We already do this with some slurs, right? We can start enforcing these words, too.
Not calling anyone out, I’ve been guilty of it too. And we don’t have to do it all at once. Like, we can start with these:
Ableist words and alternatives.
Stupid, R€tarded, Idiot(ic), Cretin, or Moron(ic): People say this to imply something, or someone isn't intelligent or worth their time, but the words refer to people with intellectual disabilities. Instead, say that a situation or person is frustrating, ignorant, dense, unpleasant, cheesy, or awful.
Dumb: This word refers to a person who doesn't speak verbally, but people often use it to mean that something or someone isn't intelligent or wise. It's listed separately from stupid and its synonyms because it references a physical disability instead of an intellectual one. Try using any of the non-ableist synonyms like irritating or uncool.
Crazy, Nuts, Mad, Psycho, or Insane: "Wow, that's crazy!" may not seem like a harmful statement, but if you think about someone with a mental health condition hearing that statement, it's easy to realize that it is. So instead of using one of those words, try outrageous, bananas, bizarre, amazing, intense, extreme, overwhelming, or wild.
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Crazy, Nuts, Mad, Psycho, or Insane
So instead of using one of those words ... bananas
That literally means the exact same thing. It could just as easily be on the first list. I think this is a great example of how dumb this stuff gets. Language evolves, and even words which have roots in ableism can be completely divorced from that connotation. No one thinks that when you say something is "stupid" or "insane" that you are in any way referencing people with any kind of mental condition. Because you're not.
but the words refer to people with intellectual disabilities
No, they don't. They haven't in a long time. They can be used in an ableist way, but most use of those words aren't. They're very different from stuff like the r word.
Instead, say that a situation or person is frustrating, ignorant, dense, unpleasant, cheesy, or awful.
That just sounds like a euphemism treadmill. But also I'd argue those words could also be used in ableist ways. Frustrating, dense, and unpleasant I could definitely see being used against autistic people (like me), but that doesn't mean they should be avoided in general, even to describe a person.
Dumb: This word refers to a person who doesn’t speak verbally
Does it though? Has anyone used it that way in the past few decades? Hell the way it's used has absolutely nothing to do with the inability to speak, it's unrelated.
The last time I saw dumb used like that it was in a children's book about a donkey that turns into a rock
It's okay, he
spoiler
turns back. His parents go out looking for him and stop to hold a picnic, unwittingly using their rock-child as a table. They wish they had their child back and he's unrockified
Putting that in spoilers is a great bit. I was imagining it as one of those old-style Euro fairy/folktales where it just ends with the bad thing and you're like "well, fuck". A cutesy example might be "The Fir Tree", in which a tree wants to be used for a Christmas celebration
spoiler
and it is, and then is left to wither and rot for some time before being chopped into firewood and burned
lmao, shoutout to Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, book was peak fiction when I was like 8 :theory-gary:
The "r-word" is already banned, as it's basically the only one of those that hasn't completely lost any connection to their original meaning.
So no imo.
Hasan who? The streamer guy? I don't see how whatever he does would be relevant, as far as I know he doesn't have an account here.
And the slur related to schizophrenia wasn't even mentioned in the op btw, but okay.
I've been here from the very beginning, and I genuinely can not remember seeing anyone having a negative reaction to the usage of extremely common words like moron, idiot, dumb, stupid, etc.
And it's not as though the average user has much problems with loudly voicing their opinions on here (our endless struggle sessions are pretty clear evidence of this lol), so I'm just unconvinced that this is a real issue that needs adressing
Just the other day our friend Venustum said the term " useful idiot " was ableist.
there was one early on
sticks out to me because "lame" got banned but not only was it barely enforced, sitemods and admins would say it publically lmaoAnd on this site specifically a word like stupid is usually used for people whom one would say much worse things about. Like capitalists or Americans or whatever
Exactly, I don't think anyone on here would see someting like "Meatball Ron is a moron" as ableist for instance.
To me this seems like an attempt to create an issue that's never been an actual issue.
I genuinely can not remember seeing anyone having a negative reaction to the usage of extremely common words like moron, idiot, dumb, stupid, etc.
I know there's been at least one post just like this one before.
I’ve been here from the very beginning, and I genuinely can not remember seeing anyone having a negative reaction to the usage of extremely common words like moron, idiot, dumb, stupid, etc.
maybe the people who do leave silently rather than complaining but i also don't think they exist so :shrug-outta-hecks:
I've been struggling with anxiety and depression since I was in elementary school, so I'd appreciate if you could kindly fuck off with your assumption that the only reason I could possibly disagree with you is that I've never experienced ableism myself and that I've lived a life free from any hardship.
My god, this is even more unreasonable than if you said the phrase "poor choice of words" was classist. What fraction of a percentage of the population even knows that anyone ever used the term "moron" this way? I happened to know from a high school class, but when we are making an accusation of bigotry we can't just free-associate feelings, we need to investigate the actual philology, which requires doing things other than introspection.
