Some of our most common, ingrained expressions have damaging effects on millions of people – and many of us don't know we're hurting others when we speak.
As a disabled person, I face ableism and ableist language every day. Some people use ableist language without even knowing that it is ableist. I thought it would be good for folks to take a look at the attached BBC article and expand their perspectives a bit.
But the fact is, discussions about the negative effect of a word such as “dumb” – a term originally denoting a deaf person who did not use speech, but which now functions as slang for something brutish, uninteresting or of low intelligence
Old English dumb, of persons, “mute, silent, refraining from speaking or unable to speak,” from Proto-Germanic *dumbaz “dumb, dull,” which is perhaps from PIE *dheubh- “confusion, stupefaction, dizziness,”
Now, as for actual discussion to be had, unfortunately our language is entirely coded in slights towards different groups of people. In calling someone “a sinister villain who’s a part of a cabal”, I’ve called them a left (handed)farmer who is Jewish.
At some point we do need to accept that these negative words, which are at their fundamentals, slights to certain groups of people, have taken on a new meaning, and that their misuse as slights against those people only really applies contextually. I do think that terms like “stupid” and “idiot” have achieved that level of shift.
Feel free to disagree with me of course, I’m not here to tell you you or your experience is wrong, and I’m more than happy to have an actual discussion on this. ❤️
Now, as for actual discussion to be had, unfortunately our language is entirely coded in slights towards different groups of people. In calling someone “a sinister villain who’s a part of a cabal”, I’ve called them a left handed
if left handed people were still marginalised your comparison might be valid, but they aren’t so it isn’t.
At some point we do need to accept that these negative words, which are at their fundamentals, slights to certain groups of people, have taken on a new meaning, and that their misuse as slights against those people only really applies contextually.
No we don’t, especially since no, they haven’t
I do think that terms like “stupid” and “idiot” have achieved that level of shift.
I’m not here to tell you you or your experience is wrong,
yet that’s exactly what you are doing.
You should be able to remove a few words from your vocabulary to reduce harm to already marginalised people, without arguing about it or trying to “logic” your way out of it. It isn’t a big ask, but rather the very bare minimum.
Not the person you were talking to but wait… why… I thought kbin was one of the more chill instances? Have we got a bad reputation in your neck of the woods?
Thanks, perspective’s a strange thing, to me it always feels like the bad faithers are from the biggest instances but that’s just because of the size of them.
The theory we joined kbin over politics surprises me. I joined because I found the interface so much easier to use than lemmy, and also it has a lot of features like the ability to block domains or instances by myself, and the cool interfacing with mastodon. We also turned out to have a cool dev and transparent finances which is nice.
I think some of us who joined kbin before we federated are kind of in a bit of a diy small magazines vibe and don’t really mix it up as much.
Although we can see the names of people who upvote and downvote us, Kbin doesn’t seem to federate all downvotes, so I guess we can be kind of oblivious to disapproval from outsiders.
wrt not federating all downvotes, you sure that’s not because the commenter or poster is from an instance that disables downvotes? If they disable downvotes, then all downvotes will only be localized to your instance (i.e. every downvote you’ll see on that comment/post is from kbin.social users, and me, lemmy.ca users)
No, there’s definitely more to it than that. I don’t fully understand, but to give you an example, @ram, here are screenshots of how your comment about kbin above looks to me:
Ad hominem only applies when using an attack on a person as an argument. This person’s clearly not behaving in good faith, so why are they entitled to a good faith reply?
I just notice time and time again that kbin.social is populated by users who act in bad faith. I assume it has something to do with people repulsed by communists tending to stay away from lemmy instances due to the M-L association. Of course, kbin.social is the biggest instance of its software, but it’s a trend I keep noticing.
Nothing inherently, it’s an open instance with almost no rules regarding discourse though so you will find a lot of trolls and bad faith comments coming from kbin.
I agree with you. In fact I had no idea dumb used to mean “a deaf person”. This word has a new meaning. This is obviously besides the fact that the word dumb is demeaning in today’s definition, so there’s that.
Agreed, but for words like that to make such a shift, there was a period where the words were still super offensive and used anyways. And if we are more enlightened now, we should have less of these words going forward. Like I think we’ve largely stopped such a transformation of the word “retard(ed)”.
