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.
I recognized this a while back and since then I've actively removed those terms from my everyday vocabulary. Even if it seems like a very low-priority issue to some, I recognize that it's considered ableist by marginalized groups, so I want to do better. I don't see why this can't be everyone's response, it's not that hard to use different (and more precise) words.
That's a great way to think about it! Also made me think of how it's similar to switching to they/them as default pronouns, because means I'm much less likely to cause someone harm by accident, and I think that alone makes it worth the effort since there's no downsides.