As an easy example, "lame" is totally used in an ableist way and you can see these connotations in how people use it constantly, even if referring to an actual disabled person this way would seem a little old-timey (along with being quite rude). The only difference between "moron" and "doofus" is that "moron" has a harsher implication, but there's no further insinuation because they have very non-specific meanings in modern English. "Dolt" is about equivalent to "moron" and has no such history from what I can tell.
If you want to make the case that it's really any word that means "unintelligent" or some equivalent is ableist, you have a case there, but then actually make that argument.
“poor choice of words” was classist
You know I wonder how much embedded classism there is in the English language. Another example is "villain" comes from the word "villager". I think this sort of language policing is very dumb but I would be fascinated to read about this sort of research in historical terms.
sanist/mentalist biases
uhhh you're skipping a shitload of work if you want to say it's value neutral to have people run around completely disconnected from reality. At a minimum we need to protect them from traffic and marketing...
Yes, I don’t want to ban every word listed here. I just want a discussion about possibly beginning with some of the worst ableist words because we acknowledge the hurt they can cause to others.
We do that, removed is censored. None of the others are slurs anyone associates with disability.
That said I wouldn't mind spaces being less ableist. Calling out stupidity is often a method to silence marginalized and those that are oppressed. It also makes it so that caring for people is less important than being an Ender kind Isekai who is just so smart he alone knows what is right and lifts up "reasonTM" and uses cold Nazi-eqsue pseudo-science as the ultima ratio (like the Nazi scientist in Strangelove) .
It also ignores that people are diverse, the same person is, too, that person is both in their faculties and circumstances sometimes - not always - able to check stuff (i.e. code switching when talking to people), and the other component is the change in time. All of us have intervals in which we aren't able. Society acts as if you are always either able and useful or not.
Important is still though if you talk to people that share intimate stuff currently not to police them in the wrong situations. If a friend is fired them insulting their boss is good and supporting them is the right call. But there is a difference if they call the boss an asshole, capitalist or use the n-word which ought to be called out.
I'll never forget getting banned from r/LSC for calling the landlord's exploitation of the working class "insane."
Literally all language used to describe something negatively can be tied to an instance or even a systemic pattern of it being used for ableism, rasicm, sexism, homophobia, or something else. Every single negative descriptor. Humans are just fucked up like that. All we can do is draw a line somewhere that minimizes alienation of marginalized groups while also minimizing tone policing. I feel like the existing policy is pretty good.
It's always good to check in and have discussions like this, but the comments seem to illustrate a consensus.
Bananas: Cool and good
Nuts: cringe
Chiquita shills out in full force smh. First Guatemala, now hexbear????
10/10 post comrade :gold-communist:
:allende-rhetoric: (I know it's Chile, but we don't have any Guatemala emotes I don't think...)
I think calling people stupid dumbasses is a good way to refer to people who simply have no desire to self-reflect or examine their own reasoning before pushing some kind of argument. I don't think "you're being excessively hasty with this line of thought" properly shames people who do that.
Try using any of the non-ableist synonyms like irritating or uncool.
Can you suggest a word that actually replaces the meaning people are using it for?
The issue most of the time here is that idiot or stupid or dumb are used in context to functionally mean "a person making a [decision/action/statement] that lacked proper thought" and while I agree that in various contexts these words are ableist, and that they carry ableist sentiments because of their usage in those contexts I have failed to find useful synonyms that replace the functionality of these words when their intent is still just "that was a decision/action/whatever made by someone not giving appropriate thought to the situation". Wew that's a badly written run on sentence.
To properly address this problem in language an appropriate substitute must be given to people, or one must be created. The issue I see with creating words to fill this niche however is that they will last just months before beginning use by reactionaries in an ableist context where they will quickly then become tainted.
The issue I see with creating words to fill this niche however is that they will last just months before beginning use by reactionaries in an ableist context where they will quickly then become tainted
yep, you got this with charities in the 80s and 90s in the uk
one example being the National S[slur]s Society having to change it's name to ScopeI think there are good alternatives depending on the situations like frustrating, unwise, thoughtless, even evil when it’s capitalism doing something very egregious.
There are alternatives out there. We don’t use them because these ableist words act as a convenient filler, but if there common usage causes some people to feel discomfort, then imo we should look into removing these from our vocabulary.
Agree. All language can become -ist depending on context. If I call the American healthcare system depraved that's a moral judgment that isn't a problem.
If I were to refer to any of our comrades sexual identity or preferences (outside of pedophilia) as depraved then that would be incredibly cruel as it becomes whatever-phobic.
Context matters for a lot of these words. Both uses involve a normative claim about morals, one is inoffensive and harmlessness, one should be banworthy.
