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?
self-defeating personality disorder was once a formal diagnosis, just thought you should be aware.
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this here, but as someone who's been to a dozen different mental health, autism, and learning disability support groups in my time, with the exception of "psychotic" I've never seen anyone object to these terms.
Tangential, but I kinda miss the mad pride movement that was around about a decade ago.
That's fascinating. This is the first time I've come across self-defeating personality disorder.
mad pride movement
Do you have anything on this? I don't recall ever coming across it
Shit... this sounds vaguely familiar.
I bet I heard it on a Death Panel Podcast episode, maybe in their "carceral sanism" episode?
Interesting. I wonder what caused it to not spread? Obviously it seems to have picked up international copycats but it didn't spread in the UK? Only one event per year nothing else in various local areas? It's an interesting concept and it would be interesting to analyse specifically why it failed to spread and what gay pride did differently to successfully expand. Understanding it might end up being important information for future organisers trying to create mass movements for change.
As a descriptor for "Other personality disorder" it was included in the DSM-III in 1980.[2]: 330 [a]. It was discussed in an appendix of the revised DSM-III-R in 1987,[1]: 371 but was never formally admitted into the manual. The distinction was not seen as clinically valuable because of its significant overlap with other personality disorders (borderline, avoidant and dependent).
doesn't sound very established, like it's associated enough with anything that could marginalize someone, or carries any social baggage.
I really think it's context specific. Calling someone a cripple? Unacceptable. Saying a supply chain has been crippled? Most likely would not offend someone who finds 'cripple' offensive.
The only one here that's got anything to it is psychotic (and maybe moron/lame - but they're quite far removed from their origin now), and only in the sense that people misuse it. Psychotic means detached from reality, psychopathic means without empathy - people conflate the two, contributing to misrepresentation of the conditions. Then again, why am I making up a psychopath that cares about the representation of their condition? As if they give a shit.
I really think it's context specific. Calling someone a cripple? Unacceptable. Saying a supply chain has been crippled? Most likely would not offend someone who finds 'cripple' offensive.
yeah i brought this one (and lame) up in the other thread. I feel like we've already excised that usage from common speech, it's something
's dad might call someone I guess, but sanctions being crippling or whatever isn't disparaging or marginalizing anyone.Calling a situation Crazy is punching across the isle at the person who hears and gets dis-regulated. Switching what the word is doesn’t change the situation. I’m 100% positive that there are people who would not like to hear things called lame or crippled because yes that is still used disparagingly.
because yes that is still used disparagingly.
where, by whom? zero points for fossils like "jesus healed the sick and mended the lame"
I’m sorry, are we not in a room talking about this very phenomena. It’s not about specific actions, it’s about a pattern of disrespect and the underlying structure.
i think you want the "how do i call someone stupid without being ableist" branch rather than this one. if it's about cripple i'm 99% sure the problem was that "a cripple" is dehumanizing and almost everyone who talked liked that is dead now, not that systems or machines being disabled or degraded in efficacy reinforces ableism somehow. If it's about lame, then I personally am infinitely more disrespected by etymology or church nerds than by the primary non-ableist usage. Nobody is getting called lame in their day to day on the basis of disability in contemporary american english, and the people or things getting called lame or lame-o are not being called that because their legs don't work.
I'll cede lame after we talk about "sucks" being misogynist and/or bottom-phobic.
a cripple" is dehumanizing and almost everyone who talked liked that is dead now
Trigger warning: language
spoiler
“removed” is dehumanizing. “Gay boy”. “removed.” “removed.” I’ve been called a lot of different things. That kind of thinking still exists. None of those people are dead. They had kids and the pejorative treadmill continued.
Exactly with sucks, that is problematic language. “Cock sucker” is not an insult, yet it’s used as one depending on context. It’s not a one after the other thing. It’s not “we’ll deal with trans rights once we’ve solved gay rights”. No, it’s all at once. That’s the point of solidarity.
maybe you missed the I personally in there. I can't walk right, and i'm saying lame has never been directed at me or anyone else on that basis for decades outside of a bible verse.
