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?

  • ReadFanon [any, any]M
    ·
    7 months ago

    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.

    • panned_cakes [none/use name]
      ·
      7 months ago

      I'm not endorsing racism and transphobia, thanks for implying that for no reason. I just think name-calling is stupid.

      • ta00000 [none/use name]
        ·
        7 months ago

        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.