I personally have completely nixed the R word from my vocabulary. I agree that there was a time when some terms were super offensive, or the history of a term is one leaded in negative use towards marginalized peoples. I’m just not convinced that these terms in particular are ones I need to care about.
If you’ve stopped using the r word because it’s offensive, that’s great! Really. Hopefully this discussion (like the linked article) will convince you that there are other terms commonly used that are just as offensive. If you can find alternatives to the r word, then you can also probably find alternatives to “deaf” and “stupid”, for example. Regardless, I appreciate that you’re trying!
This isn’t a new discussion I’ve seen, and it’s something I’ve dealt with internally myself. It’s also not as though this is a final answer. I do try to evade these words where I can, but generally I don’t think they’re harmful enough for me to “swear off” so to speak, if that makes sense? I’m not so dull as to say it’s “a personal choice” - that stuff’s just a cop-out for choosing the worst options, but I think that simply suggesting that some people may be offended by certain terms is enough to lend people to change their biases in terminology; or at least it is for me haha
Thanks for the good natured response. I appreciate that in this thread, given how intense some people seem to be.
I’m autistic, and so I come off pretty blunt sometimes. I am really passionate about disability justice, but blasting people just hardens their position and makes them unwilling to listen. I’m glad that you weren’t offended! :)
I totally getcha, 150%. It’s hard too to distinguish between someone steadfast about a cause from someone who’s just using a cause as a means to bully. I often fall into that category of indistinction myself, so I can completely relate.
Would you consider this from another perspective — if you accept that people should be able to determine what they are called/named, a corollary is to avoid using descriptors for them, or idiomatic expressions, that they say they are finding contribute to systematic bias against them? Or that they find demeaning and experience as micro aggressions?
If you are open to listening to those most affected, it wouldn’t make sense to ask the hearing, for example, whether expressions like ‘falling on deaf ears’ or ‘dumb’ are harm-free.
The Deaf have let us know that these words are still harmful. As one of the most isolated and marginalized communities North America, should their concern about language not be enough to give hearing people pause?
English doesn’t have a the equivalent of L’Academie Française to arbitrate accepted language and usage. So, it becomes an evolving societal conversation of usage.
Surely then, it’s on all of us to listen to those who are saying how old names and expressions, that have negative connotations, are harming them?
You seem to be making the case, on the other hand that, able people should be exempt from considering how our word-choices impact others as long as we feel an expression has fallen into such common usage that it has become disconnected from its origin, and can only cause harm when used in a context that evokes its original meaning.
Or, your position is that if someone doesn’t don’t see the problem, it isn’t one. Interestingly enough, this is almost exactly one of the generally accepted definitions of privilege - not perceiving something is a problem if it’s not a problem for you personally.
Not on a soapbox, just really quite surprised at the implicit assumptions your response and that of others. The number of downvotes OP has received suggests this community is less civil than I had thought.
Would you consider this from another perspective — if you accept that people should be able to determine what they are called/named, a corollary is to avoid using descriptors for them, or idiomatic expressions, that they say they are finding contribute to systematic bias against them? Or that they find demeaning and experience as micro aggressions?
The premise here doesn’t apply. People I use these terms to refer to, I deny their freedom to be called as they wish. Instead I tend to call them nazis, pieces of shit, fascists, and the like.
The Deaf have let us know that these words are still harmful. As one of the most isolated and marginalized communities North America, should their concern about language not be enough to give hearing people pause?
However, if I accept your premise, I don’t see how “allowing others to be referred to as they wish” leads into a conclusion of “allowing others to dictate how I speak of others”. This is non-sequiteur.
I’m no stranger to listening to the marginalized, and, like most people, experience discrimination and have slurs I don’t want others to use, so I already do understand accepting that some terms are unacceptable, but it’s a matter of the barometer.
English doesn’t have a the equivalent of L’Academie Française to arbitrate accepted language and usage. So, it becomes an evolving societal conversation of usage.
Most languages are like this. The reason L’Academie Française exists is merely to marginalize and suppress “improper French”, which before WWI was dozens of languages across the country. Paris French was standardized and languages were destroyed.
