Ableist Language (Part 4)

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here as always with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. And today is part four, and I’m going to go ahead, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it is part the last of our ableist language series. That doesn’t mean this is going to be the end of this conversation. Truth be told, there are so many examples, complexities, nuances, alternatives, societal and linguistic connotations. I personally could talk about this a lot longer than the span of four episodes, but I am sure no doubt concepts like this will come up now and then tangentially to other topics. So it’s not the end of the conversation, but we have so many more topics we want to get to. So part four, part the last of ableist language.

Courtney: I did want to start with a quick note building off of last week’s episode because I lose track of my pins sometimes. I’m sure I said, “Put a pin in that,” and I don’t think we actually got back around to it. But go figure. As always happens, we turned off the microphone and I went, “Oh! I should have said that.” Every single time without fail. I wanted to call attention back to the suffix versus prefix conversation. Because obviously we talked about -phobic and -phobia as a suffix and explained our understanding of some of the arguments from the camp of folks who prefer -misia as a suffix. Amongst the other thoughts and arguments I had, I did want to circle back to -misia because we mentioned that that is actually a prefix in the English language. And as someone who was diagnosed with a phobia, I’m also someone with misophonia.

Courtney: Which is weird to me, when I hear the argument: well, -phobia as a suffix should only be used for the medical terminology, and if it’s not used in this medical psychological sense, then it is ableist to use it to mean hate. So we should use -misia because it means hate. But then I also have misophonia, which is also a medical condition, something that is diagnosable. And so then I– I question, like, by the same logic, can we also not use -misia to just mean hate flippantly outside of a medical context? I just, I just don’t think that that is how suffix– suffixes and prefixes work or should work. And that’s not how I interpret them at all. I think by very nature of being a suffix or a prefix, it is meant to alter the rest of the word that it is placed with or add extra context or meaning to it. So on its own, I do not think that that is a problem.

Courtney: Now, if anybody tries to make the argument– Because, I mean, we’ve had enough of these conversations for years that I, unfortunately, every time we talk about these topics have to be preemptively thinking about the arguments that are going to come back. And I don’t think -phobia or -misia is in any realm the same situation as adding T-A-R-D onto the end of another word. I do think it is wrong and ableist, and slur-adjacent at best, if you add T-A-R-D onto the end of, like, fuck or lib or whatever creative mismatch of words those hateful hateful people want to do. Because tard is not a suffix. It’s not. If you are using that to add on to another word, you are explicitly trying to call to mind the r-slur. That’s what you’re doing. You’re doing it on purpose. That is the point. That is the only use of that that I am aware of.

Courtney: And it seems to me that the argument against using -phobia in context of, like, homophobia, acephobia, xenophobia, is trying to say that that is the same thing. And in my experience, my interpretation, I just don’t see it. I do not think those are the same thing. Because the name of today’s game is going to be context. There’s an entire section on the ableist words and terms to avoid blog that we have been citing on autistichoya.com There’s an entire section here called: terms that are not inherently ableist, but become so in context. And we’re going to break down some of these things. Because I do think it is a good, interesting conversation. And context is, I think, a lot more nuanced than anyone gives it credit for.

Courtney: We talked about handicapped, for example, having drastically different connotations in the UK versus America, as just two very Western Anglo-centric examples. But there are languages where handicapped is just kind of the word for disabled, and even the Disabled Community uses it and doesn’t see an issue with it. So this is a very English centered conversation. And we do all need to remember, especially in these online conversations, that you do not know the context of your conversation partner or the people in the comments or the people tweeting. And assuming you do is really detrimental to meaningful conversation and community building. I think I’ll give another example, too, before we get into these specific words, because a lot of these are going to be in a very, very diagnosis specific language, which I have thoughts about as a whole.

Courtney: But I mentioned that, you know, the Swedish word for crazy was one that became a very easy word for me to start using, even when I wasn’t using crazy in English conversation because of the ableist argument. But, you know, in Swedish it was, it was diverse. I could use it for several different things. I did have to ask, at one point, to my language teachers, like, what is the Swedish word for disabled? What do I say when I’m trying to convey these thoughts? And the two words I was given, the, I guess, direct English translation is basically movement hindered or function hindered. And hindered is obviously, like, we use that in English not terribly often, not as often, but it does just seem very similar to conversations we’ve had about, like, impaired. Where if it just doesn’t have the societal stigma about it, the word itself is likely not to be a problem. I started with those thoughts on -phobic because I wanted to get them out of the way. We already started that conversation, but that is on this section of the list too.

