Ableist Language (Part 2)

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney, I am here with my spouse, Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple and we are back for another round of ableist language. If you missed it, please check out last week’s episode where we started discussing ableist language, our own personal thoughts and associations on some of these words. We’ve got a lot more to talk about and we’re taking a list as just a starting jumping off point from the Autistic Hoya blog, which you can read for yourself and follow along with. Links will be in the show notes on our website and the description box on YouTube. Just as a reminder, as we engage in these conversations, to be kind to one another, extend grace. I have seen people on all sides of these conversations terribly mistreated.

Courtney: And although these are very, very important conversations, attacking and harassing people is never going to be the point of it. So we’re gonna jump back in. The blog itself is listed in alphabetical order. We jumped around a little bit last time because there were some words that can be used synonymously. We might do a little bit of that again today, but near the top of the list, ones we hadn’t had a chance to get to last week, are: ‘bound’ to a wheelchair or ‘wheelchair bound’, similarly ‘confined’ to a wheelchair. These are absolutely ones that I agree with, and having conversations with more and more wheelchair users over the years, I absolutely fall in the mentality of using bound and confined is a sort of language that makes it seem bad.

Royce: Yeah, it’s hard to get past the negative connotation of either of those words, as opposed to just saying this person uses a wheelchair, which is a much more neutral term.

Courtney: Yes, wheelchair user. Because it’s also very important to note that when we’re talking about any type of mobility aids, be it a wheelchair, walking canes, forearm crutches– although there absolutely are instances of disabled people who do experience some kind of pain or grief from using a mobility aid, especially if it’s something you haven’t always used, if it’s a new development in your life, there’s a learning curve, there’s an emotional curve. And we can absolutely give space for people who do go through emotionally difficult experiences becoming a mobility aid user, while also acknowledging that mobility aids provide a lot of freedom. Freedom of movement. Sometimes they can grant higher levels of independence.

Courtney: And it is extremely ableist in mindset to have a disabled person who maybe fully acknowledges, “With this wheelchair I have a lot more movement. I can do more things with my day. I can do more things with my life. My wheelchair actually provides me added freedom.” And then have a whole host of people being like, “Oh, you poor thing, you’re bound to that wheelchair.” Definitely worth the vocabulary shift if you can. And I can’t emphasize enough, this conversation is so much more than a vocabulary shift. We’re talking about vocabulary as a means to enter this conversation, but it’s really a mind shift. It’s really a mentality shift to identify ableist frameworks, ableist ideologies, and to begin rethinking them. Because just changing one word or one phrase to another here and there is never going to be the end-all be-all of disability justice.

Courtney: It can be a starting point and part of the process, but I also don’t want anyone coming away from these episodes thinking, “Okay, I’m going to change X, Y, and Z word. I’m not going to use these words anymore. I’m good. I am no longer ableist,” or “I am an advocate for disability justice.” That is not how any of this works either. It’s one piece of a monumental puzzle of injustice. Moving along, we also have ‘burn victim’. I know there is a bigger push to use the word survivor in place of victim. That’s not just in disability communities, but think of about like a victim of sexual assault. A lot more people are trying to advocate, say, well, a survivor of sexual assault. That mentality being not defining a person by what they were a victim of, but using survivor language to sort of put the emphasis back on the person.

Courtney: And some people can see that as being very empowering to say survivor as opposed to victim. I think this, like a lot of things on the list, are going to come down to an individual case to case basis. If someone who has survived a burn, if somebody chooses to call themselves a burn victim, even if they want other people to call themselves a burn victim, I think that’s okay. And this is absolutely one where I’d put it in the camp of if you are talking generally or to a group of people or online and you’re not talking about a specific instance, I think the change in language is probably the safer bet. Because if you’re taking ‘burn survivor’ versus ‘burn victim’, in my eyes, it’s a lot more likely that someone would personally be offended by being referred to as a burn victim.

Courtney: I think there are a lot fewer people who would hear ‘burn survivor’ and be like, “I’m upset at that language. I don’t like that.” Everybody’s different, so you never know. So that’s one where I would say, like, yeah, burn survivor, even in instances like, you know, a survivor of assault, I think that’s the safer bet when talking generally. And then on a case to case basis, using the language an individual prefers for themselves. Okay, I fear we do have to revisit possible synonyms for crazy. We talked about crazy a lot last episode, but now I see cuckoo coming up on the list.

Royce: Oh, yeah. There are a lot of– a lot of synonyms. Like, I mean, you threw out ‘bonkers’ specifically, and that’s one I hardly ever hear.

Courtney: Yeah. And to me, all of these are conditional and situational, just like crazy is. I think there are times when you should absolutely not call someone crazy, especially in an insulting way. If I’m trying to insult someone or– Well, I have stopped using crazy to refer to people in negative senses myself. I said last episode that I have started reusing the word crazy in more positive ways or silly ways, ways that are not in any way meant to refer to any kind of mental or psychiatric disability. Because if you’re just like talking shit to someone or about someone, you’re like, “Man, that person’s really cuckoo, if you know what I’m saying.” Like, that is an ableist way to use that word. If you are using cuckoo for yourself in like, “I’m cuckoo for cocoa puffs.” Like, I just really like this thing so much. Because there are other even more, like, euphemistic words like nuts or bananas.

