Read on Twitter
I see twitter has caught up to where we were on tumblr six years ago with “don’t say ableist slurs such as st*pid or cr*zy.” can I hit fast-forward on this one, please 
https://twitter.com/gothhabiba/status/1167173194995916817
https://twitter.com/gothhabiba/status/1167173194995916817
thoughts 1. it’s useful and worthwhile to change the way you speak & to avoid certain words in an effort to change the way you think or to avoid harming people
however 2. providing lists of words not to say (“cr*zy, st*pid”) and some alternatives to switch in (“wild,” “outrageous,” “inane”) doesn’t attack ableist ideas at their core & is more likely to get you a bunch of liberals who self-police their language—
without challenging ableist, murderous, eugenicist ideas of what “intelligence” even is, what constitutes “care” or “mercy,” whether & which disabled people lead a worthwhile existence & deserve autonomy.
3. it becomes blatantly obvious when people aren’t challenging core ideas here when the alternatives offered themselves play into ableist & white supremacist ideas of sanity, proper comportment, &c.—e.g. I’m meant to say “wild” or “savage” instead of “crazy”?
it’s all right to insult the ways in which people physically or mentally function, to keep these hierarchies of functionality or these ideas of what kind of functioning is valued in place, as long as you use approved words in doing so? too often that’s how this convo plays out.
4. relatedly, this provides a very easy in to chastise or ostracise people who don’t know the correct vocab, regardless of the context in which they used the ableist words—these demands (for a heightened form of moral & linguistic ‘purity’) fall heaviest on woc
& tie in with the common thing white disabled ppl do where they assume poc aren’t disabled in order to use accusations of ableism to silence discussion of racism. deepening our conception of what ableism constitutes & connecting it to our understanding of race is needed here
point 5, an expansion of points 3 & 4: the shallowness of these kinds of criticisms of x oppressive system is actually DESIRABLE to some of the people making the criticism. we want ableism to be about individual choice & moral purity so we don’t have to connect it to a deeper
understanding of or grappling with history, or a challenge to capital, whiteness, medical institutions, governments. valuable criticisms of ableist language do and must make these connections.
otherwise, there is something very... modern, western sj politics about focusing on the words that people use over the actual logic that underlies what they’re saying (whether it leads you to be too generous or too critical).
& the brunt of the criticism is going to fall on those who people are looking for excuses to criticise anyway, who aren’t in on the rules of the in-group, who conceptualise language differently.
the thing about attempting this, btw, is that you come up against a lot of walls. it’s very quick and easy to “swap out” e.g. “asinine” for “stupid”—it’s harder to think “WHY do I want to call this stupid, and what ideas about intelligence am I relying on when I do?”
and as I said earlier, I think this is WHY so many people lean so heavily on the “swap out” approach—it’s so much faster and easier. “learn about the history of ableism and apply those concepts throughout your life in word and in action” isn’t quite as punchy as a quick fix!
if you’re interested in the conjunctions between eugenics, ableism, and white supremacy (to-day and in terms of how all three are historically produced), you can check out this thread: https://twitter.com/gothhabiba/status/940089930524475394
