I've met yet another example of English being ableist af, and I wonder: why?

[gloriouscow@oldbytes.space]

@nina_kali_nina I have read (always a great prelude before dropping some ignorant unverified crap you saw on Reddit) that in Japan it is far more acceptable to be rather blunt about someone being overweight. It is dangerous to hold any particular culture on a pedestal when being cruel is part of the human condition unless specifically and systematically opposed.

I am curious what term you are referencing though.

English really is a minefield because most of its most satisfying and cathartic terms to apply to the sort of perfectly healthy but willfully ignorant people stem from outdated medical terms for real conditions that were given grossly inadequate treatment.

The terms 'idiot' and 'moron' are fundamentally little different than the r-slur other than being more archaic and therefore somehow less objectionable.

There are people out there in the world doing irreparable damage and in anger you want to call them ... something, something that describes them in a suitable way but does not in any way drag in associations with mental illness or infirmity or other conditions outside one's control. But I come up blank.

Its sort of sobering to think - almost as if our culture is so habituated to punching down we didn't even bother forming vocabulary that does otherwise.

[lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me]

@nina_kali_nina I also feel that but I wonder how much of it is being used to ableism in my native language (french) and less used to it in english.

[dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz]

@gloriouscow @nina_kali_nina
> The terms 'idiot' and 'moron' are fundamentally little different than the r-slur other than being more archaic and therefore somehow less objectionable.

Famously, they were technical terms, but then moved into common parlance as slurs, whence the medical community invented new terminology that was temporarily pristine.

This has been termed "the euphemism treadmill" by linguist Steven Pinker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan
https://lingodigest.com/the-euphemism-treadmill-why-we-cant-stop-inventing-new-words-for-old-taboos/

[gloriouscow@oldbytes.space]

@dougmerritt @nina_kali_nina

I do recall a famous George Carlin standup routine on that. Like other things that entranced me in my teenage years I'd be afraid to see how it holds up today now that I've gone all woke

[dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz]

@gloriouscow @nina_kali_nina
"The Seven Words You Can't Say On TV"

[gloriouscow@oldbytes.space]

@dougmerritt @nina_kali_nina

now that i think about it though some archaic words skew to losing their offensiveness while others just get more offensive, like the way your Grandma calls people "Orientals"

[gloriouscow@oldbytes.space]

@dougmerritt @nina_kali_nina

language is weird

[dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz]

@gloriouscow @nina_kali_nina
“Verbing weirds language.” — Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

[asie@mk.asie.pl]

@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt I think Polish might even be more casually ableist than English. Assuming I'm reading your post right.

[janmontag@social.janmontag.de]

@nina_kali_nina I think german is also an ableistic language but please give examples.

[nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt]

@gloriouscow I know that the culture might be allowing for being casually cruel, but somehow default swearing and negative words in Japan seem to be more disconnected from medical conditions. There are some, of course. Humans are weird, and languages are too

[nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt]

@asie basically, I'm talking about words that are or used to be medical terms but used to describe undesirable qualities of people and objects. Now that I think about, Russian also has plenty of such words, but I still think they're more often used as insults and less often used almost casually like they are in English

[nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt]

@janmontag "dumbing down" would be an example of a very casual phrase in English that is absolutely rooted in ableism

[hypha@cafe.mycelium.locahlo.st]

@Foritus @nina_kali_nina (i'm also curious)

[aperezdc@oldbytes.space]

@nina_kali_nina I think part of the reason English feels like that is that it's not our mother tongue so we have less “internalized knowledge” about it that goes unnoticed, part that a big part of the activism about improving how we use language comes from the Anglosphere (which makes the flaws in the language more obvious), and part that historically a number of “recent” big scale acts of colonization and oppression, starting with the British Empire, have been carried by said Anglosphere (which permeates to everyday language).

[whophd@ioc.exchange]

@nina_kali_nina @asie I once tried to think of alternatives to “that’s stupid” and really struggled

Also, there’s a peculiar connotation to “I’m dumb” and “that’s dumb” that needs a rather big specific word to substitute properly … “recklessly indifferent” maybe