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?
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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.
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.
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.
