My personal space. Expect asexuality, queer nerding, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and the odd post about pets.
Ah, hell. Thoughts on disability and language use...
...which I've gone and shared on MeFi. Eeek.
The thing is, the focus on word choice and language when discussing ableism bugs the crap out of me. We used to say when I was paneling for the Lambda Alliance and explaining to clueless straight people what terminology was okay and what was offensive, that we can tell when an ugly word is meant in ignorant-but-trying kindness and when a polite word is thrown as a slur.
I... don't think words changing fixes the problem, is the thing. I think the thing which is important is changing the attitudes that the words underly. Changing the words themselves is like a plaster to cover the symptoms without really addressing the underlying problem.