Courtney: OCD is also on this list. And as someone who also has OCD, I can say that my opinion on a flippant usage of OCD has changed over time quite a bit. A lot of the items under this section say it is not ableist when you use this word to describe someone with this condition. So the argument here is if you call me OCD, that’s not ableist because I actually have that thing. But if someone who is sort of a stereotype, someone who’s just like has a really intense need to be very clean and tidy, like, “Oh, they’re OCD,” and use it flippantly that way, then that is ableist. It did used to be. Shortly after I was first said by a medical professional to have OCD, I started learning more about what that does actually mean or can actually mean or means in my specific context, and it is a lot more than the casual opinion of, “Oh, they’re just very, very type A,” or high strung or need to be neat and tidy. And a lot of the symptoms, or the thought patterns, the spiraling, can actually be very disabling.

Courtney: At the time, I was dealing with many other issues, extreme depression amongst other things. I did not yet have a diagnosis for my physical conditions or the source of my chronic pain. So I was just like medically speaking and mentally, emotionally speaking dealing with a lot. And it did really start bothering me when I would hear people say OCD outside of the medical context. Because at the time, to me, it felt like it was very dismissive. I was dealing with something that could at times be crippling. I was dealing with things that were, you know, psychologically tormenting me, and I was like, “Why are people just using this to mean this person likes to have a clean desk? Because that’s not what OCD means!” Over time, though, I really, really have softened on it. Now if I hear someone use OCD casually, it just doesn’t bother me anymore.

Courtney: Part of that could just be desensitization to that, but I really, really do believe that I have just become a much happier, more mentally healthy, stable person since that time period in my life. And I’ve also rationalized that it is not actually hurting me if someone says OCD in that context. It is not causing me any harm at all. Whereas before, it just felt like I’m not being seen, I’m not being understood, why don’t people understand this thing that is a problem in my life? So I can– I can definitely relate to people who still dislike hearing OCD used casually. And I do think, too, that if someone were to properly educate themselves on what OCD truly entails and they’re able to empathize with it on some level, it could be a much more natural transition to stop using that in the casual way. Because now you just understand it more and maybe at a certain point after you’ve gotten to a certain level of education, you catch yourself saying OCD casually and then think, “Oh, well, that doesn’t actually feel right anymore.”

Courtney: So in my mind, in terms of, like, a broader conversation, I think educating people on the details and nuances of a disability is, at the end of the day, going to have a lot more of a positive and meaningful impact than just telling people, “Don’t use this word.” Because if someone doesn’t actually know the complexities of OCD and they use it flippantly, and someone says, “Don’t say OCD.” They’re likely to be confused and not really know why that is. And I am now, at this point in my life, a lot more inclined to say that they just don’t know, they don’t understand, they haven’t had that life experience and give someone the benefit of the doubt than to feel upset and unseen. It’s also a little goofy because being someone with OCD, this might be one of the only ones on the list that is directly lifted from a diagnosis that I’m going to be a little bit soft on and a little bit soft about.

Courtney: And I’m certainly, certainly someone who tends to give an abundance of the benefit of the doubt to a lot of people in a lot of situations. But I have just so many obscure identities, so to speak, that I’m fully confident and comfortable in knowing that any given person I meet is fundamentally not going to come into a conversation with me with my breadth of experience. Like, nobody’s going to understand OCD and asexuality and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and the weird, you know, racist comments I’ve gotten being a racially ambiguous person. No one is gonna understand all of those aspects of my experience. And I really at this point don’t expect them to. But it’s also like, what is it saying? Like, if you call someone OCD flippantly, you’re probably just being like, “They’re a very neat and tidy person.”

Courtney: If you call someone a psychopath who isn’t actually experiencing psychopathy or having one of those– we’re going to be talking about cluster B, like, personality disorders quite a bit today, I think. You’re not– you’re– if you call someone a psychopath, yes, that is ableist, but it is implying something that is very socially insidious. And you’re probably going to be using it because that person hurt people. Either– either physically or emotionally. There was probably something abusive that occurred where someone is getting harmed. And that is the stigma about a lot of the diagnoses that we’re going to be talking about today. So that’s just sort of our jumping off point. To get into that.

Royce: I think people will also jump the gun in that one and sometimes use it to label people who show some sort of intense or unexpected behavior that they don’t really understand.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Like something that surprises them that may not necessarily be harmful, but now they look at that person thinking, “Oh, well, they might be capable of doing harm.”

Courtney: Right, exactly. And so, to me, there are levels to this, right? I, on some level, agree and understand people who say OCD is ableist if you’re just using it flippantly. I understand those arguments. But I’m going to be a lot softer on that than someone who’s throwing around, “That person is a psychopath, that person is a narcissist.” Because truthfully, socially it does less harm and breeds less of a stigma if you’re just using OCD to mean someone’s very clean. Like you are not implying, most of the time, that someone is inherently dangerous or you need to be very careful around this person. You shouldn’t have a relationship with this person. This person should be ostracized. Which, that is sort of the undercurrent of a lot of the other words and phrases that we’re going to be talking about here.