Courtney: Like, “I’m absolutely bananas over this new TV series.” I’ve definitely softened to that over time. I don’t think that is a problem. But I don’t like the insulting senses of it. And a lot of these words that can be synonyms for crazy can be used in an ableist way. And that’s why I’m saying this is why it’s a mind shift and why I think you yourself need to think about how you’re using words, how you hear words used, and try to identify the underlying mental frameworks of ableism. Because at the end of the day, having a mental or psychiatric disability does not inherently make someone a worse person. It doesn’t make them lesser. It doesn’t mean they are less worthy of individual rights and liberties. And unfortunately, we do live in a world where lots of people do believe that that is the case, that people with disabilities are lesser.

Courtney: So if someone’s just being an asshole and you call them crazy, that is a little bit ableist. Probably, I wouldn’t recommend doing that. Especially because if you get to a point where you’re actually referring to bad behavior as crazy, those words also get thrown out a lot in instances of, like, violence or physical safety. And there is also an incredible stigma that people with mental disabilities are inherently dangerous. And that is a stigma that we also want to break. So I think those are definitely situations where if someone is violent and you’re calling them crazy, I don’t know, maybe just call them violent. Because the violence is the problem.

Courtney: My additional thought on words like that, if it’s something so general as crazy or so euphemistic as nuts, bananas, cuckoo, I think context matters a lot. But there are some words where I think there is a stronger direct correlation to a psychiatric term like psycho, for instance. Which, now that I think of it, I don’t really remember the last time I’ve actually in real life heard someone say, “That person’s psycho.” But it has happened plenty in my life. I’m sure there are still people that do say that. That one is so directly related to psychosis, psychotic.

Royce: It also carries an even higher association or implication with violence due to the famous movie.

Courtney: Yes, absolutely. So that’s one where I don’t think that one is as acceptable to generalize and make more positive. Like, I think there are situations where you can look at a friend who’s just being a little fun, like out dancing, partying, and I think you can say like, “Girl, you’re crazy!” And mean that in a positive way. I don’t think there is a way that psycho can be removed and generalized as heavily from the root word and therefore the stigmatized disabilities that that language comes from. So I don’t like that one. And maybe that’s in, like– listen, you all, if you haven’t been privy to these conversations, maybe I’m going to sound a little over-explanatory in some of these or repeat myself a lot, but it is just because I have seen multiple ways these conversations get abusive.

Courtney: So I really, really want to emphasize, too, that when I say, “I think there are times where this word can be used in a way that is not fundamentally harmful,” I’m explaining why I think that way because I have spent years and years thinking through these things. And I have gone through phases where sometimes I’ve completely cut out a word to see how that feels and see how I feel about it. Sometimes I’ve reintegrated words, but only in certain contexts. And so there’s been trial and error, there’s been lots of conversations with lots of different people. And so I think it’s important that when I say, “This is why I think this word should not be used. This is how I think a word could maybe be used, but shouldn’t be used this way.” I think that explanation is important.

Courtney: Not because I’m telling you all that you have to agree with me and use language exactly the same way I do, but because this is an example of what unpacking ableism looks like. This is an example of thinking very intentionally about ableism and figuring out how to integrate anti-ableist politics into my own life, into my own vocabulary. And I think sometimes that is missing from certain online conversations, especially when you think about, like, the Twitters of the world. Very fast, very sharp, very snappy. And whatever people get angry at is gonna get the most views. I don’t tend to think a very quick “Stop using this word. It’s ableist.” end is going to change a lot of hearts and minds because there’s gonna be a knee-jerk reaction to it.

Courtney: And some people truly are new to these conversations, and even if they want to learn and they want to better understand ableism, not everybody takes the time to really explain this is why it is ableist, this is why I’ve come to this conclusion. Because at the end of the day, I don’t want people to just substitute a word and say, “We’re good. I did it.” I want people to have the deeper conversation with themselves, with others in their community, that are sort of underlying the vocabulary. So none of this is prescriptive. And none of it is a free pass to use certain words. I don’t ever want to hear anyone saying, “Oh, Courtney from The Ace Couple podcast says it’s okay to say crazy, so that’s why I say that word all the time.” Mm-mm, we’re not playing that game. No, we are not.

Courtney: Also on the list we have ‘daft’. I think that’s similar enough to other words we said, probably doesn’t need much of its own comment. We have ‘deaf-mute’: refers to Deaf or hard of hearing people. Consider instead: Deaf person, nonspeaking Deaf person, signing Deaf person, hard of hearing person, ASL user, ASL speaker, signer. We also have ‘deaf to’ or ‘to turn a deaf ear to’. That’s sort of like the ‘blind to’ or ‘turn a blind to’ that we touched on a little bit last episode. That’s another one where anytime there is language that could be alluding to a disability that’s used metaphorically, I know lots of disabled people who do not personally have an issue with it, but others absolutely might. And truth be told, like the best thing for any of these is to actually be in community with disabled people, so when conversations like this come up, you can hear what people with those specific disabilities have to say about it, what they think, how they feel.

