this post was submitted on 02 May 2024

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What is Neurodivergence?

It's ADHD, Autism, OCD, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, bi-polar, aspd, etc etc etc etc

“neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior”

So, it’s very broad, if you feel like it describes you then it does as far as we're concerned

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1.) ableist language=post or comment will probably get removed (enforced case by case, some comments will be removed and restored due to complex situations). repeated use of ableist language=banned from comm and possibly site depending on severity. properly tagged posts with CW can use them for the purposes of discussing them

2.) always assume good faith when dealing with a fellow nd comrade especially due to lack of social awareness being a common symptom of neurodivergence

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Suggestions for replacing ableist words (hexbear.net)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I hear that this has been tried before but it didn't really land because finding viable substitutes for particular terms can be difficult. I'm fascinated by language though and I wanted to take a shot at this myself.

Just a disclaimer that I'm not trying to drag anyone over using any of these terms and I'm not going to pretend that I'm some paragon of anti-ableism myself - I have work to do on this front, you probably do too and if we all work together we can make some positive change and establish better habits and a more supportive culture in our communities.

Here's a list of words that are more socially acceptable in their ableism and some suggestions for alternatives:

Crazy, Stupid, Dumb, Moronic, Idiotic

[In the sense that something is incorrect or bad]

Silly, foolish, absurd, ridiculous, laughable, nonsense/nonsensical, illogical, incomprehensible, inscrutable, irrational, contradictory, hypocritical, self-defeating, naive, ill-conceived, inane, asinine, counterproductive, unbelievable,

Crazy, Mad

[In the sense of letting loose or being enthusiastic]

Going wild, getting stuck into something, in a frenzy, on a rampage, being engrossed, head over heels, obsessed.

Psychotic, Psychopath, Psycho

[In the sense that something is cruel]

Vicious, bloodthirsty, monstrous, horrific, sadistic, heartless, brutal, ruthless, horrendous, reprehensible, despicable, depraved.

Crippled

Hamstrung, moribund, incapacitated, impaired, ineffective/ineffectual, hog-tied (lol).

What are some other ableist words that are pretty commonplace even amongst the left that you've heard?

Are there terms that I have overlooked or any ones that you use yourself that you'd like to replace?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (3 children)

self-defeating personality disorder was once a formal diagnosis, just thought you should be aware.

I don't know if I'm allowed to say this here, but as someone who's been to a dozen different mental health, autism, and learning disability support groups in my time, with the exception of "psychotic" I've never seen anyone object to these terms.

Tangential, but I kinda miss the mad pride movement that was around about a decade ago.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

That's fascinating. This is the first time I've come across self-defeating personality disorder.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

mad pride movement

Do you have anything on this? I don't recall ever coming across it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Shit... this sounds vaguely familiar.

I bet I heard it on a Death Panel Podcast episode, maybe in their "carceral sanism" episode?

Oh... here's a Vice article... "Remembering Mad Pride"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Interesting. I wonder what caused it to not spread? Obviously it seems to have picked up international copycats but it didn't spread in the UK? Only one event per year nothing else in various local areas? It's an interesting concept and it would be interesting to analyse specifically why it failed to spread and what gay pride did differently to successfully expand. Understanding it might end up being important information for future organisers trying to create mass movements for change.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I really think it's context specific. Calling someone a cripple? Unacceptable. Saying a supply chain has been crippled? Most likely would not offend someone who finds 'cripple' offensive.

The only one here that's got anything to it is psychotic (and maybe moron/lame - but they're quite far removed from their origin now), and only in the sense that people misuse it. Psychotic means detached from reality, psychopathic means without empathy - people conflate the two, contributing to misrepresentation of the conditions. Then again, why am I making up a psychopath that cares about the representation of their condition? As if they give a shit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I really think it's context specific. Calling someone a cripple? Unacceptable. Saying a supply chain has been crippled? Most likely would not offend someone who finds 'cripple' offensive.

yeah i brought this one (and lame) up in the other thread. I feel like we've already excised that usage from common speech, it's something Bwaaa 's dad might call someone I guess, but sanctions being crippling or whatever isn't disparaging or marginalizing anyone.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Calling a situation Crazy is punching across the isle at the person who hears and gets dis-regulated. Switching what the word is doesn’t change the situation. I’m 100% positive that there are people who would not like to hear things called lame or crippled because yes that is still used disparagingly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

because yes that is still used disparagingly.

where, by whom? zero points for fossils like "jesus healed the sick and mended the lame"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (6 children)

I’m sorry, are we not in a room talking about this very phenomena. It’s not about specific actions, it’s about a pattern of disrespect and the underlying structure.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Stupid

Okay I'm a bit curious about this one, why is it considered ableist? Terms like "moron" and "idiot" were actually used to refer to people with intellectual disabilities in the past, but looking up "stupid" it appears it just comes from a Latin word for a comic relief character in plays. As far as I can tell it was never used in any official medical context and was just a generic insult for "low intelligence".

