As someone who is mentally ill, like, diagnosed by a doctor and medicated, I want to say that it does actually bother me that Lemmygrad is so willing to call fascists etc slurs for mental illness. Insane, lunatic, cuckoo, deranged, psycho, brainless, mad, r*tard, etc were actually words that old lobotomy-and-electroshock asylums used to dehumanize their victims in a way similar to things like the n word, so I do think they should count as slurs. It’s not even cool for actual mental illness or mental disability sufferers to use them. Calling fascists or anyone who intentionally does horrible things those words insult the mentally ill way more than it insults the people you want to insult. We are not fascists and we don’t want fascists to be seen as the same as us.
Same with that whole “elderly Western politician has dimentia” thing that goes around here. My grandfather has dimentia, and it’s an absolutely terrifying and sad disease for him and the rest of our family. I think the thing that sums it up best is that he can’t even enjoy the short periods of lucidity he has left because those are the times he realizes just how far gone he is, and he spends that time apologising to us for his behaviour when the disease takes hold of him. Please don’t trivialize it by using it as an insult for people who’s old and make horrible decisions. If Trump and his MAGA cult use some insult all the damn time, chances are we communists shouldn’t mirror that. IMO, that’s not that different than 4chan using AIDS and cancer as insults for people/things they don’t like.
I don’t agree with a lot of things the other Lemmy.ml admins are doing, no, but I do think disallowing ablest terminology are very reasonable. Call fascists horrible people all you want, but leave the mental illness and mental disability related terms out of it.
As someone who is mentally ill, like, diagnosed by a doctor and medicated, I want to say that it does actually bother me that Lemmygrad is so willing to call fascists etc slurs for mental illness. Insane, lunatic, cuckoo, deranged, psycho, brainless, mad, r*tard, etc were actually words that old lobotomy-and-electroshock asylums used to dehumanize their victims in a way similar to things like the n word, so I do think they should count as slurs. It’s not even cool for actual mental illness or mental disability sufferers to use them. Calling fascists or anyone who intentionally does horrible things those words insult the mentally ill way more than it insults the people you want to insult. We are not fascists and we don’t want fascists to be seen as the same as us.
Same with that whole “elderly Western politician has dimentia” thing that goes around here. My grandfather has dimentia, and it’s an absolutely terrifying and sad disease for him and the rest of our family. I think the thing that sums it up best is that he can’t even enjoy the short periods of lucidity he has left because those are the times he realizes just how far gone he is, and he spends that time apologising to us for his behaviour when the disease takes hold of him. Please don’t trivialize it by using it as an insult for people who’s old and make horrible decisions. If Trump and his MAGA cult use some insult all the damn time, chances are we communists shouldn’t mirror that. IMO, that’s not that different than 4chan using AIDS and cancer as insults for people/things they don’t like.
I don’t agree with a lot of things the other Lemmy.ml admins are doing, no, but I do think disallowing ablest terminology are very reasonable. Call fascists horrible people all you want, but leave the mental illness and mental disability related terms out of it.