Well congrats. I’m sure you have been disparaged in other ways though. The exact words don’t matter, intent does. The intent hasn’t changed for generations, just the words have.
yeah the euphemism treadmill is why i thought you wanted the other, rather on the nose, branch.
I’m 99% we’re making the same points at each other. I’m pretty sure I agree with you, and because I like you I want to explain more better if I can.
i think you want the "how do i call someone stupid without being ableist" branch rather than this one.
Just to clarify, this is not my position. I am actually upset at people being told “you can’t call people stupid” and just hearing “stupid is bad word now, what word can I say instead?” Those are the same people that stopped saying the R slur and swapped to stupid. Those are closely related to the same people still calling things gay and refusing to change.
There is no appropriate word to use if you want to disparage someone. Whether that’s intellect, gender, attractiveness, or anything else like that. Those are just social norms. You aren’t stupid, you just don’t fit the capitalist model you are expected to fit.
It all sort of originates from the desire to point out what is different and other it. On the left we want to other the people that don’t fit in with us and make them feel bad so they change. “Gusano, Chud, etc” On the right they want to other the people that don’t fit in and shame them into changing. The differences aren’t that stark in a lot of ways.
Stupid
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.
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.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.
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.
really this could be applied to most non-specific insults then.
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.
“it’s okay to throw generalized insults at certain people” is not something I’m on board with,
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.
Definitely. We aren’t super humans with all the correct answers. :)
I have a hard time changing my mind, they tell me that PDA factors into it, so I’m pretty sure I could shift my position if it was presented in a way I could internalize and think on later. I usually just lurk but I’ve been trying to engage with people more genuinely.
The way our system categorizes and demonize people for not being acceptable in a myriad of ways, in this case perceived intelligence
As much as you may hate debate tactics, maybe searching for new versions of "scruffy looking nerf herder" that have punch but simultaneously don't offend anybody is less fruitful work than developing attacks on the bogus ideas being presented by your shitheaded adversaries.
This is intended to get people to consider the implicit ableism in the way they use language and to suggest alternatives so that radical spaces can be more inclusive and less oppressive towards people with disability.
[This] is less fruitful work than developing attacks on the bogus ideas being presented by your shitheaded adversaries
I disagree with this framing.
I'm not trying to convince anyone that the necessary work is to find inoffensive ways to insult people.
I feel like this is veering into rehashing the same discussions that have taken place in defense of things like sexism, racism, queerphobia (especially transphobia) in radical spaces; no, eliminating transphobia isn't going to be enough usher in the revolution but at the same time this is not a valid reason for ignoring or even perpetuating transphobia.
I'm not endorsing racism and transphobia, thanks for implying that for no reason. I just think name-calling is stupid.
I think ReadFanon and myself both misread your first comment in the same way. I took it to mean "Don't bother worrying yourself about ableist language, it's a waste of time when there are more important things" (The class reductionist argument) but I now see that you meant something along the lines of "name-calling isn't helpful in the first place so we should move away from it entirely"
I don't think the words in question are necessarily name calling.
Downside is, it doesn't do anything for when comrades use the same language without thinking about it.
Listening/watching YT videos about the Genocide of Palestinians and the anti genocide campus protests, pretty much everybody keeps using "insane" and "crazy" without thinking about it. There's nothing pathological about being a fascist.
To be fair, it didn't cross my mind watching those videos at all. I was thinking more about how to replace my language in private conversation (Maybe Mao would call that liberalism.) where it's much more effective not to do any name calling at all and just be more specific about why someone sucks, and when going back-and-forth with people who are actually arguing in good faith rather than Zionists who should just have their crimes announced for all to hear if you want to insult them. How about "baby murderer" is that okay to call people?
If you're genuinely alarmed about student protestors calling Zionists "psycho" I think you may just have priorities which are fundamentally different from mine and we have no basis for conversation.
I'm not alarmed but it does seem to be ableist... or maybe ableist adjacent (?).
Not having anybody around me to point out how many times I do it without thinking about it and having to take the very long way around, by seeing a regular group of "TV" talking heads use the words one after the other after the other and it finally starting to dawn on me that I should pay more attention to the words that I use.