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's not that it was ever a medical term, the issue is disparaging someone based on their perceived level of intelligence rather than anything that they're actually doing wrong. Almost everyone with learning disabilities will have been called stupid for their conditions hundreds of times, even if they aren't doing anything morally wrong; meanwhile half the time us Hexbears call something or someone stupid, it's completely off base because it's mostly not an issue of intelligence but an issue of morality and class interest. It's a little like calling someone fat to offend them, when they're not even overweight.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Okay but wouldn't that mean any insult based around intelligence is ableist? So calling someone "ignorant", "dense", "oblivious", "incoherent", ect.

Also not all lack of intelligence is caused by disability, sometimes it's born of laziness and lack of curiosity.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ignorance has nothing to do with intelligence, nor does being oblivious or dense, those are a lack of knowledge and personality traits respectively, and incoherent is just a subjective descriptor, something is or is not incoherent it's not a value judgment, and not related to intelligence either

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

We need a word that specifically targets the sort of person who is chronically incurious, but who constantly feels the need to speak their nonsense opinion, which if you read between the lines usually boils down to "that's scary, let's just keep doing the same thing" dragging the entire conversation down because they neither know what they're talking about nor care to find out. I think that specific situation is what we mean, at least on hexbear if not generally, when we say someone is "being stupid" or the like.

If you literally meant to tell someone that you think their brain is bad because of consequences of their birth, then you should reevaluate whether you really want to do that, which is where this post comes in.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I come up against this wall often. Sometimes I do something myself that I would consider "stupid" and frankly the only thing I've found that feels like a good replacement is "ill-conceived" and "thoughtless" blob-no-thoughts . Depending on the scenario being whether I feel rather negative about it or positive about it would determine whether I lean more towards "stupid" over "thoughtless" though. Maybe that's self-ableism but I sort of don't think it is, without viewing my own actions and determining whether they were the application of good or bad ability-wise I would not improve at a given task, so some sort of analysis of ability at various things is a necessity in basic life.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ignorance and intelligence are different things. I think willful ignorance would denote lack of intelligence, however.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

The most willfully ignorant people I've ever met were quite smart

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It’s bad faith. If you have to go back to a dictionary and say “look see this isn’t offensive you’re wrong” then maybe take a step back

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In past the logic being presented to me for why all the other terms are harmful is that they historically referred to actually developmental disabilities. If the actual argument is that they are just words that make people feel bad that's fine but I think we should be consistent then, really this could be applied to most non-specific insults then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It’s a way of trying to get people to grasp an issue they couldn’t normally. It’s a tool for bridging a communication gap. It’s a specific type of example of a structural problem. You are looking at trees and not the forest.

really this could be applied to most non-specific insults then.

Yes, and it should, but that’s an intersectional issue

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Okay, that makes sense.

Just to be clear, I am a big believer the left should try and have a consistent logic about these things, because if we don't I think it leads to assholes, wreckers and weirdos co-opting and abusing our arguments. You end up with people arguing that "gusano" is a slur and that Israel is a "indigenous nation" and getting more pull with baby leftists than they should.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

As much as you may hate debate tactics, maybe searching for new versions of "scruffy looking nerf herder" that have punch but simultaneously don't offend anybody is less fruitful work than developing attacks on the bogus ideas being presented by your shitheaded adversaries.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This is intended to get people to consider the implicit ableism in the way they use language and to suggest alternatives so that radical spaces can be more inclusive and less oppressive towards people with disability.

[This] is less fruitful work than developing attacks on the bogus ideas being presented by your shitheaded adversaries

I disagree with this framing.

I'm not trying to convince anyone that the necessary work is to find inoffensive ways to insult people.

I feel like this is veering into rehashing the same discussions that have taken place in defense of things like sexism, racism, queerphobia (especially transphobia) in radical spaces; no, eliminating transphobia isn't going to be enough usher in the revolution but at the same time this is not a valid reason for ignoring or even perpetuating transphobia.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Downside is, it doesn't do anything for when comrades use the same language without thinking about it.

