Stuff like "stupid, idiot, moron, dumb," you know the ones. If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.

Just saw a thread on here where a user was stubbornly refusing to adjust their language when another user politely pointed out that it was harmful to our comrades as well, and the person refusing was massively upvoted and the comrade trying to explain why it was harmful was downvoted. Thought we were better than that

I'm not calling anyone out, just wanted to make a post explaining my feelings on it and that when stuff like that happens (not the intelligence based insults, I know its hard to switch, but getting insulted for asking people to avoid them) it hurts and makes me feel less welcome here </3

Using words like “You’re being ignorant” or “That’s a cruel belief” is actually more effective than just going “lmao idiot”.

If those are the words you actually mean to convey I'd say use them instead :)

Edit: if the reception this post got isn't a good proof that this is something this community needs to grapple with, I don't know what is.

  • RedStarLesbian [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yeah, I understand what you’re saying and I agree with you for the most part. Just thought I should add my own thoughts. It does hurt me a bit when people use actual ableist slurs in here like the aforementioned ones. It’s some insults which arguably are ableist, aren’t at all connected to any actual human experience and aren’t particularly harmful, imo. Like calling Zuck a robot/lizard person.

    • QuillQuote [they/them]
      5·
      4 years ago

      Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation comrade, I appreciate it a lot <3

      Like calling Zuck a robot/lizard person.

      this one is interesting as well actually, we talked about it on the Neurodiversity and Solidarity episode of The People's Podcast, I hadn't considered it problematic either but apparently that's not universal in the ND community. The example given was asking "why do we only talk about the Zuck like that and not jeff bezos, if the thing that makes them a robot/lizard person is their utter lack of humanity from being a capitalist monster and not his social weirdness?"

      It was an interesting conversation, can't wait till editing is finished and we can post it :D

      • RedStarLesbian [she/her]
        2·
        4 years ago

        By the way, sorry you’re getting hate for this post, Comrade. It’s disappointing that some people had such a volatile reaction to a genuine post like this.

        • QuillQuote [they/them]
          5·
          4 years ago

          Thanks comrade, I appreciate it. It's been incredibly upsetting and has made it really hard for me to formulate my thoughts and express my feelings

          • RedStarLesbian [she/her]
            2·
            4 years ago

            Well, just to let you know, I’ve enjoyed seeing your posts on here since I’ve joined. Hopefully people here can become more tolerant to actual discussion because this sort of reaction will certainly dissuade other marginalized people from speaking up again. It’s really sad.

            • QuillQuote [they/them]
              4·
              4 years ago

              Thanks comrade :')

              and yeah, it's really disuading me from speaking up again. Just wanting to have a discussion about something that causes me and my comrades harm being met with derision and invalidation hurts so much. I've long said this place feels like home, so to have this happen cuts pretty deep

              Edit to add: as time has gone on and more people saw this post it got a lot better

              • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
                1·
                4 years ago

                It's hard to create a community around dunking on chuds and not have any collateral dunking consequences. I'm optimistic we can improve on this, though.

                • RedStarLesbian [she/her]
                  2·
                  4 years ago

                  Yeah, I agree. I feel like the advent of the effort post label should be used as a signal to switch off the dunk tank brain and engage civilly from now on.

                • QuillQuote [they/them]
                  4·
                  4 years ago

                  Oh me too! Our greatest weapon "post hog" for example skirts this issue completely after all :)

                  Not to mention focusing our insults on the bad things these bad people actually do and think sharpens our analysis and critique, it's good practice for drawing out exactly why it's not just "mean" but actually Bad that these people do what they do. No one cares if you call someone stupid on the internet, so what rhetorical value does it actually server?

              • RedStarLesbian [she/her]
                1·
                4 years ago

                To be honest, it’s the same reason I never made an account and posted on the original subreddit. If you need to take a break to do some self care, I would recommend it.

                • QuillQuote [they/them]
                  2·
                  4 years ago

                  I will comrade, thanks. But until then I'm going to keep pushing the conversation so someone else doesn't have to :)

                  I'm really glad you made an account and post on here btw. I hope this thread doesn't make you second guess your decision. I'm happy you're here <3