Courtney: Because that’s something I– I– I absolutely do and can and will call out our own listeners for things like that. I mean, back when– Goodness gracious, back when the James Somerton drama was unfolding, the number of people who would just be like, “Yeah, James Somerton’s a psychopath.” I’d be like, no. No, no, no, no, no, we’re not playing that game. Because I have met diagnosed psychopaths who call themselves psychopaths who have not hurt me, as directly as James Somerton did. If you’re using a diagnostic term as a shorthand for ‘this person is damaging’, that is wrong. That is a much harder line that I have. Now, I did, just in that example, use like if you call someone a narcissist. That one? Also extremely complex. I do not ever like or want to hear someone be called a narcissist to just mean someone who is self-centered, someone who is– I used the word abusive earlier.

Courtney: But this is a very weird situation of a sort of a pre-existing term getting medicalized by psychology, essentially. Because I would say, viscerally, when I hear it used casually, I will recoil and probably have a conversation about adjusting language if it’s someone I’m actually in community with, if someone is flippantly saying a narcissist as a title. I don’t feel it as strongly when narcissistic is used as an adjective. And I was trying to figure out why those felt different to me. And the root of that word truly does– it transcends a psychological context, like the myth of Narcissus is old Greek mythology. So it is a very old word that is– was originally intended to draw to mind that Greek tale. But there is now narcissistic personality disorder, which was not formally incorporated into the DSM until 1980. It was used sort of in this psychological context before being formalized as a diagnosis. There were doctors in previous decades who did say things like narcissistic personality.

Courtney: But the root of that at the end of the day comes back to Narcissus. And I don’t actually know enough about the popularization of that name and phrase in the popular lexicon. So I really don’t know if it became used more often after it was a diagnosis and used in a mental health term, or if prior to doctors using narcissistic personality, if people would just say, you know, narcissistic as a describer for someone still trying to call to attention the old myth. And that’s something I honestly do wish I knew more about, because I think that would be a very interesting framework to look at this conversation. Because on the one hand, if narcissistic was just used as an adjective, a descriptor, one of potentially many personality traits that any given person might have, before it got co-opted by psychology speak, then it almost to me feels like we’d almost be putting psychology as a science, a field of medicine, as an institution – which I will remind you has very often been an abusive institution – almost too high up on a pedestal.

Courtney: Like, well, now that this is a psychological term, now that this is a diagnosis, we cannot use this at all because the psychological medical usage of this is now the end-all be-all. That almost feels wrong to me just because I do know that psychology has gotten things very wrong. It can get things wrong, it gets things wrong all the time. The DSM is always changing and evolving. Things are not only being added, they’re being removed. I will remind you that homosexuality was characterized as a mental disorder once upon a time. That is no longer in the DSM. We’ve had many conversations about asexuality or diagnoses that sound a lot like asexuality that were and to some extent still are characterized as disorders also. There have been extremely abusive practices.

Courtney: There’s a reason why we don’t do lobotomies anymore. There’s a reason why, quote, “insane asylums” are such prevalent trope in, like, horror media because what horror does extremely well, as a genre of fiction, is point out historic injustices. That doesn’t mean that those tropes or commenting on those injustices are always done well or in a way that doesn’t at times increase stigma around mental health, but the social reasoning is there. Because honestly, I mean, the conversation of -phobia is almost the same way when I was talking about the abolitionist context of using -phobia before psychology ever got its hands on it. So now that it has been co-opted by psychology, we have to forget that history…? Everything that came before it doesn’t matter anymore? It’s really less of a criticism of what is and is not ableist and more so what power this institution actually has over, not only our language, but our view and interpretation of it, knowing that it is itself a very flawed and at times abusive system.

Royce: Well, while you were talking, I was trying to figure out if I could find any reference for the usage of the words narcissist and narcissistic. And I did pull up Google Books Ngram Viewer, which just basically has a ton of books that Google has access to, broken down by words, you can search the frequency. And were you saying that there were some years that you found where the term narcissistic started entering, like, psychology definitions?

Courtney: I mean, in, like, the late 1800s, the narcissus root was actually used to describe, like, sexual conditions or behaviors, like autoeroticism, which is something we’ve talked about in previous episodes. But in terms of, like, narcissistic personality as a framework for characterizing patients, there was a psychoanalyst in 1967 who used the phrase ‘narcissistic personality structure’ but that’s not the first use of ‘narcissistic personality’ period.

