Hi.
I’d like to convince you to stop being ableist. Or try to, anyway.
I’m not here to point fingers. I don’t even know who you are; it’s not like I’m gonna know whether I’m successful or not unless you tell me. So relax.
I’m figuring you’re someone who doesn’t like it when people try to make others out to be terrible humans for using words like “retard,” “dumb,” “stupid,” etc. as insults.
When someone comes to you (or someone else) and tells people not to use those words, I’m guessing you probably have a couple reactions. First, there’s frustration. It’s unfair for someone to try to shame you for using a word — it’s just a word. It doesn’t reflect who you are or your intention when using the word. We probably seem like speech police, two inches behind your back bumper waiting for you to just barely say the “wrong” thing so we can call you out on it.
Plus, when we claim that we’re telling you to stop doing it for the sake of those with mental disorders…you think we’re being patronizing. You might think: People are stronger than they think. It’s just a word. They can take it.
Maybe you use the word out of spite, to show the morality police that they can’t control what you can’t say, that you are not affected by their attempts to bully people into silent guilt, and that it’s really no big deal. They should get over it.
And you probably see those of us who do avoid those words as people who are either doing it to bully, or as people who are bullied and have become too weak to stand up for themselves and their use of language. It looks like a cult to you, in which nearly everyone follows ridiculously silly rules that are designed to police, control, and manipulate their lives and the way they feel about themselves.
That’s why social justice concepts like “ableism” have to be gotten rid of. We need to just chill out. We need to stop acting like the speech police and end this cultlike mentality.
This is the general gist of what I hear. And I want to say that I hear you. I talk to you, I read your blogs, I watch your videos, and I listen to your arguments.
Now that I’ve heard you and given your grievances some thought, I’d like to tell you where I’m coming from.
So, about five years ago, I started trying to follow a rule in my Internet arguments. I found that I had grown cynical concerning many of the people I argued with when I dismissed them as “stupid” or something similar, and I tried something out. My general rule of thumb, somewhere along the line a few years ago, became this:
I would never insult someone in a way that would still apply to them if they agreed with me.
So I might, say, call someone “ignorant,” because that’s something that could be fixed. But more permanent insults that challenged the person’s fundamental ability to think, I tried to stay away from.
This was a hard rule to follow, but following it did something interesting to me. The value I saw in people started to change — not just in internet conversations, but also outside of them.
No, really! I swear…
I started paying more attention to the content of arguments, as opposed to focusing on a supposed permanent flaw in the mind of the person making them. And that turned my world upside down.
For example: if you call someone “ignorant,” that’s something that can be fixed. I’ve been ignorant before, and I’m still ignorant about some things. That’s something that can change with additional information.
But if you are wrong because you are “stupid” — you’re blaming the fact that your opponent is wrong on their overall intellect, which is much more permanent.
So, over time, I started working with them and identifying opinions that could change, and appreciating — instead of denigrating — things in them that could not change. It was really a remarkable phenomenon — if I disagreed with the person, I still saw value in the PERSON, even if I thought the argument was wrong. I started seeing more value in places I hadn’t seen it in before, and it surprisingly brightened up my world.
I mean, you could go through your whole life and miss out on that really beautiful perspective. Or…
Look, I think I might understand your hesitation. I’m not saying you gotta stand up on a mountaintop and say you’re doing it, or police your friends, or anything. Like, your friends aren’t really gonna notice, are they? I mean, they might notice a change in the way you view and seem to appreciate people after awhile, but they probably won’t be able to trace that change to something as simple as not saying a word unless you tell them you’re not doing it.
Chill out, man. It’s up to you; it’s not a commitment. You could just try it out, see if I’m wrong. Like, maybe for twenty days or so, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll see the effects. Just try not saying those words, like I did, and see if your view of people doesn’t start changing in positive ways. No one needs to know.
Of course you don’t need to shame yourself in private or anything if you say it. I’m not the police; this isn’t a cult. I’m more like this guy on the corner of the interwebs, ushering you in away from your friends and society for a moment (no one else except you knows you’re reading this, anyway), and saying, “Pssst. Over here. I got some good stuff, man. It’ll blow your mind, I’m telling you. Just try it homie; I’m so sure you’ll like it, I’ll give it to you for free.” I’m just telling you that this simple decision to not use ableist words — in a way hardly anyone will notice — can rock your world. It’s like being high on weed or something while everyone thinks that you’re sober. (OK, not exactly like that. It’s an analogy, obviously. But you get the gist.)
