A while back there was a thread about eliminating intelligence-based insults from our vocab. Words like "Dumb", "stupid", etc.
https://hexbear.net/post/15636
My gut instinct to this was to get angry, and berate the OP u/QuillQuote for his ideas. I insulted him, I called him dumb, and when he pm'd me, I dismissed all his arguments and called him dumb again. Then he told me to go fuck myself and I told him I would masturbate later
Since then I actually thought a little about the issue and I began to see their point. An intelligence-based insult is fundamentally wrong, because it concerns something that cannot be controlled.
Insults about race, gender, and sexuality are all de facto verboten here because they target traits that can't be controlled--and I agree.
Intelligence can't be controlled either. And intelligence is actually one of the most disadvantaging traits to be handicapped by. Ditto for appearance.
Likewise, AGE cannot be controlled either, you only age in one direction and that's it. If I was 55, there's nothing I can do to be more like a 30 year old. MOREOVER, some people actually have inborn disabilities that make them age faster, with some 10 year old children having the biological age of a 40 year old adult.
So I'm making the proposition that we should attempt to eliminate these words from our arsenal of insults. Words like "dumb", "stupid", "boomer", "ugly", "short", are all words that target people on traits that they cannot control, and worse, they insult other bystanders in the process who may have committed no offense.
In fact, I called someone a boomer jokingly just a few minutes ago. That was the trigger that made me think about this. I apologize if my words hurt anyone.
I didn't down vote this, I hardly vote on anything unless it's egregiously bad or very good. But I'm a little hesitant to jump completely onboard.
Look, I say this with love as someone with MDD and GAD, there are mentally ill people here. People who don't know how to socialize or really engage with the world. I am one of those people. But at the same time we can't get into this mindset where we make being a good leftist = being nice to me. You have to be able to separate politics from your personal hangups and issues. I don't mean thinking that politics has no bearing on your life. Just not falling into the trap of "you said the word dumb to describe some lib on twitter so you're actually insulting me and therefore you're a bad person and not a good leftist." You might try to take a patronizing route and say that you're not calling others bad people, you're just saying they're not being as good as they can be. But that's really the same thing. People don't have to be nice to you because you're a fellow leftist. People don't have to be nice to you online. Especially when the definition of nice is highly qualified around this kind of ritual. This isn't politics.
That being said I agree people should try to be nicer online. People should try to be more constructive and approach things in good faith. But I don't think using insults is what's stopping that.
Let's take the Iraq War for example. You had wealthy people with connections who purposefully and willingly refused to educate themselves on the country. They were in charge of changing the country and running things. Yet they never read about its history or its people or anything else. They refused to know things simply because of hubris and laziness. If that's not dumb I don't know what is. I know that knowledge is not the same as intelligence. I'm just saying that I'm not going to stop calling this kind of shit dumb. I'm not going to call you dumb. But they are dumb. They are stupid. Trump is ugly. Biden is a boomer.
I'm actually completely on-board but simply see it as a strategic error in any space that is not trying to be a socialist-only space.
Every single space that takes this on as a matter of policy becomes socialist-only and eliminates their ability to have any lib to leftist pipeline.
A great reason why it should never be a rule, because fuck that. We shouldn't need rules to tell us how to support our comrades, but what we do need is the ability to talk about stuff like this without it immediately setting people against each other
I get this and I understand where you're coming from with the "it's just normal language" angle, and you're right. It is normal language. The problem however is that it shouldn't be, and that's what the ableism movement is trying to achieve.
I am on board with that movement in that respect because I can see in it exactly the same battles trans people have fought to get where we are, and what we're still fighting (trap) in many places.
But, as I said before. Because of the current situation with the word in the wider public and even among the left I do see it as strategically difficult to go all-in on it, despite the fact I completely agree with the battle they're fighting now.
Honestly, it chases off a lot of socialists too. "Stupid" is just normal language, and it's grating to have to hobble your speech over a tiny amount of people's weird sensitivities. The thing I liked about CTH was that it was more freewheeling and less restrictive than all the other leftist subs that went with these language bans.
I get this and I understand where you're coming from with the "it's just normal language" angle, and you're right. It is normal language. The problem however is that it shouldn't be, and that's what the ableism movement is trying to achieve.
I am on board with that movement in that respect because I can see in it exactly the same battles trans people have fought to get where we are, and what we're still fighting (trap) in many places.
But, as I said before. Because of the current situation with the word in the wider public and even among the left I do see it as strategically difficult to go all-in on it, despite the fact I completely agree with the battle they're fighting now.
