Lemmy has a weird issue with being super restrictive of ableist language, beyond reasonable, in some spaces and completely ambivalent in others.
I had someone say I was as useless as accessibility kitchen items, which mostly just means I’m extremely useful to specific people and viewed as a joke by intolerant people who don’t care about others…
Weirdly good compliment. Really telling in the idiot using it.
I still have such dissonance about this. I want to say “Look at this idiot” and point out something unintelligent that an objectively evil person does. But because intelligence is an inherited trait, we can only use negative language when referring to a person for evil that they do by choice? Or something? So, evil people bumbling can only be mocked for the evil intent and not for their inability to be evil with skill and intelligence?
I dunno. Trump is a numpty and if that offends the numps or whatever group that term was originally a slur for then I apologize.
edit: to be clear, the r word seems objectively shitty to use and I don’t. I just have yet to find an objective litmus test for where the line is between that and “silly” cuz I swear there’s always someone there to explain the etymology of “silly” and how it’s origins were shitty in some way
Intelligence is an inherited trait?
The ableism is coming from inside the house - it’s not a bad thing to be intellectually disabled. The problem with Trump is not that he’s stupid, it’s that he’s a selfish, careless, thoughtless, cruel, ignorant asshole.
Using words like “stupid” as an insult implies that all people lacking in intellect or wisdom are also bad people.
The thing is, having someone who is so intellectually disabled try to run our country is a really bad idea. And we can see all the pain and destruction this is causing.
Trumps stupidity is very valid to insult for this reason. It is emphatically harming countless people across our nation.
Stupid is as stupid does, and Trump does lots of stupid things.
The pain and destruction is caused by fascism, not by his intelligence. If he was “more intelligent”, he would not cause less pain or destruction.
We are all guilty of this. Especially if you don’t think so, you are.
I don’t really think it’s difficult to avoid ableism in our language.
If a single word with no significant history attributes ableism to the person or people who use it, then perhaps you’re the problem.
What are you alluding to?
I don’t really understand this meme. If I wanna insult someone, obviously I’m gonna use insulting language. At least that’s the easiest of a thousands possible ways to insult someone. What’s your point?
My point is that it’s not necessary to use language that puts down entire groups of people in order to offend someone. The phrase, “bigoted piece of shit,” is obviously ‘insulting language,’ but it is categorically different from calling someone a slur.
I see people going around saying that the only way they can possibly offend people with their insults is by calling them slurs. That’s nonsense. And it’s very ironic that these same people get really, really mad at me when I call them something like “bigoted piece of shit,” which just proves my point - if it were actually true that slurs are necessary to get that ‘sting,’ then they wouldn’t get so upset when I call them out for being the bigoted pieces of shit they are.
Saying that you need slurs in order to insult people is basically an invitation for people to lay into you as harshly as they like, short of using slurs. And I am more than happy to accept that invitation by calling such people what they are.