Royce: Okay, well I think that explains what I’m seeing. Because this tool goes back to the year 1800 and there are no known usages in the English texts in this system all the way back to the year 1800. There are some that kind of start around 1830, maybe a couple years before, but the graph is basically zero. It’s basically flat up until 1915-1920, and then it slowly goes up until it starts to accelerate around the 60s and 70s. And I’m looking at both the word narcissistic and the word narcissist. And narcissist also, it starts a little slower and usage is always less than narcissistic, but the word narcissist really picks up in 1999 or the year 2000.

Courtney: Interesting. So based on that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the popularization of using ‘narcissistic’ in broader psychoanalysis just sort of got that word to become increasingly popularized in public consciousness. So that certainly does give more weight to popular flippant usage of narcissist being an ableist word, an ableist framework, even when used flippantly, if psychoanalysts are the reason why we’re saying that word in the first place. And when they’ve started using that word, I don’t know, do you all trust a eugenicist psychoanalyst from the 1890s who called a sexual condition narcissus-like? Do you trust that guy? Do you think he had good ideas? Do you think what he was describing was even a problematic medical mental health condition? I don’t think so. But it seems like that word, that phrase, started to get used more often and adapted more widely, changed in focus a little bit. Because now the diagnosis we have is narcissistic personality disorder.

Courtney: It is one of those cluster B personality disorders in this group that I talked about. Also in this group is, like, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder. And these are ones that I’ve talked about before and will continue talking about, just because they are so extremely stigmatized. And it does seem to me like, you know, the label narcissist, I have– I have read, I have watched videos, I have listened to people who have narcissistic personality disorder. I know there are some people in that community who do say, “I am a narcissist.” And that is part of their advocacy, part of their education campaigns to teach people what this actually is, what it actually means. And above all, does not necessarily mean that I am going to abuse you. But even in the realm of diagnoses, that was not even the original use of narcissistic. That’s just the one we have now.

Courtney: But if this sort of pop psychology, which especially right now with social media and with the very strong mental health culture that we have right now, a lot of psychological phrases and therapy speak will be used in day-to-day conversations in ways that sometimes can be helpful, but sometimes I’m a lot more skeptical of it. Think of the term gaslighting, for example. Oh, oh, this is actually gonna be great to parallel ‘narcissistic’. If narcissistic became popular in public consciousness because of psychoanalysis, because it was diagnosable, because it was a symptom, and that leached out into public consciousness, and now people are using it more casually, or as an accusation against others more often given the stigma, gaslighting is kind of the same way. Because gaslighting comes from a play. And literally was referring to a gas light. A gas light was the method of gaslighting this poor woman.

Courtney: A lot of people don’t know that origin from the play. It was a play from the 30s. It was later adapted into a film like a decade later. And there was at one time a very intense weight about it when you would learn about this phrase maybe in a therapy session with a trained professional, you’d be able to give a language to abusive manipulative behavior that was being done to you. And it’s good to be able to identify those things and name it when you are the victim of such things. But now that phrase has gotten so popular. How often, now, do you hear people say, like, “Oh, he’s gaslighting me,” but then you actually hear the description of what’s happening and it’s like, that’s not– is not actually what gaslighting means? This person’s just upsetting you. Or you both had a mutual miscommunication, one of you thought something was happening, the other didn’t, and now you’re like, “He’s gaslighting me.”?

Royce: Yeah, you disagree on the information or the conclusion of the information or something like that.

Courtney: Yeah, and not everyone does. I know personally in my life plenty of people who have been truly given the origin of the phrase gaslit and they know the psychological weight behind that word. So this is absolutely not everyone. But even in the last 10 years, I mean 10-20 years ago, did you regularly hear the word gaslighting? Like regularly? I know I didn’t. It’s gotten a lot more common, a lot more popular. And with the popularization of it, it becomes more flippant, there’s less weight to it. But if it didn’t become a pop psychology term, we wouldn’t be using this word frequently, we absolutely would not. And now I’ve convinced myself that that’s exactly what happened with ‘narcissist’ and ‘narcissistic’. I think ‘gaslighting’ is a really good recent example. Because I think a lot of our listeners have in real time seen the popularization of that phrase.

Courtney: So if we think about things like ‘narcissistic’ the same way, like, yeah, the root is from Narcissus, it’s an old Greek myth, it’s extremely old, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s okay to just go around calling people narcissistic because it’s the psychological institution and all of the ableism that comes with that that has popularized the word to this point. Because it’s basically only theater nerds or old school film nerds who really know, like, well, actually gaslight comes from… And even if you’re not one of those nerds and someone’s just said that to you before or you’ve looked it up yourself wondering where that phrase comes from, that doesn’t tend to be what people are thinking about when they use that word right now. And I would argue that most people using narcissist or narcissistic aren’t literally thinking about the Greek myth. And that’s why context just matters so, so much.

