Thinking about ablist language

[sqbr]

This post is for blogging against disablism day. I'm pretty new to thinking about disability in any serious way so this may all be bunk.

I was plotting out a post in my head the other day and the phrase "I am rather tone deaf to the nuances of american cultures" popped into my head. "Hmm" I thought "Is that ablist language? Do tone deaf people really count as disabled? Would they care? Where do you draw the line?"

And I had a bit of an epiphany. To a certain extent it doesn't matter: while one of the major reasons for avoiding ablist language is to avoid contributing to social bias and discrimination against those disabled people who suffer them, the very idea of using a real illness as a metaphor for a negative trait is indicative of deep problems with the way our society views illness.

Unfortunately, I am low on spoons, so I can't quite articulate my point, but I'll take a punt and try to flesh it out another day.

I think a good example which illustrates my point is "colourblind racism". Briefly: This is when someone "doesn't see" the race of the people they interact with, and so ends up supporting the status quo ie racism and not making allowances for the different experiences people have because of their race.
The reason this term is unfair to colourblind people is that they don't go around saying "I don't see colour! We should all act like colour doesn't exist! You people insisting that red and green traffic-lights mean different things are the real problem!". In my experience they aware of and acknowledge that their vision is flawed, and learn to work around it.

Ablist language works on the assumption that people who have lack certain abilities (whether this makes them disabled or not) are inherently less worthy, and incapable of being as good as anyone else at things involving that ability.

Aaaand that's about the end of my spoons. If you're interested in the topic, have a look at Feminists are fine with being bigots if it’s just ableism which has links which lead to more links... and then I ran out of link clicking spoons :)

Comments

Re: transhumanism

[sqbr]

Maybe you should just let me fizz out here where fewer people are going to be affected. *sigh*

That's not exactly what I had in mind when I tried to set this up as a safe space :P

You could always talk with aquaeri via instant message, I've done that with conversations that might offend passers by.

EDIT: And thinking about it some more, I really am rather annoyed that you hold yourself to a higher standard on your lj, where it's your subscribers who may be hurt and the comments are your responsibility, than you do on my dw, where it's my subscribers who may get hurt and the comments are my responsibility. One of the primary reasons I started this journal was because people told me privately that the thoughtless comments others made on my lj meant they weren't comfortable speaking up, you can't assume that the people speaking are the only ones paying attention.

Re: transhumanism

[attentive]

I feel a bit ruffled by those remarks. I usually hold myself to a higher standard in posts than I do in comments, as do most bloggers. As do you, so far as I can make out. That's unlikely to change.

As I see it, I haven't made thoughtless comments on this post, I've given my views in good faith and in a temperate way.

Re: transhumanism

[sqbr]

Ah crap, sorry, I misunderstood your point. I agree, nothing you've said here has been too bad (well, apart from being a bit off topic here and there) I'm not sure I can quite articulate what it is I thought you saying, I have been in the worst mood recently, it's making me view everything with a very jaundiced eye. Thankyou for replying so politely.

That said, while my comments are definitely much more slapdash and unstructured than my posts, I do hold myself to a higher standard of not-being-offensive in conversations like this than I do on my lj eg if I was a white person coming into a conversation about race on the journal of a POC.

Re: transhumanism

[attentive]

Don't worry about it. I need to stop commenting on your posts I think, problem is you're one of the few people still writing interesting posts on my f-list. I think I'm just responding for the sake of it a lot of the time, which is no way to carry on a discussion with people who have genuine sensitivities.

Re: transhumanism

[sqbr]

problem is you're one of the few people still writing interesting posts on my f-list

Well I can hardly argue with that sort of self justification :D

I guess you have to figure out for yourself the best way to control your behaviour and experience. I found I had to blanket ban myself from any discussion forum without comment threading since otherwise I got drawn into Every Single Argument.

I'd hate for you to stop commenting on all my posts altogether, since you often have really interesting things to say, but that's one of the points of me having two journals.