Ableist language

Minish said:

What's really the point of inventing silly situations? I've never been asked to respect a trigger for something like that! If you can't tell between someone genuinely has PTSD and someone who's just having cheap laughs, that's something you need to improve on. If you can't tell, why assume the worst when someone's health is at stake? The only time I hear about weird triggers is pretty much when people invent them as strawmen.

It's kind of like with particularly unconventional pronouns. Even if they invented a set nobody else uses just to feel ~unique~ or whatever, it doesn't matter because you do it anyway just in case. You can't pretend you're good with things like this if you pick and choose.

... if someone is sent into a nervous panic because you're mentioning cliffs, yes do not mention cliffs?????? Nobody's ~forbidding~ anything, you know! It's your own responsibility to not hurt someone so massively. That was such a bad example because why would any decent person purposefully talk about skyscrapers to someone if they know it's going to hurt them.

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Because in a city, there are skyscrapers. People work in them. People live in them. People put signs on them. You can't account for every eventuality. Of course some triggers are going to be rarer than others, but my real question is: what is your selection mechanisms? Who are you going to account for? What are you not going to account for? If you decide not to account for certain people, is that also discrimination?

My point is that there are things we can reasonably accept as triggers and the opposite also happens: there are things, like you just showed, that are too silly to take seriously! But my point is that you are drawing a line in the middle somewhere, and I am trying to figure out just where the hell you are drawing that line, because I have the feeling I will draw the line somewhere else. So in fact the question is: you want to draw a new line, and I am pointing out: "where the hell are you going to draw this line?" Because I am perfectly okay with not allowing ableist (or rather discriminatory in general) language use, but in that case I would like a clear set of guidelines that don't leave too much room for interpretation, because I cannot keep track of everybody's personal annoyances. I don't know all of you personally.

The linguistical thing with the pronouns is a problem that should be solved differently in my opinion - there should be a gender-aspecific pronoun in the spoken language that you can use (or some impersonal form, depending on structure) that is good to use. Swedish has solved it elegantly. I know Russian has a neuter pronoun (but that would make it sound like you're equivalent to a chair). But in English most of these solutions sound very stilted. The best I can do is use singular they, I think that is the most fair solution. Language is something we all share and need to have a consensus on, it doesn't really work if people spawn all their own dialects.

But I'm guessing you don't actually have PTSD? And yeah, I would honestly make an effort to avoid saying a name that hurts you. ?_?

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Kind of you, but you should use the name in my opinion. It is my responsibility to deal with my problems, and if I break down, that means I'm not coping. It doesn't do to live life as if you're constantly within some bubble trying to protect yourself from ham. It's a paranoid way of life when you're sheltering yourself from all sorts of damage. We are vulnerable. We can limit our triggers within reason, but if I want to discuss the author of Pippi Longstocking, famous squares in Antwerp, or do my postman round, I should be able to do it without flinching and I cannot exactly ask people to take the signs off their front doors. Responsibility is a two-way street.

And for the record, I have no fucking clue whether I am suffering from something or not, but the only thing I can say is that I have been pretty shit for the past couple of months. For various reasons. So I have no clue as how to honestly answer your latter statement. But that's a question for another day.

My point is: how, and what, do you want to enforce?

... if someone is sent into a nervous panic because you're mentioning cliffs, yes do not mention cliffs?????? Nobody's ~forbidding~ anything, you know! It's your own responsibility to not hurt someone so massively. That was such a bad example because why would any decent person purposefully talk about skyscrapers to someone if they know it's going to hurt them.
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But I'm guessing you don't actually have PTSD? And yeah, I would honestly make an effort to avoid saying a name that hurts you. ?_?

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Granted, we're talking about slightly different things here now - personal vs. public policy. It's hard to argue that the forum should have a policy against mentioning the name of Tarvos's ex, even if individuals personally talking to Tarvos would be polite to avoid it.

But I do think we have a meaningful, nonarbitrary distinction between e.g. crazy and that: the trigger for crazy is not specific to Verne, because what is potentially triggering about it applies to a large group of people in general rather than only people who have had some of Verne's specific experiences.

I'm still iffy on doling out warnings for words that only hypothetically bother someone; if someone here is genuinely triggered by the ableist connotations of something like 'stupid' or 'absurd', then let's try to avoid them, but if not, it seems like something of a pointless endeavour to undertake just for the principle of the thing and not because real harm is being caused. They seem considerably more divorced from their ableist meanings than 'crazy'; 'absurd' is never, ever used as a slur, insult or otherwise in any relation to deaf/mute people to my knowledge, so I have a hard time seeing how it could trigger someone except for some unrelated personal reason. (Granted, taking intelligence to be ableist in general, 'stupid' is worse off in that regard - though it's hard to see how that genuinely useful concept could be expressed in a way that doesn't invoke intelligence in any fashion.)

EDIT: On further reflection, stupid is definitely one of the worse ways to express that sentiment. It is used as an insult against people and could fairly easily be triggering in that light; the primary mitigating factor would just be being desensitized by how commonly it's used. A lot of other words in that direction aren't used as insults and would thus be less likely to trigger.

Agreed. How large should the group be? I assume we are talking about things that refer to conditions such as deaf/blind/Down's syndrome/etc.?

Tarvos said:

Agreed. How large should the group be? I assume we are talking about things that refer to conditions such as deaf/blind/Down's syndrome/etc.?

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I think we're missing something here.

Poly said:

However words like 'crazy' and 'insane' are not only triggering for more people consistently, they also imply negative things about a subset of people and add to the idea that mental illness is something to be avoided, which is not a good way to look at things.

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These kind of words are marginalizing. 'Salmon' and 'skyscraper' are not.