Surely then, it’s on all of us to listen to those who are saying how old names and expressions, that have negative connotations, are harming them?
Agreed completely. Some good examples are the N word, the R word, the T word, the gay F word. These are all abject slurs that continue to be used to harm people today. Beyond that, I’m gonna use examples from my own communities for obvious reasons of comfort, and respect; terms like fairy, sissy, transsexual, gay, and homosexual all have various degrees of harm behind them. They often are used to capture caricatures of people like me and apply any negativity from those words unto me. Depending on the context, these words are undoubtedly offensive, but in other contexts, are inoffensive. Of course none of these hit the same notes as “dumb” does for the deaf community, as “dumb” is used colloquially as a term to insult, either seriously or jokingly, so I can’t directly relate in this regard. If I had experience of people referring to deaf people as “dumb” in my lifetime, my perspective would also be different, but that’s not my reality.^This may come down to privilege, but it is also the reality within which I live. I cannot deny my reality without getting actual context of it; beyond simple, theoretical whataboutisms.
Surely then, it’s on all of us to listen to those who are saying how old names and expressions, that have negative connotations, are harming them?
It is on all of us to do this, yes. It’s not on us to accept anything any marginalized person says ever without question. That’s an improper ask.
You seem to be making the case, on the other hand that, able people should be exempt from considering how our word-choices impact others as long as we feel an expression has fallen into such common usage that it has become disconnected from its origin, and can only cause harm when used in a context that evokes its original meaning.
Yes. A decent example for this, with a term that impacts me, is an abbreviation for a transmission.
Or, your position is that if someone doesn’t don’t see the problem, it isn’t one. Interestingly enough, this is almost exactly one of the generally accepted definitions of privilege - not perceiving something is a problem if it’s not a problem for you personally.
No, I definitely agree that people are blind to problems that are surrounding by them. I disagree that this is a definition of privilege though, as I am no less privileged for believing it to be a problem. I don’t lose my linguistic privilege simply because I acknowledge, and to the best of my ability make efforts to see the problems that impact the people who don’t speak the common language of my region. If this is an accepted definition of privilege, it’s an entirely bad one.
The number of downvotes OP has received suggests this community is less civil than I had thought.
It’s an unpopular opinion generally anywhere online, and people dislike being told what they should say or not; they often perceive it as radicalism and paint radicalism with a broad, negative brush. If OP posted this in a community that was specifically tailored to the deaf or the disabled, you’d definitely see a different reaction.
I hope that I come off as good faith to you. I’m trying to be thoughtful and reasonable in my responses. In other comments I have mentioned where I personally stand on these terms. I have no desire to “combat” people with bad faith arguments like many people in this thread seem to be, and legitimately just want to find some understanding. I’m sure I said some shit wrong in this post but I don’t really feel like revising the whole thing to make sure everything in it is perfect. Forgive me if I said something wrong, or even entirely out of my ass.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !canada@lemmy.ca
Speaking of facts
Now, as for actual discussion to be had, unfortunately our language is entirely coded in slights towards different groups of people. In calling someone “a sinister villain who’s a part of a cabal”, I’ve called them a left (handed) farmer who is Jewish.
At some point we do need to accept that these negative words, which are at their fundamentals, slights to certain groups of people, have taken on a new meaning, and that their misuse as slights against those people only really applies contextually. I do think that terms like “stupid” and “idiot” have achieved that level of shift.
Feel free to disagree with me of course, I’m not here to tell you you or your experience is wrong, and I’m more than happy to have an actual discussion on this. ❤️
if left handed people were still marginalised your comparison might be valid, but they aren’t so it isn’t.
No we don’t, especially since no, they haven’t
you would be wrong
https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/stupid-is-an-ableist-slur-breaking-down-defenses-around-ableist-language-liberating-our-words/
yet that’s exactly what you are doing.
You should be able to remove a few words from your vocabulary to reduce harm to already marginalised people, without arguing about it or trying to “logic” your way out of it. It isn’t a big ask, but rather the very bare minimum.
Uh, I’d rather good faith discussion instead, actually.
Just noticed you’re using kbin.social. Checks out.
Does kbin.social have some kind of reputation or something? I’m not defending the commenter BTW.