I'm sorry, but quite frankly, Socialism is not a contest to turn people into the most morally perfect versions of themselves. It is not about being perfectly sensitive to every little group that centers itself around an identity so that they can feel heard and validated. Socialism is about POWER. It is about the WORKING CLASS coming together and seizing power together from the Bourgeoisie. The struggles of individual groups, like disabled people, are a part of that, but they're most importantly part of an overall framework of class warfare.
I don't want to live in a world where I can't say "stupid" or "moron" as a pejorative. Stupidity is a bad thing that needs to be struggled against, both in oneself via education, and in the world via making it more justly and intelligently run. The thing that I absolutely despise about conservatives is that they're morons. I hate being ruled by morons. I hate letting conservatives shove their idiocy in our politics and wreck the rest of our lives and our society. Conservatives are stupid. The Bourgeoisie is stupid. The problems they cause are stupid. Climate change is stupid. Racism is stupid. Homophobia and transphobia are stupid. Recessions are stupid. Lower wages and economic growth that serves to feed the most pampered people in human history more useless money is really fucking stupid. We should fight against all of these things, because stupidity is a bad thing, and I want a smart society. We should all say so, and if the anti-ableism movement doesn't want socialists to say that, then that makes them wreckers who should not be listened to.
Yeah we disagree. I strongly recommend you actually talk to some people affected by this issue rather than just making your own mind up about it. Take a step into some communities for those working against it and see what their points are. These people are very much not different from any other marginalised group by society and the use of these words has absolutely no difference to the use of removed or removed in terms of damage it does to them.
This is a battle that is going to be fought over society for the next couple of decades and it is going to be won by them just as ground has been clawed from society on everyone in lgbt circles.
I won't scold you for it. I was where you are not very long ago. I don't think you're a bad person for this. I just disagree and think that, given proper exposure to the affected groups, proper empathy for their struggle, proper understand of how it harms them, I think that you will eventually step back and understand it the same way you understand the plights of other groups.
On an unrelated note. I really think you're actually completely misusing the word stupid altogether. None of those groups are stupid, they're the ignorant and misguided masses, but not stupid. The problem with calling people stupid is that it abruptly stops right there, it's a value judgement of someone's biological ability to process information. You can't fix biological deficiency and thus calling these people these things actually prevents us from doing the thing that really needs to be done -- education. They are correctly defined as the ignorant and misguided masses, people that must be corrected, brought around, educated. You can't educate-away something biologically inherent to a person like "stupid" or "dumb" which are really just substitute words for "removed". What we as revolutionaries must do is teach the masses. Their views are distorted, the information they have been fed is outright wrong in many cases. This is not always their fault. Yes they are often exceedingly difficult and frustrating to get through to but we can and must get through to them. We aren't repairing biology by doing that. We're repairing ignorance.
I really don't like talking about myself too much online, but I have a family member who is mentally disabled. In an earlier era, he would have been called the word that the automod removed in your post. I think I understand the issues surrounding these individuals a fair bit better than most, and let me say-
No, stupid and dumb are emphatically NOT substitute words for that, and I'm kind of disgusted at the assertion that they are. My mentally-disabled relative is not stupid. He's mentally disabled. Ordinary people who do not meet the criteria for mental disability can be stupid. Furthermore, the way "stupid" is used is conditional and circumstantial. I'm not stupid all the time, but I behave stupidly sometimes. For example, I was stupid when I left a jar of quarters in the laundry room the other day. I understand the argument over the history of these terms, but that doesn't apply to the way they're used in the modern day.
You're asserting a weird, totalizing definition of these words in ways that hobble our language and our ability to accurately describe the world. The way you'd have us define these words would make it harder, not easier, to reach the masses, which is why I think these anti-ableism movements might be pushed by the feds and other anti-socialist forces.
I don't think this matters. It's the same argument people that previously commonly used fa. ggot used and it's the same argument people currently fighting against the word trap being a slur are using. Back 10-15 years ago in the days of my 4chan use I myself rather ignorantly made the argument that fa. ggot was a word used with neutral intent that was not target at or even about lgbt people at all. It was a word used simply to insult, simply to tell others the equivalent of r-word or stupid. Apologies for censor dodging, I felt I needed to in order to make sure the correct word I intended as said. Just last week I encountered EXACTLY the same argument being used in /r/goodanimemes by people blasting trans people for daring to tell them to stop using a harmful slur. Back all those years ago we did all kinds of gymnastics around the intention and how it's actually used and on and on and on. We were wrong. Very very wrong and ignorant children.