Courtney: Because we talked about this a little bit in the first episode where it was just like the evolution of language and what did words mean when they were first used, and does it matter? It’s not a black and white question of yes, it does matter, or no, it doesn’t. Because ableism is a systemic issue. Because it is systemic and it leaches into all areas of our language, our mentality, our preconceived notions, the way we judge others, and what accessibility looks like in public places, virtual places, what rights disabled people do or do not have that able-bodied folks do. It’s a systemic issue. And as with every systemic issue, I think we do need to be careful not to put this, like, overstatement of harm on individual people. Someone can theoretically be extremely well-meaning and use one of these words or phrases because they either just don’t know, they aren’t thinking about it, it became habit for them to say, and maybe it’s harder for them to break linguistic habits than average.

Courtney: Disproportionately, sort of attacking one another as being one of the big problems and perpetuating ableism is not going to work and cannot be the end all be all of our advocacy, our activism, our knowledge or social awareness. Because if everybody tomorrow– if someone flipped a switch and turned off all of our ableist words and phrases, and we can literally not say those words anymore tomorrow, ableism is still going to be in our culture. There are still disabled people who are going to feel the impacts of the politics and policies and accessibility that we have right now. So it’s– it’s not the only solution. To me, it is if nothing else, an awareness campaign, which is important and can be important. Which is why I like to look at things from a variety of different ways. It is good to know the origins of words, but it’s equally important, if not more so, to understand the modern context of those words and how it got to be this way.

Courtney: Because if we were only analyzing the origin of the word, you say, “Okay, well, narcissistic. But the origin was a Greek myth. We’re talking about a story. We’re not talking about psychology. We’re not talking about a heavily stigmatized personality disorder, because that was the origin.” That’s not the whole picture and never has been the whole picture. But it is– it’s impossible for everybody to know the full story, the full history, the full context of every single word and phrase. And so I do think we need to give people a little bit of grace. And we can be kind as we educate and have these conversations. Because I also don’t think that the opposite is true. There will be people who say, you know, the origins of words never matter. What matters is how they’re used now. And that tends to be the camp of people who are also saying, “Oh, well, you’re just too sensitive. You’re overly sensitive. Everything bothers you. Nothing matters at all. We can use whatever words we want.” Neither of those are true. Neither of those are true.

Courtney: And I think the best we can do for ourselves and our community at all times is to give grace but encourage growth. If I was so staunch that I said, “I will not be friends with or associate with anybody who is ableist, I will not talk to anybody who uses any of these words.” I would not have any friends, I would not have a single friend. And I would venture to guess that’s the same case for all of you out there, because these words are so prevalent, some more so than others. But like I said, there are levels. If I had a friend who every single day, everyone they disliked, they were referring to them as the r-slur, or they were calling them a psychopath? Like, if someone was like that, I would not associate with them. There are levels. But if someone’s using crazy and stupid really flippantly all the time, I’m gonna be a little softer on that. And that’s just me. Maybe different, you know, levels of tolerance for you, but I do think that’s something that everyone needs to sort of think about.

Courtney: Same thing with OCD. I’m like, if you use OCD flippantly, I’m not gonna make a big fuss about it. If you use one of these more heavily stigmatized words – that are not something I’ve been diagnosed with – I’m probably gonna speak to you about that. But overall, and this is the same way with the racist origins of language too. The more you think about these things for yourself and research things and assess why you’re feeling a certain way, I think that’s most important. Because I noticed in myself that I had a very negative reaction if someone was flippantly called a narcissist, but it wasn’t as strong of an emotional reaction with narcissistic. And because I noticed that and considered it to be a discrepancy, I took a step back and I said, why do I feel differently about these? And tried to really think about it. And that’s how I approach a lot of things.

Courtney: But once you get into a good habit of just thinking about where you actually stand with language and why, and trying to challenge yourself as well, to just not get complicit – well everyone says this word, so it should be okay with me – not fall into that trap of just being lazy or complicit, it starts to become second nature. At a certain point. There have been, you know, especially like the last five years, you and I now and then, a word will just come up that isn’t very common, and because it’s not very common, but we don’t really know where it came from, we’ll just be like, “What is that word? Where did that word come from? Is that word racist?” And sometimes you look it up, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. But, you know, I actually did that recently of– When did I use this? On a recent podcast, I said jaywalkers.