Courtney: And I see one here, jumping down a couple on the list, I think can tie in pretty well to what I’m about to say: derp. Also variations on that, like herp-derp or duh or doy. Variations like that. The first time I saw a conversation online saying that derp is inherently ableist, you should not use that word, I was a little bit confused because the specific one I saw was citing, like, “This word was first used in this year,” but it was like a shockingly recent year. I– this was years ago, so I do not know what the post was specifically, but it was something like, oh, 2009 or something. And I was like, I, as a living human who is older than that, heard that word before that year. So I already was like: I’m open to the conversation that this is ableist, but the specific thing you’re citing is definitely incorrect, because I know I heard people say this word before this year.

Courtney: So I wanted to investigate it further and see what other people were thinking about that. Because my initial thought to hearing that was, yeah, there are ableist ways to use those sounds. If you are– I think the first post I saw was saying it’s specifically ableist against people with Down syndrome. I think that was the specific disability. And in my mind, yeah, if you’re just like making those sounds in the direction of a disabled person, if you are deliberately mocking them using those words, absolutely that is ableist. No question about it. But when the assertion is made, the first use of this sound was to mock a disabled person, and I know the year and thing you’re citing is not correct, I do actually want to look into the origins because to a certain extent that is misinformation.

Courtney: And I like to have better history and better facts as often as possible when having these conversations. And here on this blog, for instance, it even says some of these variations originated with a 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon. So what I did at the time, when I first saw this post and wanted to explore more, since the specific assertion was this is specifically ableist against people with Down Syndrome, my first impulse is to look for the opinions of people who do have Down Syndrome, and what are they saying in this conversation. And I mean, several years ago when I was doing this, Google was a little better than it is now. But I would try to, for example, google like, “Derp is ableist,” and see what people are saying about that. And then I would google, “Derp is not ableist,” and see what people are saying about that. And specifically trying to find the voices of disabled people who would be the ones harmed by this in an ableist way.

Courtney: And as you can imagine, when you do that, you do find a plethora of opinions. And sometimes you start to learn about weird, fascinating things that you didn’t even know about. I’m pretty sure during that research tangent and looking for specific blogs, looking for specific disabled voices on this opinion, I ended up getting on like, My Little Pony blogs. Because there’s apparently a pony called Derpy Hooves? I had no idea. But I specifically found a blog written by someone with Down Syndrome who was like, “I love Derpy Hooves, this is my favorite character in My Little Pony, and here is why.” And was talking about, I don’t like when, you know, people who don’t have any disability say, “We need to stop saying Derpy,” because I actually really like and identify with this word, and here’s why.

Courtney: And I didn’t expect my research tangent to give me an opinion like that. I didn’t think My Little Pony had anything to do with it. But I don’t know, I find humans so fascinating, and I like all the different flavors we come in. But then I’d expand out and see blogs of people with other disabilities who did say, like, “Yeah, I did have people on the playground saying herp-derp to me.” And that really sucks, people shouldn’t do that. That is profoundly ableist if you are doing it in that context. But I was struggling to connect that further to like duh and doy. Kind of like Royce, how last episode you were like, “If I know I’m about to cut my finger cooking and I do it anyway,” like you find value in being able to say that was stupid for something you yourself did.

Royce: Yeah, and we’ve gone back and forth on how much etymology actually matters in these discussions, but that was as far as I can trace the original source of the word derp.

Courtney: It was duh?

Royce: Sort of like– eh, it was– it was a word that would be used around, you know, like doing something dumb.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: I did see that people were speculating, like the reason that word was chosen may have been similar to a word like duh. That’s why that came up.

Courtney: Yeah, and I’m not going to know the exact answer. Even after researching, there’s probably a lot of speculation on how some of these words do evolve.

Royce: Well, yeah, derp specifically is pretty new.

Courtney: It is pretty new. But the thing is too– and while I’m talking about my own thoughts here just in context of talking about a lot of different words, this is probably not one that I myself, in my own voice, would die on a hill about.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Like, I probably wouldn’t be doing a tweet being like, “Don’t say derp. It is ableist against this population of person.” Because I also, in my own real life, don’t hear people say this word anymore. There was probably a period of time where I did.

Royce: That’s true. It does seem dated.

Courtney: It seems a little dated. And to me, the only time I ever actually do see or encounter it anymore is in a very specific kind of meme culture online. I know Derpface is a thing. If you hear Derpface, you probably have a meme-cartoonish kind of face in mind.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And when I was going through my research tangent about the ableist connotation of this word, I was seeing a lot of people reference that and saying, “You know, by very nature of having the Derpface, this is ableist because it calls to mind people who might have facial differences as a result of a disability.” But then I’d see blogs about– like the Derpy Hooves blog and people be like, “I feel seen by this character. This feels like good, positive representation to me.” Or I’d see people say a third thing, “You know, I can separate the Derp Face meme from disability. I personally don’t think they’re connected as someone who does have the disability.” So I think connotation matters a lot. And truth be told, for me, I am not in this meme culture.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: So I am not the person who should be leading this conversation. I can seek out other opinions and try to learn. But I don’t know enough about meme culture. I don’t have a personal enough stake in meme culture, and I don’t have one of the disabilities that is sometimes argued that this is directly ableist against. So there is no situation why I should be prescriptive in, “This is how you should or should not use this word.” But I’m also– I’m just not gonna use the word derp, ’cause I already don’t.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: I already don’t, so I’m gonna continue to not. And I have not yet seen either a majority enough opinion or an explanation of why extrapolating this out to things like duh and doy are also fundamentally ableist. So then to me in my life it’s gonna be, you know, context. I mean, if I forget something off the top of my head that I can normally recall very quickly, like–

Royce: “Oh duh.”

