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Can you educate me on the R word, please?
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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askchapo
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If you believe broadly that people should be given dignity regardless of gender, sexuality, race, disability, appearance, etc. etc. etc., it should be clear that using a descriptor of those things to mean something generally negative deprives them of that dignity. You're saying they're lesser, inferior, below you, purely because they don't fit into the status quo.
genuinely asking, hopefully this doesn't come off as some reddit snark bullshit since it's a super obvious sounding question, but what about calling things dumb, or stupid then? is that also ableist? or is it not ableist because it's more just saying something is generally bad as opposed to being specifically "r"?
A lot of people DO avoid using those words and ask people to refrain from using "dumb" and "stupid" in their presence. Small children are taught that calling someone stupid is mean. It is ableist to insult someone's intelligence like that, but it is an ableism that a lot of society tolerates.
As far as "why can't I use this slur if other words mean roughly the same thing" - I feel like this is obvious. You can say someone is black, but you should not call them the N word, even if the N word means "a black person".
I see a big gulf between words that are merely mean and ones we see (and want others to see) as so denigrating that they rise to the level of slurs. Conflating the two waters down the impact of labeling a word like the r-word a slur.
I haven't bought that words like "dumb" or "stupid" are abelist slurs because even in their harshest common usage those words mean "only a little below average." It's like ripping on someone for placing last in a 100-meter dash by a step or two. It doesn't seem enough to rise to the level of a slur, even if it is literally insulting ability, because on its face it's not implying you're all that far off from where most people are anyway.
The best argument I've seen against using those types of minor digs is that they're imprecise. You don't really mean Billy did something stupid, you mean he exercised poor judgment or acted carelessly.
The etymology of dumb is rooted in ableism, yeah. ~~I'm not sure about stupid.~~ Those are two I struggle with to this day, because in my mind they're so detached from the ableist definitions. I've never in my life associated dumb with a mute person, for example, even though that's the definition.
~~To be completely real, I'm not sold on 'stupid' being ableist but~~ I'll try to avoid the language if it has the possibility to be harmful, e.g. I edited one of my recent comments from stupid to silly. Ignorant is another good alternative.
EDIT: Okay, yeah, the etymology of 'stupid' is also rooted in ableism.