Comments on: A brief PSA on language

By: You « I Am Not

You « I Am Not — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:26:09 +0000

[...] I’m going to pass over the issue with the word usage, because it’s been explained far better than I could hope to. Specifically, on FWD in their Ableist Word Profile series. I’m also going to pass over the difficulty of addressing such issues to people that either justify their usage of the terms or try to claim it’s oh so hard to break such habits as justification of not really trying, because this too has been explained far better than I could hope to. [...]

By: FW

FW — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:44:49 +0000

I was doing so good. I don’t think I had a single ableist word on my blog, because I started it right around the same time as that protest post on feministing went up – so I had a fresh start on a new blog, and then 2 days ago I wrote a post – it was one of those emotional ones where it was all pouring out, and I called myself crazy in the middle of it, and I didn’t even notice until later – after I had submitted it to the feministing community blog. I can’t even change the one on feministing, (it hasn’t been approved yet anyway) and I don’t wanna change the matching entry on my own blog and then have the one on feministing have “crazy” right in the damn middle and the one on my blog doesn’t have “crazy” right in the middle – I’m afraid people will check out both versions and think I’m just trying to mess with folks, or something. So I don’t even know if I should change the one I can change…. So anyway, sorry for this long boring story. :)

By: notemily

notemily — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:37:31 +0000

I’m working on it. I’ve used those words for so long that I do it automatically. The post on “idiot” helped challenge my assumptions about intelligence, but I’m still working on replacing those assumptions in my vocabulary. Years of ingrained habit take work to undo. Don’t get me wrong, though–I think that work is well worth doing.