Courtney: “Oh duh.” Yeah, exactly.

Royce: And that’s again, going back to etymology isn’t going to solve all of our problems because what happened was, as far as I can tell, the South Park Creators–

Courtney: Oh, of course.

Royce: Would say derp amongst themselves just as a silly neutral word when something didn’t go as expected, and that made it into an early movie that they produced and then entered the popular culture and then got used for a lot of things. But I think the fact that it basically became a part of, like, old millennial culture is why it was around for a little bit and it had its place in early memes.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: To the point where it is still– there are some older memes that still carry that name, but it isn’t, as far as I’m aware, really seen.

Courtney: Yeah, so that’s my two cents on that. I do believe that just as much as context matters, culture and community matters. And I mean, that’s another big reason why I think more people just need to have conversations like this. Because we all have our own little subcultures, our own little groups, and I think conversations about ableist language need to happen in all communities and at all levels, but not everybody is equipped to have all of those conversations. And put a pin in that, who is equipped to have what conversations? Because we’re absolutely going to come back to that later on in the list.

Courtney: Then we have ‘diffability’. We talked about ‘differently abled’ last episode, so I don’t think this needs its own whole conversation, because I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard diffability. But apparently it is a – quote – “usually a euphemistic phrase to avoid saying disability or disabled.” And I think that goes without saying, any time you are trying your damnedest not to say disabled or disability there’s probably an ableist reason for that.

Royce: Yeah, we talked about that last episode with things like differently abled or handy-capable.

Courtney: So this one’s interesting. Gimp and gimpy for– refers to people with physical and mobility disabilities. Um, yeah, for sure. I agree. I think that’s one that can and has been reclaimed by certain people. So I think, people with physical disabilities can refer to themselves in whatever language feels most comfortable or empowering or familiar. That’s when, like, they could say it about themselves. You can’t say it about them probably. But gimp is also– that word has so many synonyms that has nothing to do with disabilities too. Like there’s gimp in fiber arts, there’s gimp in–

Royce: BDSM?

Courtney: There’s gimp in BDSM.

Royce: I was about to say it’s the longest running Photoshop competitor, open source Photoshop competitor, like image editing software. But when you paused I had to throw another known connotation in.

Courtney: Yeah, which is a strange one for me. Like, why has that word shown up in so many possibly unrelated things? There’s even a technique in hair work that we refer to as gimp, which does come from other fiber arts, like meaning a series of loops. And there has been a time or two where I’ve said, “Oh, this is called the gimp or gimping,” and someone has just, like, wide eyes and gasped and like, “What word did you just say?” Because the disabled connotation is the only time they have encountered that word.

Royce: Oh, so I think, I mean if this very quick bit of research is accurate, that the fiber work or fiber craft term gimp might be the original.

Courtney: That’s what I thought.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: That’s what I assumed based on the fiber history I know of.

Royce: Right, so I’m seeing the term gimp for a braided trim being around from at least the 15th or 16th centuries.

Courtney: Yeah. Next on the list we have ‘harelip’, consider instead ‘cleft lip’ or ‘cleft palate’. And we have ‘hermaphrodite’ when referring to people with intersex conditions. That’s another, I think, can and has been reclaimed by some people. I absolutely have seen intersex people start to call themselves a hermaphrodite, but that’s another one like–

Royce: To be careful with.

Courtney: You as a non-intersex person should not call an intersex person that.

Royce: Yeah, and I feel like that’s a case that may resonate better with the Ace Community in general because it seems like someone is taking terms that you might hear in biology class to refer to non-human animals and then using them often incorrectly–

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: –to describe actual people.

Courtney: Yeah, in a way, usage of that word, you know, I’m reminded of how some people are beginning to reclaim or even prefer transsexual, as long as that’s not being done in a transmedicalist way. I think that’s fully okay on an individual basis, but I would never use that word to refer to a population of people or when talking generally about trans people. But if I have a friend who’s like, “No, I am transsexual, that is the word I like, that’s what I’d like you to refer to me as.” Then I will. But when talking generally or about a population here, I would use intersex. Uh, then we have ‘idiot’ or ‘idiotic’. I definitely have friends who use this word a lot more freely or flippantly than I do. I have– I’m pretty sure if not completely retired this word, have tried to get to 99%.

