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Well, discussions about my second Scott Adams piece over on Feministe (which was basically identical to my post here) have now been completely derailed by a number of commenters who’ve decided I’m “ableist” because I used the word … “idiot.” That word, they have decided, is offensive to the “cognitively impaired.” If you want to wade into the mess, here’s the comment that, while polite in itself, started the long slide down this particular rabbit hole. You can see my responses in blue further down in the comments.
I consider this kind of language policing to the EXTREME! to be bad for feminism (and frankly insulting to people with disabilities), and I’m glad a number of others have stood up against it in the comments there. I don’t think that the language police are in the majority at Feministe, much less in feminism at large. But these debates are so frustrating that many feminists who disagree with the language police end up biting their tongues and/or just walking away. At some point I may post more about this fraught topic here.
In the meantime, I’m am conducting a little poll about cats. Please click the appropriate button in the graphic above. Clicking it won’t actually do anything, but I’m pretty sure what the results are going to be anyway. Go kitties!
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>@PamWhat can I say? I see people who are way too damn touchy and I simply can't stop poking and laughing. It was the (warped) way I was raised.
>Kitties: yes please. Family has a 17yo shelter rescue who is worshiped as a household god.
>Raoul, I will have to ask you to resign immediately.
>You'll have to prove I'm White first! Bwahahahaha!
>Aw man, and I just got banned. Is it still trolling if you actually believe everything you wrote?This is the most fun day I've had on the internet in months.
>That thread…Jesus…I think the original comment – "Hey, this word has a history you might not be aware of" was a bit of a derail but was polite and sincerely meant, and hey, I learned something I didn't know. It's when other posters came in demanding that you change your post IMMEDIATELY and in one case threatening "I will roll over your precious privileged toes until you beg for mercy. I will not allow anyone to erase our lived experiences" that took it to a…(the word on the tip of my tongue is "crazy" but I don't want to commit ThoughtCrime!)…let's go with 'deeply unfortunate' place.There was no room for you to respectfully disagree, and honestly no way you could win. I agreed with Florence's comments and think she pretty much won the thread with her link here.
>Is that a requirement? *has no idea how to do the real word police thing, she just wanted to use a 12 year old political reference.*
>Yeah, I'm pretty sure that doublespeak is one of the main reasons I've largely stopped giving a shit about a lot of things.
>@AmandaOne reason I still LIKE reading Pandagon is that people actually still comment there and whenever the Lame Police show up, everyone ignores them or shoves them in a cupboard or … whatever happens to them. Anyway,The difference with "lame" and "gay" and "retarded" is that "lame" pretty much in our modern language has one meaning. It used to mean "physically disabled" and now that meaning is almost never used. The meaning now is something around "dull and stupid." "Gay" went from being "happy" to "homosexual," and then saw the tween population try to shift it to being another "lame." "Retarded" has held dual meanings for a while, meaning both "being mentally slow" and also "being slowed." Language changes.You wouldn't say "gay" to mean "happy" and you wouldn't say "lame" to mean "disabled" nowadays. You see it in older books, but both words have transformed into something else. And you probably just shouldn't say "retarded" much at all, unless you're talking about fire or something.I guess it just seems like wasting time to get all offended over words that don't even commonly mean what they used to mean. There are bigger battles to fight, even linguistically. If you think "idiot" is a bad word because of its history, don't use it, but don't get pissed if other people use it. Although not quite the same thing, it's about as useful as trying to get your grandma to stop saying the n-word or your grandpa to stop saying horribly sexist things. I personally try to avoid using "girl" to refer to women over a certain age. But I don't bother other people who do this. That would be lame.
>Damn, I mean Newspeak. I was thinking of Doublethink.
>@Diane KLooks like you can't say anything over at Feministe unless you've used snark-checker on your comment before posting.
>I used to think "retarded" was harmless, until I had a job working with learning disabled adults. One day, we had a conversation about the use of the "R" word, and the shame and humiliation they expressed at being called "retards" taught me never to use the word again. As a rule, though, I'm not big on policing language overly much, as it tends to derail important conversations. I'm more than happy, however, to respect the wishes of individuals with a specific disability to not use a term they consider pejorative.
>Ooh! I wrote an article about this in university once! Specifically, Gay and Retarded.http://mondomagazine.net/2008/lexipoeia-offensive-content/One thing I can add is that changing the word doesn't change the attitudes. The reason that you can insult someone by calling them "special" now is that there was a movement to get rid of the term "retarded", as it was seen as derogatory. So special was used instead, and it got all the old connotations attached. I forsee a similar future for "atypical" to mean "crazy".Example from conversation in the not too distant future.Crazy Steve: I don't think women should be able to vote. They can't penetrate things with their genitals!Megan: Well, that certainly is a (deliberate pause) neurologically atypical line of reasoning you're persuing, there.