I’ve never noticed us having one before, I think (hope) it’s just that one person.
@ram
Not the person you were talking to but wait… why… I thought kbin was one of the more chill instances? Have we got a bad reputation in your neck of the woods?
It’s a personal observation I’ve noticed, I go into more detail here if you’re curious.
Thanks, perspective’s a strange thing, to me it always feels like the bad faithers are from the biggest instances but that’s just because of the size of them.
The theory we joined kbin over politics surprises me. I joined because I found the interface so much easier to use than lemmy, and also it has a lot of features like the ability to block domains or instances by myself, and the cool interfacing with mastodon. We also turned out to have a cool dev and transparent finances which is nice.
I think some of us who joined kbin before we federated are kind of in a bit of a diy small magazines vibe and don’t really mix it up as much.
Although we can see the names of people who upvote and downvote us, Kbin doesn’t seem to federate all downvotes, so I guess we can be kind of oblivious to disapproval from outsiders.
wrt not federating all downvotes, you sure that’s not because the commenter or poster is from an instance that disables downvotes? If they disable downvotes, then all downvotes will only be localized to your instance (i.e. every downvote you’ll see on that comment/post is from kbin.social users, and me, lemmy.ca users)
No, there’s definitely more to it than that. I don’t fully understand, but to give you an example, @ram, here are screenshots of how your comment about kbin above looks to me:
From visiting your instance, not signed in
From kbin
From my test account at lemmy.world
(All sorted by old). As you can see, the voting is very different viewed from kbin.
Huh that’s really interesting. I wonder why that is then.
deleted by creator
Ad hominem only applies when using an attack on a person as an argument. This person’s clearly not behaving in good faith, so why are they entitled to a good faith reply?
I agree with you, but why are you disparaging kbin? Plenty of good discussion here, and a good community.
I’m not defending the other guy, but what’s wrong with kbin?
I just notice time and time again that kbin.social is populated by users who act in bad faith. I assume it has something to do with people repulsed by communists tending to stay away from lemmy instances due to the M-L association. Of course, kbin.social is the biggest instance of its software, but it’s a trend I keep noticing.
Nothing inherently, it’s an open instance with almost no rules regarding discourse though so you will find a lot of trolls and bad faith comments coming from kbin.
I agree with you. In fact I had no idea dumb used to mean “a deaf person”. This word has a new meaning. This is obviously besides the fact that the word dumb is demeaning in today’s definition, so there’s that.
Agreed, but for words like that to make such a shift, there was a period where the words were still super offensive and used anyways. And if we are more enlightened now, we should have less of these words going forward. Like I think we’ve largely stopped such a transformation of the word “retard(ed)”.
I personally have completely nixed the R word from my vocabulary. I agree that there was a time when some terms were super offensive, or the history of a term is one leaded in negative use towards marginalized peoples. I’m just not convinced that these terms in particular are ones I need to care about.
If you’ve stopped using the r word because it’s offensive, that’s great! Really. Hopefully this discussion (like the linked article) will convince you that there are other terms commonly used that are just as offensive. If you can find alternatives to the r word, then you can also probably find alternatives to “deaf” and “stupid”, for example. Regardless, I appreciate that you’re trying!
This isn’t a new discussion I’ve seen, and it’s something I’ve dealt with internally myself. It’s also not as though this is a final answer. I do try to evade these words where I can, but generally I don’t think they’re harmful enough for me to “swear off” so to speak, if that makes sense? I’m not so dull as to say it’s “a personal choice” - that stuff’s just a cop-out for choosing the worst options, but I think that simply suggesting that some people may be offended by certain terms is enough to lend people to change their biases in terminology; or at least it is for me haha
Thanks for the good natured response. I appreciate that in this thread, given how intense some people seem to be.
I’m autistic, and so I come off pretty blunt sometimes. I am really passionate about disability justice, but blasting people just hardens their position and makes them unwilling to listen. I’m glad that you weren’t offended! :)
I totally getcha, 150%. It’s hard too to distinguish between someone steadfast about a cause from someone who’s just using a cause as a means to bully. I often fall into that category of indistinction myself, so I can completely relate.