Courtney: My reason being, I don’t think of it perfectly the same way that I think of using stupid in a general sense. Because if you are saying, “I am an idiot,” or this person is an idiot, that is like a noun and an identity label. And so it’s an identity label that to me is predicated on looking down on or thinking less of people with lower intelligence, and very often in intellectual disabilities. And so conceptualized for me, like, stupid is a little more general, and situations can be stupid, and I can be stupid, and everybody can have times when they are stupid or do something stupid. I think that’s the most times I’ve ever said that word in the last year. I use it very sparingly, but sometimes I do use it. But saying this person is an idiot and meaning it with a negative connotation…

Royce: Yeah, it does have a less versatile read to it. It is one that I feel like I don’t say very often, and every time it does end up coming out, I’m like, trying to think of something else to use. There was actually a moment from our very first all-ace D&D session that I still remember, where I was still trying to get in the flow of the session. But in Out of the Abyss we were trying to move the plot along and we’re trying to wrangle like 10 NPCs around the party. And there was an evil antagonistic character there who was chiding someone for making an ignorant choice. And in my head I started talking, and I was like, “Okay, I need a synonym. Don’t say idiot. What is another word?” And then I like ran out of time and just had to go with it. But in my head it was like, I know some people have a very negative reaction to idiot and some people don’t care. And this is a group of people that I have only known and spoken to for a couple of weeks. So I, like, I don’t know what the vibe is yet.

Courtney: Well, the interesting thing with that, too, because when we’re playing D&D and we’re being a lot of different characters and a lot of different people, some of these characters are bad and I want people to know that they are bad and they are assholes. And sometimes they are going to use language that I, as Courtney, would never say because I want to convey how much this person sucks. Within reason. Like, I’m not going to be throwing around things that are actually slurs in roleplay.

Royce: Well, yeah, we also had a conversation during session zero where much of our group was like, “You know, I’m kind of tired of fantasy racism.”

Courtney: Right. But anything that has a connotation of general intelligence, I do think about a lot, and I do critique a lot. Because that one, especially historically and socially, is tied to a lot of bigoted views on rights. There are people who have advocated for, like, yeah, people below a certain intelligence shouldn’t have rights. They shouldn’t be able to procreate. You know, how often do we even, casually in conversation, over the years, have heard someone be like, “Oh, stupid people shouldn’t have kids.” And it gets very eugenicist very quickly. Intelligence is so strongly related to eugenics, racism, that I do get especially sensitive to that. And like there are even times where I might have a friend who, you know, does something silly and goes like, “Oh, I’m an idiot.” And sometimes I do cringe, just a little bit, even if someone’s saying that about themselves. In a way that I don’t have as visceral of a reaction if they were to say like, “Oh, that was stupid,” or I did a stupid thing. But that’s my personal bias. That’s my personal read and reaction to those.

Royce: Is the difference there that they’re using the word to describe themselves instead of the action or the event?

Courtney: That’s part of it, for sure. For sure, that’s part of it. Because in that case, it is self-deprecating and people are allowed to be self-deprecating within reason. But where I struggle a little bit is if your method of self-deprecation is to give an identity-type label and a noun to yourself that has historically been used for extreme injustice amongst disabled people, like idiot was a title, antiquated now in medicine, but it was something you could be diagnosed with idiocy. If you have been diagnosed with idiocy, you are an idiot. And in the intellectual disabilities, that is very often where you get lower bodily autonomy, in some cases forced sterilization, lower rights.

Courtney: So when you look at it that way, as I do, it’s really hard to separate this like, oh, you’re calling yourself this as a way to disparage yourself, but if you were to disparage someone else with this word, or if you were to, you know, think of it in a framework of disability justice. Like, I don’t think a lot of people who do casually use the word idiot would actually say that they think lesser of someone with an intellectual disability. So in my mind, I take that a step further and say, if you wouldn’t say that about someone with an intellectual disability, why are you using that language in a self-deprecating way for yourself? Or in a disparaging way against others? Sometimes people do use idiot as an insult.

Courtney: And along all the same lines, the next word we have is ‘imbecile’. Kind of same thing. ‘Insane’ is an interesting one because we’ve talked about an expansive use of ‘crazy’, but even after I started using the word crazy a little bit more in very certain contexts, I still hadn’t started saying insane again. That one felt stronger. It felt harsher. It felt more connected to the concept of sanity and psychiatric disabilities. But anytime I’m assessing a word or phrase, I continue to observe how other people use it and how I feel about it. And like how I mentioned, there are people in our lives who say the word idiot, and I do get a little bit of a visceral response when I hear it. I recently heard insane in a way that I did not have that visceral reaction. And it was actually Brennan Lee Mulligan in, like, a comedy something recently.

Courtney: Someone said something about, like, a medical escape room. And he just said, like, “That is an insane thing you just said.” And it was very funny. And I liked the use of that word in that situation. And I had to sit and assess because I was like, normally I don’t like when people use this word for the ableist connotations, why didn’t it hit this way? And because it was in the situation of a comedy show and people are laughing and feeling good, I want to try not to fall in the trap of, “Well, if it’s funny, it is okay.” Because I don’t fundamentally believe that. So I started, you know, sort of checking myself and thinking, why did this not read as ableist to me? And the best I can tell, as I’m still thinking through and assessing that for myself, is that it was used in the way that I don’t normally have a problem with crazy being used, and it’s just a word with a little more emphasis.

Courtney: And more emphasis and more impact does tend to mean funnier, more comedy. So that’s one I’m leaning currently towards, sparingly and very situational. Because once again, if you call someone insane as an insult? Don’t like it. Then we have ‘loony/loony bin’. And I’ll even take that a step further for re-emphasizing sometimes it’s not just the word, sometimes it’s the use of the word, because I have also heard things like happy hotel or funny farm. And like the words funny, the words happy themselves do not overwhelmingly have an ableist connotation, but when you use it that way, you are probably talking about a psychiatric care facility. You are talking about people with mental disabilities.