Exactly the same battle is going to rage for yet another marginalised group.
And... After their battle it won't be the last. I'm quite sure that there are other marginalised groups whose struggle has yet to even become a twinkle in someone's eye. Something we do right now, casually, without even realising. Whatever battle that is will eventually follow down the line too, long after the ableist one.
A does not equal A. Just because there is already one kind of struggle against a slur does not mean that every struggle against mean words is equally justified. Disabled people should have accommodations, such as handicapped parking spaces and ramps for their use. Mentally disabled people should have special education freely given so that they may function and gain employment in society. I support these policies because I recognize them as a part of class struggle- disability can be a major hindrance in people's economic security and a Socialist should support remedies to that.
But some kind of universal language struggle that hobbles our ability to differentiate between what we should promote and celebrate and what we should correct is not justified, on any grounds. Stupidity, as something apart from mental disability, is not something that is desirable in our society or in ourselves. As I said, I've behaved stupidly at times and I try to correct that, even if I'm not always successful. We're not talking about repressing disabled people, we're talking about differentiating between things that are smart and not smart. Intelligence, as a concept, as something people are capable of being, as something that can be applied to make the world a better place, should be celebrated and promoted. Stupidity should not. That should come with a certain understanding that we can all be stupid at times, but fundamentally, a socialist society should be an intelligent one, because only the proper application of intelligence can serve to build socialism.
I'm sorry, but I have to go back to my original point- socialism is about working class power. It is not about being nice or pure or making everyone perfectly sensitive to everyone else. All other struggles should be part of that overall framework. No socialist society that has ever existed has stopped saying "stupid," because that's just plain not what socialism is about.
Yeah well. I just think you're misusing the word stupid and clinging to this idea that because you're using it without the intent of it harming the disabled you think that it therefore does not harm them. Having actually visited, spoken to, and taken the time to understand the arguments of those in this group I empathise and really see it with very little difference. I hold pretty much all of your arguments as nearly identical to that of those arguing against the f-slur several years ago. Whether your intent is to harm them is irrelevant, it does harm them, they say it does, and it is exceptionally easy for us to change that just as it is exceptionally easy for people to simply use the correct pronouns or not use f-slur as an insult.
I don't expect you to get it immediately. I didn't either. But I believe that if you came around on others you too will come around on this.
Regardless, I will push back against official policy on the site for it on the basis of strategy.
When the new generation reaches their mid-30s this battle will be as good as over and they'll be starting the next one.
I think if anyone feels such tremendous harm by a word as common as "stupid," then that's their own problem, not mine. As I said, socialism is about power, and one dimension of that is a proper socialist should make themselves strong enough to withstand something as common as hearing a mildly mean word, without being so selfish as to try and force everyone else to deal with their distress. I can't trust someone who can't handle hearing the word "stupid" to have my back against the bourgeoisie.
Yeah. That's what we said back then too.
You said "socialism is about power" when you were an edgy teen on 4chan? Somehow I don't think you did. And it's the thing you keep not hearing. This isn't about edgelordism, this is about the need to be powerful and strong enough to achieve socialism, and a bare minimum of that is that you have to learn to withstand the minor pain of the word stupid, to the point where it's not painful at all. If you can't do that, then how are you going to be strong enough to withstand the hardships of a fucking revolution?
And what's the point of a revolution anyway? Is it to make a world perfectly tailored to weak people who are distressed by the word stupid? For fuck's sake NO SOCIALIST SOCIETY ON EARTH HAS EVER DONE THAT! And I really don't fucking want ours to be the first, because that society would be utterly nauseating and pathetic.
No, we said "It's their own problem for feeling that way about the word, not our problem for using it despite their calls against it due to the harm it does them".
This has little to do with socialism. It's just one more marginalised group doing a battle against normalised slur use that harms their group. You keep trying to dismiss it because socialism but socialism is irrelevant to it.
If it does them harm then they need to make themselves stronger to the point where it does not harm them anymore. Frankly, this whole idea of some vague nebulous "harm" that is so often invoked in woke spaces is pure idealism, not materialism, and it reinforces the thing I keep trying to tell you: This. Isn't. Socialism.
Anti-idpol is counter revolutionary. Their fight is valid and good. It improves the conditions of their groups, both under capitalism and later they will still be fighting those fights under socialism because, as you demonstrate, socialists can very much fall on the wrong side of these fights too. Nobody is saying it is specifically socialist, we are however saying that it is good and right and just and something everyone will agree with years from now as the zoomers have already normalised this argument in schools and will normalise it moving forwards into their workplaces and the following generation will further it even more.
