so I google “ableist idiot” and the first hit is this post, and now I have substitutes. thanks! when I say “idiot” I usually mean something like thoughtless or uninformed so thank you for pointing out those substitutes.

overall, this blog is amazing. I usually don’t comment but I wanted to share some gratitude for this post.

And the good thing about the AWP is that it makes you think more. Instead of just saying, “You’re an idiot.” and dismissing them and their argument right there, you can try for the real reason. Though I have been lost for the appropriate word at times and have undoubtedly said, “You are so… so… ugh/augh!” *hands in the air*

What gets me angry is when people refuse to respect your wishes. I have said a million thousand times not to use “gay” as a pejorative. If you must, don’t do it around me. When I asked my sister and her friend if they meant that car (or whatever) was homosexual, they started saying, “That’s so homosexual.” So if I pointed out the roots of her insults, she might start using them.

And I am all for creative insults, especially old fashioned sounding ones! “You ruffian!” (From Om Shanti Om) “Oh fish!”

Actually, my specific objections aren’t addressed by either post. I don’t want to be difficult. I just…want to understand, you know? I don’t want to be too liberal for most places, but too conservative for this one. I want to fit in, you know?

I do enjoy many other posts here, which is probably why I don’t want to stop talking about the ones where I disagree, because why can’t the whole community make sense to me?

But I can stop, if that’s what you want. Thank you for letting air my viewpoint.

Kaninchenzero has previously written on the ableist connotations of judging people on “how one thinks”. I also think some of your objections have previously been addressed in this post by meloukhia on objections to the AWP.

I understand that you don’t agree with us, and that’s okay, but I don’t see a lot of value in either of us continuing to go back and forth on it.

I know you have another comment in moderation, but to my quick glance it looks like it violates some of our commenting policies, including our request for comments to be under a certain word length.

It could be both. I just don’t see that in this case. I don’t see an as well in the equation. You can be dismissive of another person’s intellectual contributions without being ableist. It’s insulting, but all insults are not intrinsically ableist.

I do consider that something can have more than one aspect to it, and as an Autistic woman who is always being yelled at for thinking in black-and-white, I get quite annoyed when it’s assumed that I haven’t considered all the angels on an issue.

I feel like the response to this word, from the disability rights group, is “this word at one time had connotations of disability! it must be ableist!”. That’s very black and white. It might be more useful to look at why and when and how those connotations were assigned, and what that said about society’s attitudes (hint: ableist as all get out) and if the situation has changed at all in terms of how the word is used.

Words aren’t intrinsically evil things. I’m interested in how they are used, what meanings they acquire and how, and what saying them means today for everyone involved, and I’m not convinced that to use this particular word is to support a history of abuses. It might, say, support an attitude in which one’s worth is determined by how one thinks, which might be considered ableist. Then I would need to think about the context in which the word is used, to determine if this is the case.

Why do you see it that way? And why can’t it be both?

Consider that something can have more than one aspect to it. Yes, it grew out of class-issues as well. But our primary discussion here is about disability.

Or maybe it’s that I’m just looking at the facts differently from you. I see the word as having strong classist origins and evolving to refer to an uneducated person, with all the implications of inferiority that an insult has. But just because something has implications of inferiority doesn’t mean it’s ableist. Even when it has to do with education. Maybe even when it has to do with intelligence. “Idiot” isn’t about intellectual disability. It’s about acting thoughtless, stupid, uneducated. That can exist separately from disability. The problem arises when you (general you) confound the two concepts and equate intellectual disability with stupidity, thoughtlessness, lack of education, or anything else providing basis for an insult. When you start to refer to disabled people as “idiots”.

The real problem, as I see it, isn’t that a diagnostic label became used as an insult. It’s that an insult was chosen as a diagnostic label. *That* is as ableist as can be!

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. It’s just that I read the narrative you provide, and I come away with a very different interpretation. And the conclusion I see is, as EGhead says above, to make sure that an insult is no longer a diagnostic label.

It’s just a different interpretation of the facts. I wanted to put it out there.

(And on a completely different note, I love this blog! It’s new and interesting and challenging. Y’all are wonderful.)

(And I’m just a little teenage girl. So be gentle when you explain how wrong I am?)