Courtney: Then we have phrases like low-functioning or high-functioning. Example here, specific for autism, or like mild autism, severe autism. Although the blog here notes that even though autism is one of the examples here used, it is not the only one. One thing I didn’t even think of right off the top of my head in addiction-related disabilities. I mean, how often do you hear, like, high-functioning alcoholic as an example. Here it says: “High-functioning dehumanizes people by ignoring the ways in which they need support, have challenges, struggles, or experience distress. Low-functioning dehumanizes people by ignoring their personhood and capabilities.” And I will add to that as well in the case of an identity term like autistic, autistic people, the Autistic Community.

Courtney: More and more people are starting to use that as an identity term and therefore reject, “I am not more autistic or less autistic than someone who does have, for example, different support needs than I do.” The same can be said for general disabilities. A lot of people will say, “I am disabled, I am not more or less disabled,” because that is an identity term. And I love this consider instead example: simply describing the specific characteristics a person has that are relevant to a particular description or context; such as needs help eating and bathing or is able to go to college. Because if you really think about it, any situation where someone might be saying, like, “Oh, my friend’s child has low functioning autism,” like you’re talking about a specific person. You know what that person’s situation is if you are talking about them. So it’s very non-specific even and sometimes very unhelpful because–

Royce: Yeah, there are a lot of ways to take that.

Courtney: There are a lot of ways to take that. And in a situation of disability and autism, and because of the ableism in society, it’s probably– whatever the person you’re talking to is conjuring in their head is probably a very ableist, unfavorable image and might even be inaccurate to the situation. So depending on what you’re talking about, it is better to just be specific. So that’s also another case where when you– Usually anytime in my experience that the phrase low functioning is evoked, it’s normally not to emphasize the needs or humanity of the Autistic person. It’s normally as a means of getting sympathy for whomever the caregiver is. Like, “Oh, isn’t it so hard to live with this person because X, Y, and Z?” So there are absolutely aspects of dehumanization to that that are worth knowing.

Courtney: Lunatic, to me, that’s another one of those identity words with a negative connotation. So whereas ‘idiot’ is intellectual disabilities, I feel a similar way for ‘lunatic’ as it pertains to psychiatric disabilities. ‘Maniac’, kind of similar situation for me, same story. We have ‘mental’ when referring to people with mental or psychiatric disabilities. That’s one of those words, I know it’s a lot more common to be used that way in other English-speaking countries. Like, in the UK, I’ve heard people say, like, “Oh, that’s mental.” I’ve never known anyone in my real life who talks like that. On the flip side of it, calling someone a mental case, that is something I’ve heard a couple of times, and we frown upon it. Not great. [reading] “Midget refers to little people or people with small stature or a form of dwarfism.” I think that one might be a little more self-explanatory than others. I– At least even before getting more heavily involved in disability politics, that was one where every now and then you’d hear almost a PSA style, like, don’t say this word.

Royce: Yeah, I at least feel like that one has been frowned upon for a while now. I also feel like there are a lot of people out there that know that that’s frowned upon but still aren’t sure what they’re supposed to say instead. Like, what is or is not appropriate.

Courtney: Yeah. Which is why it’s great that, you know, the blog we’re collecting words and phrases from has ‘consider instead’ alternatives. The next one on the list: morbidly obese or just obese, consider instead fat person. As we mentioned this, even in last episode, that a lot of fat activists are trying to use that word more often, get other people to use that word, give it a more neutral connotation. The second one on consider instead here kind of surprises me just because this list is the only time I have ever earnestly seen someone propose this. I’m sure there are others out there, but I suspect it’s a little fringe, and I suspect there are many real-life situations or rooms you could be in where you will be laughed at if you use this phrase. Because I’m just trying to conceptualize it. The other consider instead is ‘person of size’.

Royce: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.

Courtney: I have not heard that one before.

Royce: And I can see how if you were in a group of people and someone said, “Well, there is a person of size,” that would be a very odd thing to say.

Courtney: Yes. It seems to me like this might be a phrase that has been discussed in online conversations about language. Because even though I do love and value these conversations, and I think they are important to have, there are some propositions for word changes that are so exceptionally fringe that if you were to use it in a real life room, someone might– Like, this one just could sound a little silly, but there are some proposed alternatives where someone would literally not have any idea what you’re saying.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Like, you cannot understand your word and there you have now defeated the point of language.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: Because now you cannot communicate.

Royce: Well, person of size, none of those words individually have negative connotations. It’s just not how I’ve ever heard anyone talk.

Courtney: And it sounds like grandiose, almost in a silly way. Like when I–

Royce: That’s what I was thinking.