Their struggle is valid and it should be understood and support, just as my trans struggle is valid and should be supported, just as racial struggles are valid and should be supported, just as homosexual struggles are valid and should be supported, just as patriarchal struggles are valid and should be supported. And on and on the marginalised groups can be reeled off, as each struggle steps into the light one after another, wins some battles and moves forwards.
This is the rallying cry of the caucus that caused Adolph Reed to cancel his DSA lecture because they selfishly demanded it be turned into a debate on "class reductionism." The fact is, the opposite has proven true- idpol has proven to be counter revolutionary. It causes so much unnecessary conflict because so many people demand to have their specific pain validated instead of sublimating their egos into a revolutionary collective. It turns what should be the building up of strength and solidarity into infighting and a weird celebration of weakness and pain and fragility, to the point where it becomes selfish.
We saw the Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn movements get hurt by idpol- they validated and apologized to every accusation that they weren't sensitive enough to every little slighted group that it hurt their effectiveness and alienated them from the masses when they should have had the most appeal. With the way idpol language has been so easily appropriated by liberals, it's become abundantly clear that idpol is a tool of the bourgeoisie to sow internal division into working class movements. This tweet sums it up better than I could.
This idea of generations fighting each other is counter-revolutionary. Generations are a spook invented by marketers to better segment the population. The Zoomers' politics are a reaction to their material conditions, and they're not fully formed yet.
Smells like opportunism.
I don't think you should bring up Jez to me, I knocked 2000 doors for that campaign and threw a lot at it. What you're asserting just is not true. 2017 was just barely lost in what should have been a completely unwinnable election and it was lost by literally a nose hair (2100 vote difference would have put Corbyn in) because of internal sabotage of ad platforms by the liberals.
You're absolutely right that using racial or other cultural politics is a tactic they use. This is not new or special. The Bolsheviks did not throw Jews under the bus nor did they reel back on being anti-religion in the face of an absolute onslaught from the bourgeoisie on these cultural fronts simply because it "did not appeal to the masses". They stuck to it.
You are merely demonstrating your willingness to throw aside groups that should be defended in order to hopefully gain some opportunist ground. That ground you gained will simply be lost when they rile a different cultural battle., and if you throw those groups under the bus too they will move to the next. Pretty soon the entire history of your movement will be about how you threw every marginalised group under the bus whenever it suited your opportunism. That sounds like precisely what the liberals do to me.
That's a disgusting accusation. I already told you that this issue is actually pretty personal to me, so you can go sit on a fucking icepick for suggesting that I'd throw my own family under the bus, you shitty fucking little twerp. This isn't about throwing anyone under the bus, this is about building a movement, and part of that means that you have to sublimate your own struggles into the greater collective whole, and being strong for your comrades. Idpol creates the opposite of that- programs get derailed, selfish people demand attention. That last part is what I really object to- so much of this "harm to groups" discourse is fucking selfish. What harm are you even talking about? You've asserted over and over again that saying "stupid" causes some kind of "harm," but you've never once defined what that harm is. As far as I can tell, it's just a vague negative feeling, and socialism doesn't exist to alleviate that, it exists to give the means of production to the working class.
Besides, you yourself admitted:
Well, then I have don't have any interest in it. I'm interested in creating the MATERIAL basis for people to be happy and secure, and they should not be discriminated against or suffer prejudice or material harm on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. As far as disabled people go, we should have accommodations for the physically disabled, and special education and employment (if possible; I know it isn't always because as I said, I actually know a fair bit about this and it's actually pretty personal for me) for the mentally disabled. We should fight for those material gains as part of the overall working class struggle.
I mean. It is literally opportunism. Opportunism is where you choose not to do something that is a part of your beliefs because you are concerned about alienating the people. It is compromising in order to get to the goal sooner rather than moving the people to the goal we actually have.
Opportunism is bad. We must move the people. They must be led where we need them to be, falling to opportunism can't occur and the bolsheviks never did anything of the sort despite facing EXACTLY the same problems.
I've defined that harm just fine. You already know what harm occurs when someone uses slurs that harm any other group, I think you already understand how some using nword harms black people even if they're not using it contextually with any intent to be about race. I think you understand how using "gay" of f-slur affects lgbt people even when there's zero intent for it to be affecting those groups. I think you understand this argument thoroughly.
I apologise for upsetting you. I really do. As I said before, I don't think you're a bad person and I don't have any ill-will towards you. I think you'll move on this topic as will the rest of society over time. We just disagree with one another and.... That's ok. We don't need to personally dislike one another over that disagreement.
