The harmful ableist language you unknowingly use
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
dumb (adj.)
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.
you would be wrong
https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/stupid-is-an-ableist-slur-breaking-down-defenses-around-ableist-language-liberating-our-words/
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.
Just noticed you’re using kbin.social. Checks out.
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?
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.
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.
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 my test account at lemmy.world
(All sorted by old). As you can see, the voting is very different viewed from kbin.
Not sure, I've only been able to find snippets of dev discussion on it but as far as I can tell it's part of Ernest's philosophy.
He used to have the upvote button mean sharing and the "boost" button for upvotes, but he reconfigured it because we all got too confused.
This way we can never vote brigade, or be brigaded either, I guess?
But kbin is still being built, it's a lot newer than Lemmy, so who knows what the future holds. It's interesting that different instances will have a wildly different picture about whether a comment is popular though.
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