Courtney: When I call myself like, “I am a woman of many maladies.” Like, I like saying that, but there’s a bit of– there’s an air of unseriousness about it when I use that as, I guess, my alternative. And maybe the problem is it reads to me as another way of not saying fat, which is not the point. Like if someone says, “I’m fat,” and everyone goes, “You’re not fat, don’t say that!” It’s like, well, no, I am fat, but that’s not a bad thing. The only reason why you don’t want me to say it is because you’re attaching a negative connotation to it, and that’s the problem. Like, person of size seems like an alternative to that. Like, “You’re not fat, you’re just a person of size.” I don’t know. I really, I don’t want to make fun of phrases if there are people who genuinely prefer this phrase, but. And in fact, I wanted to see what other situations I’d be missing where this would be used. In a quick search, the most common thing I am seeing is airline policies. There are person of size policies or customer of size policies.

Royce: I think one thing that’s tripping me up on ‘person of size’ is how you were commenting on some terms earlier just being a little too vague. Like what size are we– do you mean here?

Courtney: “What do you mean?”

Royce: Because in this instance we’re specifically talking about someone being fat. What about someone who’s abnormally tall or short or something like that? That is also a size that is outside of the average human experience.

Courtney: It’s a funny one for me, because especially now, I would be curious how they came up with this phrase and which came first, if it was the airline policies first or if there were fat activists who were advocating for this and then airlines adopted it. But it seems even more like a euphemism for fat when it’s like a corporation trying not to call their customers fat. Like, in most places when we talk about ableist language, euphemisms are normally bad. Like, you’re trying not to say disabled, but disabled is not a bad word. You’re trying not to say fat, but fat is not a bad word. So I might have to look that up later and see who is advocating for that more often and see what the logic is, because I’m just not familiar with that argument myself.

Courtney: Moron. We’ll put that in the same camp as idiot, lunatic. And this is why I like this list too, because a lot of these I could have just pulled out and known off the top of my head, but without having it presented to me, I would have never considered mentioning mouth breather. I think mostly because I don’t remember the last time I’ve heard someone use that insult. And the interesting thing here, because the consider instead we have: uninformed, reckless, impulsive, ignorant. And then way at the end of the list from last episode, I called attention to dipshit, which is admittedly a very fun word to say. And after we stopped recording, it occurred to me, do I need to start using that word more often? Because it really does roll right off the tongue. Although, although, I really think that the origin of dipshit probably does just mean stupid or a stupid person. I am willing to put money on it. Because now that we’re talking about like duh, derp, like dip, dipshit. And you say that like, “You’re stupid.” Like instead of saying, “You’re stupid,” you say, “You’re a dip shit.” So I fully believe that has a similar origin to a lot of these other words we’re talking about, so.

Royce: I did look it up while we were recording the last episode, and part of it does come from the word dip, which meant a foolish person.

Courtney: Oh, of course it did! Of course! So yeah, in that sense, I’m almost gonna disagree with that being such a common alternative for some of these words. Because to me, if you’re insulting someone and you’re calling them stupid, I don’t think there’s really any difference between doing that and calling them a dipshit. Except dipshit has more emphasis. Uh, then we have the R-word, which is like an actual slur that I’m not going to say aloud on a podcast. But that’s at least one that I hope and can trust that most people listening know exactly what word I’m talking about. And if you don’t, please find the link to the blog we’re referencing, you can see it written out fully there. But I will also say adding -tard, T-A-R-D to the end of other words. Like, how often lately do we hear libtard from, like, conservative people? Or another example cited here, fucktard. Uh, don’t like that. Not good.

Courtney: Um, unfortunately seems to be making a comeback. I feel like there was a period of time where it was pretty universally frowned upon, and the only people using that word were the ones who intentionally still wanted to be offensive. But I’ve seen it more and more. And unfortunately, I’ve even seen it from left-leaning people. I have seen, like, videos and podcasts dedicated to progressive politics, people who consider themselves leftists who are starting to use that word again. And I am like, what is happening? What? Don’t. Don’t. But at least that is like a big one where I do think most people know what the R-word means. There are some words on this list where I’ve seen some people go so far as to not use these words that they will just say, like, “Oh, I don’t say the C-word,” and they mean crazy. And it’s like, that’s not what the C-word means.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: If someone says the C-word, I’m thinking a very different word. In fact, here a little bit later on the list we have spaz or spazzed. I have a good story about this one because of a big conversation that happened a couple years back surrounding this. During this conversation, a lot of people were saying, like, “Oh my gosh, this artist used the S-word.” And enormous swaths of people had no idea what the S-word was. And if it is so outside of the realm where you don’t even know what word we’re talking about, it’s very hard to have that conversation. Even if you’re someone who wants to learn and wants to understand what happened and what the problem is, if that basic level of communication doesn’t connect, you’ve already kneecapped your conversation.

Courtney: Now, this one, I do think needs a lot more education, so I do want to talk about it. In this case, spaz comes from the word spastic and was predominantly in reference to people with cerebral palsy or perhaps other neurological disabilities. But it’s also a word that has different niche meanings or connotations in different places and is just not common enough that there’s a universally agreed upon connotation to it. The example I’m thinking of was there was a Lizzo song where the original lyric was like, “I’mma spaz,” as in like, “I’m going to,” and then spaz was used as a verb. Which is a way that that word is in AAVE. That’s also a word where in other English-speaking languages that aren’t the US, it is used a lot more as, like, a playground insult, and a lot more people hear it in that context growing up.