Would you consider this from another perspective — if you accept that people should be able to determine what they are called/named, a corollary is to avoid using descriptors for them, or idiomatic expressions, that they say they are finding contribute to systematic bias against them? Or that they find demeaning and experience as micro aggressions?
If you are open to listening to those most affected, it wouldn’t make sense to ask the hearing, for example, whether expressions like ‘falling on deaf ears’ or ‘dumb’ are harm-free.
The Deaf have let us know that these words are still harmful. As one of the most isolated and marginalized communities North America, should their concern about language not be enough to give hearing people pause?
English doesn’t have a the equivalent of L’Academie Française to arbitrate accepted language and usage. So, it becomes an evolving societal conversation of usage.
Surely then, it’s on all of us to listen to those who are saying how old names and expressions, that have negative connotations, are harming them?
You seem to be making the case, on the other hand that, able people should be exempt from considering how our word-choices impact others as long as we feel an expression has fallen into such common usage that it has become disconnected from its origin, and can only cause harm when used in a context that evokes its original meaning.
Or, your position is that if someone doesn’t don’t see the problem, it isn’t one. Interestingly enough, this is almost exactly one of the generally accepted definitions of privilege - not perceiving something is a problem if it’s not a problem for you personally.
Not on a soapbox, just really quite surprised at the implicit assumptions your response and that of others. The number of downvotes OP has received suggests this community is less civil than I had thought.
The premise here doesn’t apply. People I use these terms to refer to, I deny their freedom to be called as they wish. Instead I tend to call them nazis, pieces of shit, fascists, and the like.
However, if I accept your premise, I don’t see how “allowing others to be referred to as they wish” leads into a conclusion of “allowing others to dictate how I speak of others”. This is non-sequiteur.
I’m no stranger to listening to the marginalized, and, like most people, experience discrimination and have slurs I don’t want others to use, so I already do understand accepting that some terms are unacceptable, but it’s a matter of the barometer.
Most languages are like this. The reason L’Academie Française exists is merely to marginalize and suppress “improper French”, which before WWI was dozens of languages across the country. Paris French was standardized and languages were destroyed.
Agreed completely. Some good examples are the N word, the R word, the T word, the gay F word. These are all abject slurs that continue to be used to harm people today. Beyond that, I’m gonna use examples from my own communities for obvious reasons of comfort, and respect; terms like fairy, sissy, transsexual, gay, and homosexual all have various degrees of harm behind them. They often are used to capture caricatures of people like me and apply any negativity from those words unto me. Depending on the context, these words are undoubtedly offensive, but in other contexts, are inoffensive. Of course none of these hit the same notes as “dumb” does for the deaf community, as “dumb” is used colloquially as a term to insult, either seriously or jokingly, so I can’t directly relate in this regard. If I had experience of people referring to deaf people as “dumb” in my lifetime, my perspective would also be different, but that’s not my reality.^This may come down to privilege, but it is also the reality within which I live. I cannot deny my reality without getting actual context of it; beyond simple, theoretical whataboutisms.
It is on all of us to do this, yes. It’s not on us to accept anything any marginalized person says ever without question. That’s an improper ask.
Yes. A decent example for this, with a term that impacts me, is an abbreviation for a transmission.
No, I definitely agree that people are blind to problems that are surrounding by them. I disagree that this is a definition of privilege though, as I am no less privileged for believing it to be a problem. I don’t lose my linguistic privilege simply because I acknowledge, and to the best of my ability make efforts to see the problems that impact the people who don’t speak the common language of my region. If this is an accepted definition of privilege, it’s an entirely bad one.
It’s an unpopular opinion generally anywhere online, and people dislike being told what they should say or not; they often perceive it as radicalism and paint radicalism with a broad, negative brush. If OP posted this in a community that was specifically tailored to the deaf or the disabled, you’d definitely see a different reaction.
I hope that I come off as good faith to you. I’m trying to be thoughtful and reasonable in my responses. In other comments I have mentioned where I personally stand on these terms. I have no desire to “combat” people with bad faith arguments like many people in this thread seem to be, and legitimately just want to find some understanding. I’m sure I said some shit wrong in this post but I don’t really feel like revising the whole thing to make sure everything in it is perfect. Forgive me if I said something wrong, or even entirely out of my ass.