Have you considered that I want to say mean things and make people feel bad
You're probably hitting more than just your intended target if you're using ableist words.
"Bozo", "clown", "clownish", and "circus" as words for incorrect/bad stand out right away as words we can use.
If we're including the word "sadistic" after the Marquis de Sade, perhaps we should include the word "libertine" itself?
Edit: I misunderstood the sentence I was quoting, nvm
"Bozo", "clown", "clownish", and "circus"
Hey now we shouldn't encourage anti-clown sentiment here
I like mindless as a substitute for the first set as it’s typically a more accurate description of what’s going on. They don’t lack intelligence, they’re choosing to do things without stopping to think about them. Or maybe adopting some hexbearisms, brainwormed?
Bizarre or bizarro is a nice substitute for the middle two as well.
Isn't the implication of "low intelligence" the ableist part? The words don't matter so much as the pathologizing of "intelligence."
Me not thinking through the consequences of an action doesn't meant that I have low intelligence.
Me refusing to argue with you in good faith and being willfully ignorant doesn't mean that I have low intelligence.
Me not having the same interest in a subject, not reading the same books, understanding the arguments and critiques at the same level as you doesn't mean that I have low intelligence.
Knowing less about something that somebody else, or not having the same ability to remember the details about a subject doesn't mean that I have low intelligence.
Isn't the implication of "low intelligence" the ableist part? The words don't matter so much as the pathologizing of "intelligence."
This. Exactly this. People are missing the forest for the trees.
Good question.
The easy answer is words like unintelligent, dense, oblivious, ignorant etc.
To answer the broader question though I think it's worth considering how you frame your understanding of something that you'd call stupid - we can use words that are euphemisms for ableist terms but that doesn't really address the underlying beliefs, sorta like how politicians will use racist dogwhistles like "gangs" and "inner-city crime" to make a statement that is essentially the same thing that would have been said 75 years ago with the only difference being that they aren't using the N-word. What happens in this situation is known as the euphemism treadmill where a new word slots into the gap left by the removal of an older slur and it gradually adopts the same qualities of the older slur because the usage of the word and the underlying beliefs remain the same.
So in that sense I personally try to think of terms that are more specific and more descriptive - a term like dumb is usually a catch-all term that can be applied virtually anywhere but often I find if I think about the way in which something is bad, I can use a more suitable alternative.
It's a bit like how the word "good" encompasses a whole lot of different positives depending on context: strong, healthy, agreeable, friendly, beautiful, delicious, durable, cost-effective, morally correct, clever etc.
You can't really insult someone by saying they're not intelligent enough without it being ableist. I still have a long way to go to improve my own vocabulary and root out some ableist brainworms, but the fundamental idea we all gotta grapple with is that there are enormous structural forces that have shaped the way we assess a human's worth. Those forces stem, in large part, from ableism and all other forms of bigotry. We should think long and hard about why we use certain words to disparage people (especially when we feel that they deserve it 100%) and how they reflect negative societal attitudes.
if we're recognizing that IQ is fake and "intelligence" is either also fake or so general as to be nearly meaningless as a one-dimensional measure, what are we even referring to if we're trying to be disparaging on that basis?
It's like race. Race is fake, there's no actual physical or biological reality backing it up. But because of the superstructure that surrounds those notions, there's arbitrary traits that a person has about them that determine what role they play in the system.
Honest answer: in terms of objects or structural forces (e.g. The Houthi attacks on freight entering into Israel has impaired Israel's ability to import goods) nobody's gonna bat an eye.
In terms of making it personal (e.g. "Are you impaired?") that is problematic imo.
If the sun is in your eyes and it's impairing your ability to see, though, that's very neutral and not problematic from my perspective.
Got you, I was thinking of the second one. But I think I agree with you on the first use
For me the hardest to replace has been "That's crazy!" in a neutral/positive connotation for unexpected, off the wall, out of bounds, wild, shocking. Would love to hear other suggestions for this because most replacements I've found for "crazy" have negative connotations.
You can always say cumwizard instead of something ableist.
Or call someone a turd cutter.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
And here I am just using terms like "silly goose" or "chicken fucker" like a simpleton.