If they are used as a direct insult, sure, but it's not marginalising if I say "that's an insane amount of gold you've got stored in Fort Knox". Then it just means you sure got a lot of gold.

Tarvos said:

If they are used as a direct insult, sure, but it's not marginalising if I say "that's an insane amount of gold you've got stored in Fort Knox". Then it just means you sure got a lot of gold.

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"Insane" in this case (and in most cases) is meant in a way that implies that the amount of gold is too much or unreasonable. Even when used as a positive, the word tends to have connotations of excess or irrationality. Not in every case, but I would wager most of the time.

Tarvos said:

If they are used as a direct insult, sure, but it's not marginalising if I say "that's an insane amount of gold you've got stored in Fort Knox". Then it just means you sure got a lot of gold.

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I think it was mentioned earlier in the thread that using crazy as an exemplifier isn't so much of a problem (though do speak up if I am wrong, someone). It's one thing to say 'I love Adventure Time, it's crazy good' but another thing to say 'Adventure Time is so weird, Pendleton Ward must be fuckin' crazy'. using crazy to connote something as bad, or weird, or over the top, or absurd, etc. is a larger problem, and this is what I feel that Verne and probably others are upset by. You're grabbing everyone who's regularly held under that label and attaching that attitude to them without them doing anything.

But I honestly don't see what's merited by such a strong need to 'draw the line'; like I get that in principle, but in reality we're a small forum in a small corner of the pokemon fandom on the internet. If people are comfortable to say 'these words trigger me and I'd appreciate if people used alternatives', I don't see how it's going to escalate to the great lengths you're using as examples (like salmon or skyscraper being triggering. Also I completely agree with Cirrus in that I only ever see ridiculous examples when someone is making a strawman out of it). Besides, it's not like we wouldn't notice someone trolling and making up triggers for lols.

Like I dunno, if we can go to the effort to put hide tags or spoilers on triggering content, is it that much more of an effort to think for an extra half-second to think of a better word? I used to genuinely have trouble not calling things 'retarded' or 'stupid' and now I find it pretty easy to think of better words. I mean, I'm still getting there with 'lame' - even though I don't personally see how it's offensive. It's not about me.

I think it would be a good idea to grab a couple words that are more or less universally agreed to be kind of shitty, and then if anyone else has more objections they can speak up? I mean most of the time I think it's common for people to send a message or post in-thread if they're uncomfortable with something, but I don't know how easy that is for them to do. I have heard it's common for people with especially unusual triggers to kinda work it out for themselves instead of asking a lot of people to work around it, but I don't personally know anyone who is triggered by something very unusual. If anyone has any real experience with that it'd be great if you could elaborate.

I don't know. I feel like this is a lot of fuss when really it's about not ruining people's good vibes when they're just trying to browse a pokemon forum.

edit:

It doesn't do to live life as if you're constantly within some bubble trying to protect yourself from ham.

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so this is probably entirely inappropriate and I know it's a typo, but this made me laugh. :D

Yeah my typing is a little bit ham-fisted lately.

I don't really get why accommodating for people who ask you not to use certain words is such a Bad Thing

there's like. more than a million words in the english language. finding an alternative is kind of easy. there are already lists for your convenience

Also the difference between a racist and me, a supposed "ableist", would be that race has little to do with a person's actual ability to do anything but whether a person is competent or not is a major factor in people's ability to do productive tasks.

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I was mostly referring to the agrument tactics you were using rather than the actual content. They seem very circular with a lack of real evidence other than hypothetical opinions, for the most part.

Actually, I try very hard for art, but I still am the worst. Probably because my school has this category which "grades" you for effort, so effort doesn't go into the actual grade...

But I agree with you, you should put them in a different class to suit them better, if it doesn't "hinder" anyone else that is unrelated.

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Regardless of how the grading system works, do you understand the metaphor?

Out of curiosity, have you ever actually been in classes with disabled people? They usually don’t change what everyone is doing to fit those with disabilities; I’ve never seen that happen. One of my closest friends has muscular dystrophy and is physically unable to run or walk long distances, for example, so when we had mile times or something he would be given an alternate assignments. When my friends and I passed the ball with him or something it was by choice, nobody ever forced us to hang out with him, even though he’s a really cool guy. Anyway, usually they would give the disabled person an alternate assignment that would challenge them personally at the same level the normal assignment would to a non-disabled person.

I really hate to sound like the whole “separate but equal” thing, but our school district at least tries to challenge everyone at the same relative level. I wouldn’t call it “hindering” to play wheelchair basketball (Heck, I’d think it was fun and I’d certainly get an appreciation for how to use those things, they can be hard to maneuver!) but its plain unfair to try and to the opposite and bring up those who physically or mentally cannot.

Because of that they usually group the kids with autism together so that they can all learn together. I’m sure a community feeling comes out of that as well, though my only experience with the whole class rather than individuals comes from performing a play for them a few years back.

I have to disagree. Obviously, using words such as "retarded" is unacceptable, and possibly even "insane" and "crazy", but if someone asks me to stop using less severe words such as "stupid" and "mad" it's not very fair, is it?

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I think that’s where the matter of opinion comes in. Its impossible to cover every single trigger word, even if we banned those too. I personally wouldn’t have a problem saying the word “stupid” or “mad”, but if someone in a conversation personally requested I don’t, I’d find another alternative while talking to that person out of courtesy for their opinion. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to change your whole form of speaking, but its like stopping yourself from saying “Oh my God” when you’re in a room full of deeply religious people. Or something. Does that make sense?

In other words—and this is general to this whole thread as well— I think the very loaded words like the r-word should definitely be banned since we know they have a very high response, but for ones that are more watered-down, and more commonplace in everyday language, we leave that up to individuals to request it. Its not like people are going to be like “NO!” if you ask something of them.