Convenient filler how though? Because they are short and convey the intent of the user in the shortest way possible.
This is the problem. When I make a mistake and say "I'm dumb" like leaving my phone in the fridge because I was half asleep this morning, I'm not being ableist to myself am I? "I'm half asleep and have sleep walked into a silly action" is the intent. The problem is that the words are ALSO used by ableists in an ableist way, to actually harm the recipients.
We clearly need very short words to communicate these hiccups and mistakes we do. What we need if we're going to make ground on this front (outside of niche hyper-aware communities) is short words that aren't also capable of being used by reactionaries to harm people of varying ability, thus tainting them.
I've seen someone say that my above example could just be "Doh" and I've seen others turn around and ask the question of whether Homer Simpson is an ableist caricature that makes that word ableist. The topic is... Very difficult.
I'm not even saying that we shouldn't approach this with the aim of fixing it in society. What I'm saying is that we should approach it with tactics that will actually work, and right now I don't think we've figured out how to replace this little communication niche properly. I think we can, and that we should approach doing this when we've actually worked out how to replace it linguistically. Without proper replacements people engage in a lot of pushback and even in leftist groups I've seen it cause pretty bad splits. I think especially in a dirtbag left setting there's going to be splitting over it.
Great post comrade.
To give some theoretical oomph, the chain of metonymy is the problem here -any replacement for your example will also be inextricably related to the term it's replacing. So "doh" is a great example since it's in theory harmless, but its associations (with both the word replaced and the caricature) mean that we can't ever imagine a "pure" word completely divorced from its problematic versions.
However, I think that there's a degree between calling something "dumb" (perhaps the least offensive of all of these? It hasn't been in the ableist usage for a long time...) and then more problematic ones like specific conditions (for conditions in the DSM now) or other more "charged" terms.
Should we still recognize the history? Yes. But as Fred Jameson says, history is what hurts, and we can never get out of it. I don't think it's worth fighting over some of these more benign ones that history has sanded down, at least not when there's more appealing targets.
Yeah like, don't get me wrong, I do recognise the problem here that some people are trying to solve...
The issue I see however is that there's a tactical issue with this specific part of the ableist lexicon that they want to remove. It's filling a language niche that is genuinely harmless and only ends up ableist by association and misuse. The pushback that occurs, the splitting that occurs over this topic, seems to come from the fact people know they're intuitively not using these words to be ableist and understand the function that they're serving in the context so they end up feeling insulted and confused about how to continue filling this niche without a suitable alternative presented.
As communists I feel like we need to be as close to "normal" as possible, especially in the language that we choose to use. My current feeling here is that if we want to solve this problem then we need to find a way around this. The intent people have with this anti-ableist language stuff is good but I think the right tactic isn't being deployed yet. Far more penetration into the mainstream would occur if we could solve this.
Real shit: should we be "normal," bring about communism, and a better life for disabled people everywhere but occasionally call something stupid?
Or should we legislate every aspect of language before we do anything material.
This isn't to say we shouldn't strive for both, but you're totally right that if we alienate ordinary people (who don't see calling actions "dumb" as ableist) before a revolution with the most labored HR language, what the fuck are we doing?
I know we're not actually doing praxis here but this is a great thing to keep in mind. Self crit is good though, this has been a really interesting thread.
Edit a good point was made elsewhere on the thread that the forum is really good about apologizing when called on shit, and I think self policing (i.e. if a comrade were actually mute irl and felt specific offense at "dumb" and expressed it I'm sure all of us would apologize to them and try to do better)
Speaking in an entirely tactis-based mindset without moralism - A multi-channel approach is probably useful here.
Groups should exist that explicitly ban this. Groups should exist that do not. There are different types of people that this appeals to and it provides method for us to reach them all.
I know we’re not actually doing praxis here but this is a great thing to keep in mind. Self crit is good though, this has been a really interesting thread.
I agree we're not doing praxis here, but we are doing propagandism. A bunch of stuff on hexbear does make its way out into social media.
Edit a good point was made elsewhere on the thread that the forum is really good about apologizing when called on shit, and I think self policing (i.e. if a comrade were actually mute irl and felt specific offense at “dumb” and expressed it I’m sure all of us would apologize to them and try to do better)
There are instances where I self-police and some where I don't. I definitely use replacement words like "ignorant" when talking about working class chuds for example, particularly because I think their characterisation as "stupid" is harmful to us in reaching out to them. Someone who is "stupid" is being characterised as incapable of understanding what we understand, making it worthless to reach out to and educate them, whereas someone who is accurately labelled as ignorant is very much still someone we can reach - assuming their economic class position is correct of course.