>I am with Marissa and Rachel on this one. Besides, it is not really too damned hard to avoid using these terms. Asking marginalized people to just shut up and take it is far harsher than asking for small edits to vocabulary. "Insulted and attacked" for being called out on one's privileged use of harmful language is impermisible, but it is perfectly find to insult and attack the marginilized group. Well, as an aspie who used to have PTSD and depression and who had a narrow miss with being misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, let me tell you that I cannot see the word "crazy" without wincing. It has been thrown at me time and time again, including by people of power, to deny me access and services (one doctor told me to stop "acting crazy" before dismissing me without even bothering to test for a health condition that ended up costing me six years of exhaustion that deteroriated down to the point of hallucination and health risks that could easily have killed me). These words contribute to our suffering, our loss of freedom, and even our deaths. So forgive me for feeling not a bit of pity for those who are too fucking lazy to bother to stop using certain words. You want to know if I have had fights over ablism outside of the internet? Yes, I have had them again and again and again. With principals, teachers, professors, doctors, administrators, classamtes, parents, siblings. But, then again, as a person with disabilities, I have far less choice in that matter, don't I? I have sat in rooms and listened to people question my very personhood and my right not to be locked up against my will over these issues. Try that out and then get back to me about how very hard your life is because you were politely asked not to use certain terms.
>I was called "four-eyes" in school once. It hurt. I'm not saying that pain stays with me today, or that I consider that an example of marginalization.But I'm not going to deny unprivileged people of any stripe the right to express offense at the use of a given term. It's your choice whether or not you care. But you're not the one being persecuted here, as DSC said.There's also another angle to it. Like Marissa said way up at the top of the thread, sometimes it's not just offense. When someone uses the word "gay" pejoratively, I don't feel offended. But I do feel a certain amount of contempt for the person who said it. Of course, I'm bisexual but I easily pass for cis, so I reap a lot of privilege in that area, so if others are outright offended by the word "gay" used pejoratively, I understand entirely.
>Crap. The internet ate a nice long comment. (It was my fault, not blogger's, for once.) Anyway, what Capt. Awkward said. Beyond that, a few other thoughts: I am certainly happy to avoid using language that contributes to the further marginalization/stigmatization of a marginalized/stigmatized group. Darksidecat, you make a pretty persuasive case for avoiding the word crazy. As someone who has suffered from depression for most of my life I've long been troubled by the stigmatization of mental illness. But because I don't get called "crazy" I have probably vastly underestimated the ways in which that word can be stigmatizing. But it's one thing to bring up these issues, and another to do, well, whatever you want to call what happened in that thread. These weren't people who had been stigmatized by the word "idiot." These were people who were declaring themselves offended by proxy for others, and presuming to speak for them. And trying to roll over everyone who disagreed. It was a pile-on; it was a kind of bullying. Reading that thread in fact "triggered" a friend of mine who faced a similar kind of intellectual bullying in college. I spelled out more of my thoughts in the comments there; I may try to pull them together in a post here. Or a may just let it drop.
>I'm actually deeply appalled by the Feministe debacle (I've been posting as Sarah J.), particularly because it's being supported by the moderator. Said moderator seems incapable of acknowledging exactly how extreme the comments have been.It's a problem I've encountered in feminist spaces. I advertise my blog on Feministe, when I actually have time to update it, and sure enough I got a bitchy post from someone over my use of the word "crazy." Important info: my use of the word "crazy" regarded Janet Folger Porter, who masterminded the "testimony" of two fetuses in the Ohio statehouse.I replied to the bitchy comment by mentioning that I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and will therefore use the word crazy as I damn well please. End of troll.
>I replied to the bitchy comment by mentioning that I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and will therefore use the word crazy as I damn well please.There is some flexibility as far as this goes, certainly. Being bi, I have a couple gay friends that call each other and me a fag occasionally, and it's all a good larf. I suppose it's like the n-word (which, being white, I don't use). But if someone ever asked me to stop saying the word fag in their presence, I'd stop immediately. Because it is super-offensive.I don't doubt that you're similarly sensitive with your use of the word crazy. I'm just commenting for the sake of conversation.
>Oh, I agree that context is vital. I've tried to argue that point on Feministe to no avail. And there certain terms I do feel are always ableist: schizo, the r word, etc. Similarly, it bugs me to hear anyone use "bipolar" or "schizophrenic" or "OCD" casually. If you don't have the disorder, leave the word alone, because you clearly don't understand the implications of what you're saying.I suppose what really bugs is that the worst Feministe commenters (and the troll on my blog) don't claim to be people with disabilities, yet they've apparently appointed themselves the grand high arbiters of all that is ableist. I resent that. If you don't have a diagnosis, you haven't faced the sort of discrimination I've experience and you do. not. speak for me.
>I agree with Amanda. Once you let the language scolds dictate your vocabulary, you can no longer call your keyboard your own.
>Oh, and regarding the kittehz: two.
>I'm totally on board with what (almost) everyone has been saying. Yes, the words we use matter. Yes, if I were unknowingly using a word that made you feel hurt or marginalized, I would stop immediately.But on Feministe (I've also noticed it in parts of the Tumblrverse), it's actually difficult to have a conversation on any topic because, for every reply that actually addresses what you said, you get a whole cascade addressing your wording. It's a problem when your language use expectations are actually preventing communication.
>BTW, 0, but hopefully 1 soon. I'm at the humane society too, and it's just a question of which one.
>BTW, 0, but hopefully 1 soon. I'm at the humane society too, and it's just a question of which one.Good luck! If I ever had a male cat, I would name him Captain John Sheridan, Welcome to Babylon 5. Not John. Not even Captain John Sheridan. Captain John Sheridan, Welcome to Babylon 5.If I had a female cat I'd name her April.
>Makes me think of Daniel Tosh's joke about having a restaurant named "Thank you for calling, how may I help you?"