Courtney: And there was this big, big conversation that happened online surrounding this word. And a lot of disability advocates got involved in this conversation about language and how using that word is harmful, ableist against people with cerebral palsy. But it was also targeted at a Black woman who was also using it in a way that white English speakers were not familiar with that usage of the word. And I’m not saying that a different usage inherently makes it okay or less problematic, so don’t mistake that. But when some white listeners hear, “I’m a spaz,” coming from a Black woman and they think like she’s saying, “I am a spaz,” not “I am going to” and using it as a verb, like you have already fundamentally misunderstood what she’s saying because you are not speaking the same language anymore.

Courtney: You are speaking two different languages. And we know from conversations about this where if ableism is a societal issue and it’s a big structural issue, which it is, individual people’s language is to some extent putting the onus on them. And we’ve talked about this before. What was that episode called where we were talking about the emojis? Because there was like the clapping emojis that people were making a case that that was ableist to use those emojis.

Royce: Oh, that was an old one. Episode 16, Web Accessibility, Personal vs. Corporate Responsibility, and Avoiding Anti-Black Activism.

Courtney: Yeah, so that is a situation where– Ableism is a societal issue as well, but if your only means of activism is policing individuals, that is: a) not going to be enough to address the underlying systemic issue, and b) is disproportionately going to affect other marginalized people. Because who, historically, do we hold to higher standards? It’s Black people, it’s women. In conversations about ableism, often it’s other disabled people. So there was, in this conversation about this lyric, there was a lot of anti-Blackness coming from white disability advocates. And that was truly a situation where that conversation needed to be had amongst Black disability activists who were doing that work, but their voices were not being as heavily amplified. And the work they were doing was with sensitivity and knowledge of AAVE and the different ways in which those words are used.

Courtney: And so just like how I say, like, I don’t have a personal stake or intense understanding of meme culture, I don’t think I should be leading those conversations. I think people who are in that culture should be leading those conversations. This is an even larger stakes version of that. And I think those are things we need to be cognizant of when we have those conversations. Because during this period of time, I was talking to a lot of friends and, like, my British friends were all like, “Yeah, that is absolutely an insult.” Like, “I, my, my eyes would bug out if someone just said this, because it’s not okay and it’s not known to be okay here.” More often than not, just casually, if you do hear the word spaz, it’s usually in a lighter sense of like, “You’re so random,” like, you’re so random, you’re so quirky. So there were a lot of Americans, Black and white and all over the place, who were like, “I didn’t even realize this was an insult or could be an insult or is an ableist word.”

Courtney: So that was some people’s first introduction to the concept that this word is ableist. And I heard a lot of people saying, like, “How could you not know? How could you not know this was an ableist word?” And yet I very literally had a friend I was talking to who is in the Ace Community and does have cerebral palsy, who during this conversation was like, “I have cerebral palsy, and I didn’t even know that the word spaz came from spastic cerebral palsy.” Like, I guess now that you’ve said that, I can make the connection. But, you know, to them, it was not a playground insult. To them, the only times they had heard that word were either in an AAVE sense or in the oh, that’s so random, crazy-goofy kind of a sense. So if that connection has never been made, you just will not know.

Courtney: And that to me just makes it all the worse if there’s a lot of misconsideration for other marginalized groups when having these conversations. Like, if you’re having these conversations in an anti-Black way, in the name of disability justice for people who have cerebral palsy, and then there are some people with that exact disability who are like, “I didn’t even know, so why are you being so beastly to these people having this conversation.” So that– that’s one of those situations where, yes, we do all need to do this work individually. We do need to have these conversations and listen to others, listen especially to disability advocates as they talk about these things. But I think these conversations are always best served when you are in your own communities.

Courtney: Like going back to the R-word, for example. As much as I hate that it is making a comeback, I do actually have one friend who occasionally that word will slip out, and like, as a good friend of mine, I am not going to let that fly. If you say that word in front of me, I’m going to glare at you, and you will know immediately that you did a bad thing. And I can hope, at the very least, that next time that word slips out, hopefully they’ll have a like, “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” And then to just sort of round out the last of this first section of this list, we have ‘short bus’ or ‘taking the short bus’. Yeah, definitely don’t like that. Would not be happy to hear anyone actually use that in my real life, because that’s a euphemistic way of trying to call someone an idiot. Like, you’re trying to find a metaphor to use the insulting phrase. Don’t like it.

Courtney: So we’ve once again run out of time. I promise I will eventually talk about phobia. That’s [sighs] The suffix -phobia is something I have wanted to talk about in detail for a very, very long time. So I promise for realsies we are going to start next week’s episode right at the top talking about phobia. Not only as a suffix, not only the history of that word, the alternatives that some people propose, and my personal phobia experience/story time. Because that one is big, that one is important.

Courtney: But for today, we are going to leave you off, as always, with today’s featured MarketplACE vendor: Colliequest, where you can find Ko-fi art commissions offered by a sapphic aroace enby. And there are lots of options here in the shop. There is some editable line art in the commissions. You can get Autism Acceptance Month icons, you can get headshots of your fursona, or even digital pet portraits. Lots of options here. And even if you do not need animal-inspired artwork on your own, if you are feeling generous, this is a Ko-fi, so you can absolutely just throw a few bucks over to a fellow disabled ace artist. Links are in the usual places as always, and we will talk to you all next time.