Courtney: Oh, it was during the ick episode because someone said their ick was waiting for the little green man before crossing. And I was like, “Oh, this person only dates jaywalkers.” We cut the microphone that day and I was like, “What is the origin of the phrase jaywalker?” Because I don’t say that word very often. But because I said it and it stuck out, I was like, “I don’t actually know.” For all I know, that could have started as a racist slur. What is this word? Is– like, is, is this ableist? Is it racist? What is the origin? And I will occasionally look those things up. And we do that pretty frequently now, because we’ve just gotten in the habit of trying to be more mindful and intentional of language. And so once you train yourself to sort of do that, you can just think a little harder and do some more research when those one-off things happen.

Royce: Well, I think there’s a broader habit that is also important that is kind of an aside from what we’re talking about right now. But for a long time now I’ve had a habit of taking a few minutes out of my day here and there to look up really any sort of thought that I either haven’t looked up at all or haven’t looked up in a long time. Like it could be a point in history that I learned about in school 20 years ago, and I can only vaguely remember it, and also the books I was learning from were probably dated and maybe more information has been discovered. And just kind of as an aspect of continual learning, it’s– it’s good to make space for that on a regular basis to recheck information that you think you understand or that you may not remember properly or never knew the actual origins of or truth behind.

Courtney: Yeah. And it takes time. If you aren’t already in a habit of thinking and researching like this, it does take time. And I absolutely have grace for people who do. Because to compare it to another systemic issue like capitalism, for example. There are people who do say there is no ethical consumerism under capitalism. That’s a phrase we’ve heard with increasing regularity lately. Which many people fully believe is true. I also fully believe that some people use that as an excuse to not have any personal responsibility at all for their consumerist habits. Everyone’s situation is gonna be different, and that’s why none of this advice can be cookie cutter. But when it comes to, you know, financial consumerism, you can talk about how, yeah, it is bad to, you know, chastise someone for making the individual choice to shop at Walmart, because Walmart’s an unethical company. If that person– you know, Walmart is the only grocery store in their town. They don’t have any other options. Or Walmart truly does have the cheaper prices and they do live in poverty.

Courtney: Like, attacking that individual person for making an unethical financial choice is not good. We don’t do that. We shouldn’t do that to people. But on the far end of things, people who do have a little more financial freedom, people who do live in areas with greater access, who have better ethical choices to make in their shopping habits, if someone like that is saying, “Well, there’s no ethical consumerism under capitalism anyway, so I’m just gonna do exactly what I want, and not care about it at all, because what’s even the point?” I don’t jive with either of those camps of people because there’s so much gray area and nuance. To me, if you can do better, you should strive to do better. It is not okay to demand perfection from everybody, especially if you don’t know their circumstances. But I personally want to be in community with people who are imperfect and want to do better and are working toward being better all the time. That’s the kind of community I want to be a part of.

Royce: Yeah, that rigid level of binary thinking about doing what’s considered right or trying to make a difference, that it never goes well. It’s like how people will argue against environmental regulations because not every country in the world is unified. Even though, like, if America reduced pollution, that would reduce the total amount of pollution in the world. If you were to make even small changes in your life that were beneficial in some way, that would reduce the total amount of harm being done in the world. Now, it’s not going to solve all the problems because the larger problems are systemic and they’re out of the reach of any individual person, but that doesn’t mean we should just give up.

Courtney: Yeah. So we’ve already spent a lot of time. We won’t have time to go through absolutely all of these words, but a lot of them are very similar thought process. Like schizophrenic, for example, is on here. You know, not ableist if you’re actually describing someone who is schizophrenic, but if you’re just using that as a more flowery word for erratic, as an example, not– not not great. Not great. I did see autistic on here, and this one I think is extremely interesting to talk about within the Ace Community also. Because autistic has, by and large, within the communities I’m in and around, become the preferred phrase to describe oneself as autistic instead of a person with autism. But people absolutely still use autistic as an insult too. And in fact, far before you and I ever started exploring autism, one of the first times I spoke publicly about asexuality, I got some really nasty hate comments that were saying, “Asexuality doesn’t exist, you’re just autistic.” And at the time, nobody had ever meaningfully called me autistic.

Courtney: I was far enough into my anti-ableism journey that I was like, “Well, being autistic isn’t bad, but also I’m literally not, but actually, oops, maybe I am.” Which that’s kind of an interesting thought too, because I did have people call me OCD before I was actually diagnosed with OCD. And so that is another weird interesting thing. Every now and then I think flippant usages of medical terms might actually be a stepping stone toward a real diagnosis. But it isn’t always. So that’s a slippery slope that I don’t have any real tangible advice on. We have, similarly, borderline is on this list, which is not nearly as common as, like, using bipolar. I feel like I hear bipolar used casually a lot more often than borderline. But the only time in recent memory I heard someone referring to themselves say, “I know it sounds a little borderline,” and I had to kind of do a, you know, mental double take because I was like, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use that word that way in a long time.

