, “it’s okay to throw generalized insults at certain people” is not something I’m on board with, but I understand the reasoning in some ways.
Issue is I think it’s often debatable how “generalized” and insult is. Heck you see it here in this thread, people debating whether certain insults specifically refer to a lack of intelligence or lacking a specific acuity. Also there’s different kinds of intelligence that have different causes for possessing or lacking, someone may lack emotional intelligence because they’re autistic, or because their a privileged asshole who’s never had to bother even trying to read social ques because people generally just hand things to them. Plus there are developmental disabilities that cause some people to struggle with logic, so is calling someone “illogical” an ablest insult? Or is only ablest if I’m directing it at someone who has one of those disabilities?
It’s a complex debate, and a lot of people, including a lot of neurodivergent people, are gonna have strong disagreements on.
Yea, I’m autistic and sometimes I get the feeling this is more of a ND vs NT debate. The left just cares enough about humanizing people to bother having it. Usually us ND’s just get ignored and told to change.
I am also autistic which i think shows even ND people can have disagreements about this.
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The way our system categorizes and demonize people for not being acceptable in a myriad of ways, in this case perceived intelligence