Yeah, no, “mom and pop landlords” can cash in by selling their secondary properties and giving others a chance to build equity. It’s not fair to get someone else to pay your mortgage, whether or not it’s an older property, inheritance, etc. Housing should never be an investment.
Even if no charges are laid, someone is dead. The intent to kill wasn’t there, but the impact is that someone is dead. It doesn’t matter if a person didn’t mean to kill someone, but again, someone is dead.
This is why impact matters far more than intent. This is an extreme example, but it still applies in all situations. Someone might want to argue their way out of offending someone else, but the damage has already been done.
Okay.
Both are about impact vs intent. Both are about harm. I’m sorry you can’t see that.
If I accidentally spill hot coffee on you and say that it was an accident, you’re still going to be upset. You’d be more upset if I said I did it on purpose, but let’s not pretend that being offensive accidentally is okay.
Neither my nationality (I’m not American) nor my politics (I’m not liberal) have anything to do with this. The fact that I’m disabled means that this is a matter near and dear to my heart, and I can indeed be worried about more than one thing at a time (the eroding of trans rights in my own country, for example). It’s not privileged to want to discuss the impact of language.
Have you heard the expression “white lies and black truths”? The intent behind “simply stating a fact” can indeed be hurtful.
But I really don’t think we’re going to run out of words. There’s at least a half million in English, and even counting obscure ableist terms, we’re talking about maybe thirty. Pretty small percentage.
But what’s great about this is finding new and creative ways to express yourself! “My points fell on rocky ground” — Biblical allusion. “They believed me as if I were Cassandra” - Greek. “My words fell on them like the sun under an umbrella.” If you want to keep the synecdoche, “Their ears weren’t ready to hear me”. There’s opportunities to be really creative and poetic if you’re interested in language as rhetoric!
Colloquially, nobody will blink at “They refused to listen” or “It was like I was talking to a tree”.
I’m autistic, and so I come off pretty blunt sometimes. I am really passionate about disability justice, but blasting people just hardens their position and makes them unwilling to listen. I’m glad that you weren’t offended! :)
It’s really not that many words. If you google ableist terms, you’ll find maybe what, ten? I think it’s reasonable to stop using ten words. What you’re saying by refusing to do so is that you don’t think that some people or groups deserve respect.
Nobody is asking you to protest, or to write letters, change your diet, change what you do with your free time, change your job… Just stop using a few words. Hell, I’d be happy if you just considered cutting some words out of your vocabulary. If you’re at least willing to think about it, I think that’s reasonable. :)
It takes people time to change their minds. Hopefully you run across this debate in different contexts. In fact, try bringing it up with friends and/or family to see how they react!
If you’ve stopped using the r word because it’s offensive, that’s great! Really. Hopefully this discussion (like the linked article) will convince you that there are other terms commonly used that are just as offensive. If you can find alternatives to the r word, then you can also probably find alternatives to “deaf” and “stupid”, for example. Regardless, I appreciate that you’re trying!
Intent is actually not everything. Legally speaking, if I run over a person with a car and they die, I can’t get away with it by saying, “well, I didn’t intend to kill them, so there shouldn’t be a consequence”. The impact of that person’s death is greater. It’s not murder, but it’s still manslaughter.
Ableist language is the same: it still causes harm, but obviously not harm to the body.
There’s a difference between intent and impact (which is in and of itself a pretty important concept in antiracism). Basically, impact always trumps intent. If I use a phrase that insults someone else, and I said “I didn’t mean it that way, so you shouldn’t feel insulted”… well, that doesn’t work. It’s a pretty privileged position to say that an ableist expression is value neutral. If somebody is saying that a phrase is not okay with them, why argue? What’s the harm in just going, “Okay, I’ll stop using that phrase”? People don’t generally make up words to get offended at, and certainly don’t write articles (multiple articles, multiple books, multiple YouTube videos…) to try to invent outrage unless they’re trying to discredit this topic. If someone says that your language is harmful or discriminatory, what does it cost you to listen to them and to change the words you use?
Being mindful about language also forces us to be more critical of what we’re saying. Using an insult or slur is easy. Needing to avoid it means that we need to use our minds to engage with why we don’t like something, and that can be legitimately enlightening.
Is using racist language a “made-up problem”? If not, how is racist language different from ableist language?
Language changes. We’ve stopped using some expressions because we’ve realized how hurtful they are — the n word, all sorts of slurs related to being LGBTQ2S+, etc. Here’s one more. Doubling down on this is exactly like arguing that you should still be allowed to use the n word because it’s been used as an “expression” for more than half a century.
I just don’t get it. If someone tells me that a word or phrase I’m using is offensive, I’m going to apologize and stop using it. Why is this so hard? Why would people double down on wanting to offend others?
If nobody is trying to be offensive, and deaf people (one of whom wrote the linked article) are saying that using “deaf” in this way is offensive, and you continue to use it because you don’t care… you’re being offensive. Is it really so hard to change the language you use?
Why is it hard for you to believe? If someone is telling you that the language you’re using is harmful, is your reaction really to say, basically, that you don’t care and you’re going to continue using it?
I use it and pronounce it like “Mix”