I think the kind of debate we're having on this is probably similar to the kind of debate some communists in the global south end up having over lgbt issues. Being pushed by the conditions to try and be "normal" in those conditions and address them more openly at a better time. It is useful to have activists pushing the topics for change while also having groups that are not doing that. This doesn't mean throwing them under the bus of course, not fighting AGAINST them, just not being overt about it and leaving it to other groups to push the boundaries so that they can maintain their focus on attracting a certain type of people without alienating them.
This doesn’t mean throwing them under the bus of course, not fighting AGAINST them, just not being overt about it and leaving it to other groups to push the boundaries so that they can maintain their focus on attracting a certain type of people without alienating them.
This of course is the most important thing
Yeah there are already a couple of words that should be removed from the filter. Like the antonym for regenerate. It's a perfectly normal word which can be used in perfectly normal ways, not even always as a noun at all. But because some niche internet fascists use it as a noun sometimes apparently it's forever tainted?
I mean the benzo jokes about Jordan Peterson are a thousand times more offensive to me than getting called dumb, but that's because I'm a lot more insecure about my past benzo addiction than being sort of dumb. I've never felt targeted for being autistic in this community, though.
There should be conversations like this to remind us that sometimes we are unintentionally punching down, but this is also the only forum I've ever seen where people regularly apologize to each other for causing offense. I think we do a decent job at self-policing.
Let me start off with:
Crazy, Nuts, Mad, Psycho, or Insane: “Wow, that’s crazy!” may not seem like a harmful statement
Calling a person or even a person's action these things, of course should not be allowed. Calling a situation "crazy" seems fine, though "psycho" should be banned completely and probably also "nuts" and "insane"
Dumb
Sure? I mean, I don't think that it's used that way at all anymore, but whatever
Stupid, [r slur], Idiot(ic), Cretin, or Moron(ic): People say this to imply something, or someone isn’t intelligent or worth their time, but the words refer to people with intellectual disabilities
R-slur is right out, obviously, but I've looked up these words and, for example, idiot was used as a category of low intelligence, but that is not what people mean today and this use isn't even recognizable. It literally goes back to ancient Greece and then Rome, being used to call someone ignorant
The article says not to use "barren" because infertile women are called that, but it's obvious that the use of "barren" to refer to fertility is an analogy rather than the primary reason, as can be evidenced from the very use of the word "fertility" to describe reproductive capacity. "Idiot" is much more isolated than that and much less recognizable.
Moron and Imbecile were actually coined by phrenologists, they have a stronger argument. That said, "moron" especially is in popular use and not recognized as the pseudo-medical term. Imbecile sort of is.
"Cretin" literally comes from "Cretan," i.e. someone from Crete (a suggestion of being uncultured, just like "philistine"). It's absurd to ban it as ableist.
I struggle to even generate an argument for banning "stupid".
Psychopathy is a weird thing, it's definitely a mental abnormality but is it really a disability? In some ways and especially for powerful people, psychopathy is a superability, as it allows them to exploit people more effectively and without the built-in mental anguish that most people are forced to suffer. It can obviously manifest as harm towards the person themselves, but usually due to some kind of other disordered impulse control.
I've struggled to understand the social relation of psychopathy to the rest of society and whether it properly fits into any of the categories of disabilities or not.
Psychopathy is an inability to experience sympathy, essentially. You aren't only able to avoid it, you can't experience it if you want to. Technically it can also be "cured" through therapy at an early age, but that's another conversation.
Psychopaths are overrepresented in addiction, homelessness and prisons.
Its not just the capitalism superpower disorder.
Just because theres the autism superpower savants doesnt make autism not a potential disability.
“Nuts” can’t be banned without ruining some recipes in the food forums.
I can't tell if you're joking but "nuts" as an adjective or adverb can very easily be banned with zero overlap there. As an adjective in cooking, the uncountable form "nut" is used, "nuts" only being used as a noun.
Honest question because I don’t know: is an automated banned word filter able to tell the difference between “Add 50g of nuts to the dough” and “that person is nuts”? My assumption was no, but perhaps these things aren’t as bad as they used to be.
we could ban "is%20nuts" and "re%20nuts" i guess but that would be nuts
As the other user said, we couldn't automate it, but it could still be policy if people wanted it to be.
I struggle to even generate an argument for banning “stupid”.
one possible argument: stigmatizing people with low intelligence is bad and we probably shouldn't do that with any language. An analogy: to discourage body-shaming, we would punish/ban/etc all body-shaming rhetoric, which would wipe out most uses of the word "fat" even though it's not shockingly offensive by itself.
I am an enlightened centrist and will comply with whatever the site rules are. I want to use less of this kind of language personally.
Yeah but then it's a matter of a conceptual framework being banned rather than language, which is outside the scope of the OP and the article.
it's a nonsense liberal article, I think we should address the grain of truth from it if we're gonna talk about it at all
Hence my also mentioning the OP, which does specify "language" and talk about word lists.