Courtney: But that person did actually end up getting diagnosed with borderline personality disorder after it, too. So they did not know at that time that they actually fit all the characteristics of that diagnosis. In the line of, like, when using a medical terminology might be useful or even a stepping stone to understanding yourself and possibly even seeking a diagnosis, versus using it as very unhelpful and doesn’t actually relate to a medical context at all is, you know, really muddy and complicated. So I think if you’re really, really grasping for a word and you are trying to understand something, meaningfully understand something, and not just write something off or speak about it disparagingly, and that medical term is the only one you can think of, then on a personal case by case basis, that may not be the most problematic thing in the world and might actually be part of meaningfully understanding. But that– that can really only come once you’ve already started unpacking ableist ideas.

Courtney: And so if you know and trust yourself to think through that with this framework, knowing that you’re coming at it from the right place and you’re not throwing other people under the bus and you’re not just using it as a shorthand to be disparaging, then I do tend to fall on the side of languages for the sake of communicating. And if this is the only way you know how to communicate? Yes, tread lightly, think carefully, do your own reflection. You might learn something about yourself. But autistic? I want to take it a step further because, yes, we’ve seen it used as an insult, and it should not be used as an insult, and it shouldn’t be used as a way of discrediting asexuality. But I’ve also seen people casually use it as an excuse for bad behavior, and I don’t like that either. I will give an example.

Courtney: I was at a public park, quite a while back at this point, doing Tai Chi with a few classmates. And it wasn’t even, like, really a park. It was just like an open meadow. There was no one else there except us. And some guy was riding his bike on a sidewalk that was quite far away from where we were, actually, and as he was passing he looked over at us, locked eyes, stared at me, rode his bike down a grassy hill away from the sidewalk he was on, rode his bike up to us, wordlessly circled me while on his bike. Just circling me, staring at me on his bike. And I was getting a little panicky. I’ve been attacked by people in public. I have had stalkers. I was feeling very unsafe in that moment. Because I was also with a group of people and yet I was the only one being circled by someone on a bike. And after he did like a few circles and everyone else just sort of stopped and stared, no one knew what to do. It was extremely weird.

Courtney: And then he just like rode his bike away and left and I was like, that was fucked up. And I was kind of shaking. I was nervous because I didn’t know what was about to happen. And one of my classmates that I didn’t know very well outside of class was like, “Oh, he’s just a little autistic. Don’t worry about it, that’s not a problem. He’s just probably a little autistic.” And I was like, [gasps] excuse me? I was like, “Yeah, so am I. So is my spouse.” So is his husband. I’m like, being autistic is not an excuse for bad behavior. Even if– You don’t know that guy, you do not know what his deal is, you do not know if he is autistic at all. This is a random stranger on the street who just did something very creepy, and you’re not only associating that bad behavior with autistic, which is ableist, but you’re also telling me to calm down, it’s not a problem, because autistic. Which is also a bit infantilizing and takes away any sort of, like, personal responsibility from someone for their bad behavior. And so I was like, no, no, no, mm-mm. That’s not the word you use to describe that. That is not okay. And that was a conversation that I had.

Courtney: So with bipolar and borderline, those two very clearly are, if they’re used flippantly, they’re lifted from the language of psychology. But I do want to leave off on another complex one. And as always, links to see the work we’re referencing are going to be in the show notes on our website, and the description box on YouTube. Please do check out this blog, read it in its entirety, think about it, think about the conversations we’ve had, and really start a conversation with yourself about what this means for your own personal vocabulary. But ‘deluded’ and ‘delusional’ is complicated for me. Because here this blog reads: “Refers to people with psychosocial disabilities / mad people / mentally ill people, when experiencing altered states such as hearing voices, having intrusive thoughts, or experiencing paranoia. Often used as a metaphor.

Courtney: Consider instead: out of touch, totally disconnected, unrealistic expectations, pie-in-the-sky fantasies.”

Courtney: I want to compare delusional also with narcissistic. Because I have heard some people make the case for narcissistic not inherently being ableist in language because we’re all a little narcissistic. Everyone can experience narcissistic tendencies. It doesn’t necessarily mean you experience them to the level of being, you know, diagnosable with narcissistic personality disorder. Which I would say doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not ableist given the framework that language is coming from. But I do generally agree with the concept of everyone does experience this or everyone can experience this. Is it, I guess, quote, “disordered” behavior though? There’s sort of a threshold where it goes from– And this is an extremely ableist way to look at it, but this is how a lot of psychology handles most things. Is this within a normal realm of experiencing this? Or is this a little much? Is this so far to this side that we’re considering this disordered behavior?