You don't seem to be getting that we don't share the same goals. I'm not in this shit to create a world that coddles the feelings of the most fragile right wing caricature of an sjw on the planet. I'm in it to create the material basis for widely-shared, justly-distributed, publicly-owned prosperity.
The ideal socialist future for me will be one where people can be courteous to each other while also having the mental strength to deal with occasionally hearing mean words, as well as building a society that recognizes that intelligence is a good thing and celebrates it. I don't consider it in any way unjust that Stephen Hawking is elevated and celebrated for his superior intellect and achievements, while my mentally disabled relative isn't (and I'm not, for that matter). Intelligence and stupidity are real things. The former is a good thing, and the latter is a bad thing, and there is no injustice that you can rationally define in affirming that fact.
When I do stupid things, I'm very rightfully ashamed of my own stupidity, and I seek to correct it, or at least watch out for it in the future. This is a good thing. It's good to be able to call things stupid, to recognize stupidity in the world, and in oneself, and in other people.
No, you haven't. Does "stupid" cause these people physical pain? Does it distress them to the point of self harm, or make them physically sick? If so, I'd be in favor of our future publicly-owned mental health system giving them therapy to help them deal with that pain. I would not be in favor of everyone else on the planet having to give up an incredibly useful word that accurately describes aspects of our world to ensure they never feel any psychic hurt. That's not how people become strong, productive members of society.
The idea that "stupid" is a slur on the same level as the slurs you mention is ridiculous. It's so ridiculous that it's not even worth arguing about. People shout the n word at black people from their cars, and it can make them scared to leave their homes because their afraid of random violence. Gay people get beaten up in the street while their assaulters shout homophobic slurs at them. Trying to equate hurt feelings over something as anodyne as being called "stupid" to that is insulting. I keep telling you that A does not equal A, and you can't point at one struggle and automatically call it the equivalent of another.
I will prioritise my and every person's struggle for survival under capitalism because, until the revolution actually happens, that's what we have.
Throwing groups under the bus for the goal isn't ok. Anti-idpol is the act of throwing oppressed groups under the bus for the mistaken belief that it will accelerate the revolution. Not only will it NOT accelerate the revolution (as has been demonstrated by our opportunist friends in Europe) but it actively harms the struggle of these groups for the improvements of their rights and respect and ability to live equally with others within society.
Replace "stupid" with nword, removed, f-slur, etc etc etc.
This argument honestly makes me feel sick. It's pretty awful.
You don't get to say what is and is not a slur to a respective minority group. That group collectively gets to decide that. I've heard this argument as a trans person dozens of times though and I think we should stop this conversation because I will not be able to keep emotional separation from the conversation much longer while you continue to repeat the exact same arguments transphobic people use against me on a near daily basis. I say good luck to you, but you will lose this battle, it's already established and normalised within genz, it's just a matter of the years plodding onwards and the new normal replacing the old normal.
I am not throwing anyone under the bus. Idpol is the ideology of the bourgeoisie, because it serves to distract from class, the primary axis of oppression, and hurts attempts at actual action. I already outlined to you the ways in which I feel a socialist society should assist disabled people, and what I advocate for under capitalism.
Okay, the paragraph no longer makes sense, because the history and context surrounding those words is completely different.
Well, I'm sorry if I hurt you as that wasn't my intention. Thank you for wishing me well, I hope you feel better, and have a good day.
I get this and I understand where you're coming from with the "it's just normal language" angle, and you're right. It is normal language. The problem however is that it shouldn't be, and that's what the ableism movement is trying to achieve.
I am on board with that movement in that respect because I can see in it exactly the same battles trans people have fought to get where we are, and what we're still fighting (trap) in many places.
But, as I said before. Because of the current situation with the word in the wider public and even among the left I do see it as strategically difficult to go all-in on it, despite the fact I completely agree with the battle they're fighting now.
I get this and I understand where you're coming from with the "it's just normal language" angle, and you're right. It is normal language. The problem however is that it shouldn't be, and that's what the ableism movement is trying to achieve.
I am on board with that movement in that respect because I can see in it exactly the same battles trans people have fought to get where we are, and what we're still fighting (trap) in many places.
But, as I said before. Because of the current situation with the word in the wider public and even among the left I do see it as strategically difficult to go all-in on it, despite the fact I completely agree with the battle they're fighting now.
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isn’t that the greatest generation? or when do they come in
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appreciate the response
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tyvm!
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