Listening/watching YT videos about the Genocide of Palestinians and the anti genocide campus protests, pretty much everybody keeps using "insane" and "crazy" without thinking about it. There's nothing pathological about being a fascist.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

To be fair, it didn't cross my mind watching those videos at all. I was thinking more about how to replace my language in private conversation (Maybe Mao would call that liberalism.) where it's much more effective not to do any name calling at all and just be more specific about why someone sucks, and when going back-and-forth with people who are actually arguing in good faith rather than Zionists who should just have their crimes announced for all to hear if you want to insult them. How about "baby murderer" is that okay to call people?

If you're genuinely alarmed about student protestors calling Zionists "psycho" I think you may just have priorities which are fundamentally different from mine and we have no basis for conversation.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Don't forget "unserious." That one hits the hardest!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Have you considered that I want to say mean things and make people feel bad

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're probably hitting more than just your intended target if you're using ableist words.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

"Bozo", "clown", "clownish", and "circus" as words for incorrect/bad stand out right away as words we can use.

If we're including the word "sadistic" after the Marquis de Sade, perhaps we should include the word "libertine" itself?

Edit: I misunderstood the sentence I was quoting, nvm

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

bozo is such a good one

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

"Bozo", "clown", "clownish", and "circus"

Hey now we shouldn't encourage anti-clown sentiment here

joker-shopping

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I like mindless as a substitute for the first set as it’s typically a more accurate description of what’s going on. They don’t lack intelligence, they’re choosing to do things without stopping to think about them. Or maybe adopting some hexbearisms, brainwormed?

Bizarre or bizarro is a nice substitute for the middle two as well.

[+] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Isn't the implication of "low intelligence" the ableist part? The words don't matter so much as the pathologizing of "intelligence."

Me not thinking through the consequences of an action doesn't meant that I have low intelligence.

Me refusing to argue with you in good faith and being willfully ignorant doesn't mean that I have low intelligence.

Me not having the same interest in a subject, not reading the same books, understanding the arguments and critiques at the same level as you doesn't mean that I have low intelligence.

Knowing less about something that somebody else, or not having the same ability to remember the details about a subject doesn't mean that I have low intelligence.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Isn't the implication of "low intelligence" the ableist part? The words don't matter so much as the pathologizing of "intelligence."

This. Exactly this. People are missing the forest for the trees.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Good question.

The easy answer is words like unintelligent, dense, oblivious, ignorant etc.

To answer the broader question though I think it's worth considering how you frame your understanding of something that you'd call stupid - we can use words that are euphemisms for ableist terms but that doesn't really address the underlying beliefs, sorta like how politicians will use racist dogwhistles like "gangs" and "inner-city crime" to make a statement that is essentially the same thing that would have been said 75 years ago with the only difference being that they aren't using the N-word. What happens in this situation is known as the euphemism treadmill where a new word slots into the gap left by the removal of an older slur and it gradually adopts the same qualities of the older slur because the usage of the word and the underlying beliefs remain the same.

So in that sense I personally try to think of terms that are more specific and more descriptive - a term like dumb is usually a catch-all term that can be applied virtually anywhere but often I find if I think about the way in which something is bad, I can use a more suitable alternative.

It's a bit like how the word "good" encompasses a whole lot of different positives depending on context: strong, healthy, agreeable, friendly, beautiful, delicious, durable, cost-effective, morally correct, clever etc.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

100-com

You can't really insult someone by saying they're not intelligent enough without it being ableist. I still have a long way to go to improve my own vocabulary and root out some ableist brainworms, but the fundamental idea we all gotta grapple with is that there are enormous structural forces that have shaped the way we assess a human's worth. Those forces stem, in large part, from ableism and all other forms of bigotry. We should think long and hard about why we use certain words to disparage people (especially when we feel that they deserve it 100%) and how they reflect negative societal attitudes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

if we're recognizing that IQ is fake and "intelligence" is either also fake or so general as to be nearly meaningless as a one-dimensional measure, what are we even referring to if we're trying to be disparaging on that basis?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

It's like race. Race is fake, there's no actual physical or biological reality backing it up. But because of the superstructure that surrounds those notions, there's arbitrary traits that a person has about them that determine what role they play in the system.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Would impaired be problematic?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Honest answer: in terms of objects or structural forces (e.g. The Houthi attacks on freight entering into Israel has impaired Israel's ability to import goods) nobody's gonna bat an eye.

In terms of making it personal (e.g. "Are you impaired?") that is problematic imo.

If the sun is in your eyes and it's impairing your ability to see, though, that's very neutral and not problematic from my perspective.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Got you, I was thinking of the second one. But I think I agree with you on the first use

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

That makes it sound like they’re drunk

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

For me the hardest to replace has been "That's crazy!" in a neutral/positive connotation for unexpected, off the wall, out of bounds, wild, shocking. Would love to hear other suggestions for this because most replacements I've found for "crazy" have negative connotations.