Courtney: And I truly do think every human experiences delusions at some point or another to varying degrees. But I can’t think of an actual diagnosis that uses the word deluded or delusional. It might– they– those might be words that are used for a symptom as part of a diagnostic process for other things. But to me that isn’t as on the nose as like calling someone bipolar because they’re really hot and cold, you know? So I have historically used this word very sparingly. If I have ever said someone is delusional or I myself am delusional, I use it with a weight where I do truly mean what I am saying right now. I do think this is a type of delusion.

Courtney: I know one of the very common historical uses is like a delusion of grandeur. That’s a phrase I’m sure lots of you are with. And I think every time I’ve ever used delude or deluded is probably most commonly in a more traditional sense of the word, which is actually to mislead. So like, I know for sure I have said like, “I won’t delude myself into thinking X, Y, and Z,” and I have meant that in the, “I will not, you know, go astray. I will not mislead myself. I will not convince myself that this is okay because–” which is actually one of the– it is closer to the original use of that word. But I have seen in some generations, certain subcultures, people using dulu, like a very cutesy modification of that word.

Royce: And that’s a new one for me.

Courtney: You haven’t heard that yet?

Royce: No.

Courtney: I don’t like it. I don’t like it. And the thing is, I’ve tried to ask myself, if there are very intentional situations where I do think it is accurate to use delusional, and if I do believe that everybody to some extent or another at one point in time or another will experience delusions, why do I have such a response of ‘this is ableist’ when I hear people saying like, “Oh, that’s a little delulu.” And I do think it is just the overly flippant nature of it. I think the cutesifying of it – I don’t know if that’s a word, but it is now – really defangs it to some extent. Which some might make the argument of, you know, anything that generalizes it and doesn’t make it as cutting might actually help in the long term because it might not be attached to this stigma any longer. I don’t always necessarily agree with that argument. But at least in my usage, if I use it, it is because I mean it, and I have considered the ableist connotations of it, and I still think this is a worthwhile and accurate thing to say versus alternatives. And so when I see this sort of just really unintentional, lacking any mindfulness, just throwing around delulu, I don’t like it. I don’t.

Royce: And part of it might be with delusional being a little vague. I have occasionally surprised people because if I hear or, like, hear a sound that wasn’t there or like, you know, feel my phone vibrate in my pocket when it actually didn’t or something like that, I will actually use the term hallucination. And a lot of people feel that the ter– like if you’re hallucinating, that that is a big thing. But I tend to not say, “Oh, I’m just seeing things or I’m just hearing things,” anymore. I’ll say, like, “Oh, that was a minor auditory hallucination.” And I do that very intentionally, because I’m using that word very intentionally, because brains do weird things. Brains make stuff up all the time, and hallucinations do happen on a day-to-day basis sometimes. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people I’ve been around have only heard that word in really extreme cases.

Courtney: Yeah, which that’s a very interesting point, because that really goes to my same thought. Like both with a delusion and a hallucination, I think everyone experiences those, or can, or has, or will. But your example of a hallucination with your phone buzz, I think most people have experienced that at this point, to be honest. Like that hallucination is a very different hallucination in different context as opposed to someone who is, like, in the throes of psychosis, or someone who has schizophrenia. Like there are levels, and that is– That’s the framework of, you know, diagnoses for a lot of these mental health conditions is something that most people experience in small quantities or to a lesser extent or very sparingly or in a way that isn’t disruptive to their life or isn’t disabling in and of itself, versus someone who experiences it to such a grand scale that it is disabling. The question just becomes then: is it dismissive of people who have these symptoms to a disabling extent to use the same word to describe something at a lesser extent?

Courtney: I think that’s part of the mindfulness of language is that everyone, I think, needs to decide that for yourselves with your own context, with your own community. Because it’s not about purity, it’s about improvement. So I think that’s going to do it for today. I’m sure we’ll get little micro doses of conversations about ableist language as we go along, as we always have, and we’ll continue to do so. But please do check out the Autistic Hoya link. I know these are not easy conversations. There’s a lot of complexity here and a lot of differing opinions, so I really appreciate all of you who have stuck with us throughout this series and opened up a dialogue, done some of your own reflective thinking on these topics.

Courtney: There will always be more work to be done. But for today, we’re going to leave you off with our featured MarketplACE vendor: Liminal Inclinations, where you can find eerie and moody Victorian photography by a non-binary neurodivergent and disabled ace artist. Links as always in the show notes on our website and the description box on YouTube. But please do check it out. This is– this shop is on Ko-fi. So even if you are not looking for photography, you can always throw a few bucks their way. But do stop by the shop while you’re there. There is some really pretty and interesting photography here. I actually ordered a print of the piece entitled Play With Me. It is very dark, very atmospheric, just very beautiful all around. As always, thank you all so much for being here and we will see you next week with an entirely different topic altogether. Goodbye!