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I just tweeted in response to someone talking about rigid standards of what is good & bad journalism. I think there’s a problem with rigid standards that has become very general but it’s very hard to write about either general or specific so I’m struggling to wrap words arnd it.
The original context was abt incarcerated ppl being quoted in articles abt incarcerated ppl. 1 person said it’s failed journalism if u can’t quote incarcerated ppl, a formerly incarcerated journalist disagreed. But it goes beyond journalism and beyond 1 topic like incarceration.
Ppl r holding ourselves & each other 2 impossibly high standards of words & behavior. This is causing all kinds of problems. I’m still struggling to put the situation in2 words.
I’ve got 2 the pt where I feel like I can’t have a conversation without it turning into a cognitive/language/emotional minefield where there’s hidden explosions all around me. The worst is when it’s supposedly on my behalf!
For instance I’m only living person I know w word ‘idiot’ in my medical records, & I read ppl saying how ‘idiot’ (which was insult *B4* it was medical term) bcs was once a medical term for I/DD is totally unacceptable as a word to use ever bcs ableist. (Yes I know the history.)
I can’t describe the exact mechanism this works thru, but that entire way of looking @ things, & being exposed 2 it, fucks w my language skills so badly that it can make it impossible 4 me 2 write.
So this thing intended 2 protect me from being insulted, actually can make it impossible 4 me 2 use language @ all in some circumstances.
The problem is, throwing a monkey wrench into my language skills has far more profound destructive effect on me than being called an idiot. I know each person is different in this area. But I can’t imagine I’m (and in fact know that I’m not) the only person set up like this.
Also there’s no actual consensus among disabled ppl about which words are absolutely ableist and which are not, except for a very small number. There’s certainly no consensus about idiot (it’s just one example i’m using bcs it’s commonly discussed & debated).
There’s many lvls these words can take, ranging from “these had a connection somewhere in the past” to “this is wildly offensive almost always & tells ppl we’re not human”. Lots of grey area in between.
Most words for rudeness fall under the 1st category when it comes to classism — distant origins in class but few ppl rmbr them even vaguely unless they think hard abt it. This includes the word “rude”. Ableist R-word is definitely in the 2nd category, utterly dehumanizing slur.
No matter what some ppl want u 2 think, there’s no consensus among disabled ppl abt most disability-related words that end up being denounced. Most of them move around through a massive grey area btwn the 2 distant points I described.
But unfortunately things have become almost binary. Like everything’s 0 or 1. There’s “is ableist” and “is not ableist” and “is ableist” usu means “is as bad as the r-word”. No room for exploring ideas there, or for nuance, or for a lot of things.
Which means that actually as someone w cognitive & developmental disabilities, conversations designed to protect me in some way (for lack of a better term) often shut down my ability to communicate in language at all.
Which means I have to either not take part in these discussions, or take part knowing that I’m going to be taken as saying and meaning tons of things I don’t say and mean, among many other problems with participation. Participation is hard or impossible no matter what I choose.
And even though cognitively & language disabled ppl have been discussing this topic for years, attempts to bring it up still bring accusations of being brainwashed by the right wing or something. Which is so very NOT what’s happening, esp since we range whole political spectrum.
(Altho my favorite example of this getting fucked up in obvious way was when i linked to a friend’s article called “On Language Dickery”, only to hear someone respond “It’d have been such a great article if it didn’t use ‘dick’ that way in the title…” *sigh* that says it all.)