Why wouldn’t you want it? Why would you miss out on that?
Just a question. Yeah…
Here’s the other thing: that change can give you deeper friendships.
I’ll be honest with you: the “life is hard, so you should use those words even if they’re offensive, because people need to toughen up” argument isn’t that convincing to me.
I mean…I don’t have a mental disorder, so far as I know. But my mind is very important to me. The biggest fear I have is that I will get Alzheimer’s, like my grandfather, and lose it, gradually. I can’t think of anything scarier. Can you? Like, the experience of having a mental disorder seems hard enough. And yeah, some people are tough enough to take additional abuse, or may pretend they are because you expect them to be. But…even I get depressed sometimes, like most I know, and my life is GOOD. I have all my limbs, and I don’t have to take any medications for any mental or physical problems.
The lives of disabled people are already hard. They already know that it’s rough, a lot more than I do. If anything, they need to teach ME. Like, if I started lecturing someone without an arm about how they had to get used to a hard world, and he got pissed, lopped off my arm, and said, “Get used to THAT before you lecture me” … I’d think he had a point.
Maybe that’s just me. But if someone has a harder life than you…are you really the person to teach them the lesson “life is hard, get over it”? If someone has a life that much harder than mine in ways that are difficult for me to imagine, and they tell me that using those words hurts their feelings…then what does that say about how tough hearing those words is? Because if I woke up tomorrow with their problems — it would suck. I’d have to change what I do for a living, and maybe choose between dying and getting on disability, and my family would have a hard time…and if someone in that position is hurt significantly more by my use of a word, that word must be really hurtful.
Plus — here’s the other thing — don’t you think they’ve heard those words before? How much would you really be contributing to all the “toughening up” they take every. single. day. if you kept using the words, like many of your friends or coworkers already might do?
I mean..they probably have heard it more than you. They may have lived through high school dealing being called those names — a vulnerable time when many commit suicide — and come out the other side. Do they really need you to remind them life is tough?
They know.
They know more than we could ever know.
Do you want to make a difference?
Here’s the thing — based on my experience, you probably, statistically speaking, have a friend with a mental disorder, or a friend very close to someone with a mental disorder. And that friend probably wants to talk about it, but is afraid of the stigma. Oh, they talk a good game with your friends. But alone…it’s really tough. And who are they going to talk to when they need a real friend, or when they are thinking about coming out to someone and admitting their heartbreaking struggle with schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder struggles, or a learning disability?
Who is going to be most likely to notice that you don’t judge people based on their mental ability, and that you don’t use words that mock people based on mental disorder stereotypes?
Not your non-disabled friends or colleagues without mental disorders. They won’t skip a beat. Come on, there are all these other words in the English language you’ll be using. They won’t notice that a few are missing.
But that one friend that’s struggling, that’s looking for someone to talk to — trust me, I know from experience. That friend will be the one who calls you up, direct messages you, takes you aside, and says, “Hey, life is hard for me right now,” and tells you what’s really going on. Because yeah, the world is cruel, but you don’t blend in with the crowd, and they need a break from the cruel world. You’ve been showing them that you won’t judge them by their mental state, because they can see that you don’t judge others that way.
And all those other friends? They’ll miss out. They won’t know who that person really is.
You will.
You’ll be that needle in a haystack.
Why wouldn’t you want that? I don’t have a gun to your head. I’m not trying to force you to do anything. I don’t even know you, in particular, are reading this. So you’re not losing any face, and I’m never going to be able to come to you proudly and say I won an argument.
This is just up to you.
But it’s done wonders for me. It’s helped me see more value in people, and increased the depths of friendships I can have with people, in ways that surprised me and that I wasn’t aware of before.
Just think…right now, you have a chance to change your life, and maybe the life of someone you love.
Why wouldn’t you want that?
Few of those truly meaningful opportunities in life are so easy to get, y’know?
Thanks for reading.
PS: I want to thank all 33 of my Patrons who make posts like these possible. Thank you!