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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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When people talk about 'privilege,' this is what they mean. When you really stop to think about it, a huge amount of our casual insults/denigrations come down to slurs on anthropomorphized objects. If you believe that propagating such language is hurtful to the people the slur represents, you can make yourself crazy thinking about all the synonyms for 'bad.'
Is it really awful? Who knows...probably depends on the degree, but one can imagine that someone actually living with whatever deviation, someone who spends their life with awareness that their 'lameness' means they will never be the Adonis- or Venus-like advertising model, might become hypersensitive to those words. I'm not saying that we need to shun people who use 'sucks [dick]' or 'lame' instead of 'bad,' but I appreciate the people who make that effort.
It's kind of the bring-your-own-bag approach to inclusivity. Using your own bag at the grocery store isn't going to influence climate change; stopping slur-based judgements isn't going to end discrimination; but they're things an individual can do to feel a little better.
I get that, I really do. Thing is, life is hard and arduous a lot of the time and I have way too many things on my mind to even link a word like 'lame' to a meaning like that.
And a lot of people DO shun other people for using this language, which I get when words like 'gay' are used as an insult.
I'd definitely not call myself privileged because I use the word 'lame' though.
@RobertOwnageJunior @tburkhol It is privilege to not have to worry or even consider how lazy language impacts people who are different from you.
If you can understand why using "gay" with a negative connotation perpetuates harm to LGBTQ+ folks, you can figure out why the same applies to applying negative connotations to language around disablity.
If you don't have to worry about how these negative associations cause harm, that is a privilege.
@RobertOwnageJunior @tburkhol an easy example of unexamined privilege is being able to say "I don’t even think of handicapped people at all when I hear that word."
So can I use dumb? Because some people are relatively unintelligent due to their disability. Will they feel attacked when I say 'this is dumb'? Does that make me privileged?
Like, how specific do we get? Wouldn't it be easier to differentiate between people using these words as insults or otherwise?
I have my problems as well, for example I am unusually tall, which makes for some problems in my day to day life, for example finding the right shoes/clothing. Is someone using the phrase 'huge problem'' privileged? Is there a line we draw, or can we only ever use perfectly neutral phrases.
I am living my life trying to be nice and sensible to everyone, can't that be enough?
Because people are way too easily offended nowadays.
See, often times this exact sentence is also just used by people as an excuse to be an asshole. Which I think is equally as big a problem.
I am not sensitive at all, but if some random dude comes up to me and calls be a big, ugly dumbass? Ima be honest, that dude's getting punched probably.
Perhaps. This is a targeted attack on you though. So you're naturally expected to be angry and attack someone. It's not the same thing. False equivalency.
What's happening here is censorship of others because you don't like it. Censoring others is not the right way to do things. You can't just go around telling people to change just because someone might be offended.
Maybe not the violence but, but this is basically how people are supposed to handle being upset: you take responsibility and action.
Instead people do nothing to solve the problem directly, and instead go around telling the whole world that it needs to change to accommodate them.
Don't tell someone they are being short with you when they are mad because thats an attack on height challenged individuals
That's a good point, but do those handicapped people actually identify as 'lame'? I feel like you guys are really trying to find a reason to not use certain words because there might be one person in your country that's maybe offended by it. Imo, most people (handicapped or not) aren't really offended by most words, except straight up derogatory terms (N-Word being the obvious one).
I don't think any of the admittedly few people in wheelchairs I know would be offended by my usage of the word 'lame'.