After recent discussions and changes to the Code of Conduct, the Disabled community would like to give some clarification on the use of ableist language. There has been a lot of debate on what is and isn’t ableist, and we would like to clarify some key points and offer some considerations for users when communicating here and elsewhere online. This is not a guide to what to say or how to speak. We merely wish to educate and provide examples around some of the language-related issues that impact people with disabilities, with the hope that we can encourage mindfulness when interacting with your fellow users, who may or may not be disabled.
"Language is inherently political. Both as individuals and as larger social and cultural groups, it is self-evident that the language we use to express all sorts of ideas, opinions, and emotions, as well as to describe ourselves and others, is simultaneously reflective of existing attitudes and influential to developing attitudes.
The terms that are listed below are part of an expanding English-language glossary of ableist words and terms. I have chosen to include words or phrases that I know of or that are brought to my attention that meet two criteria: 1) Their literal or historical definition derives from a description of disability, either in general or pertaining to a specific category of disability, and 2) They have been historically and or currently used to marginalize, other, and oppress disabled people."
-from Ableist Words And Terms To Avoid
For those looking for examples of generally ableist terms/phrases, the article linked above is a semi-comprehensive list the Disabled community refers to, linked under #9 in our community sidebar. There, you’ll find a list of words that are ableist in origin, but not necessarily slurs or insults. If you're looking for alternatives, we'd suggest trying to be more precise in your language and clarify your meaning. One of the examples provided is "blind to / blinded by", which is by no means a slur, but can be ableist in context. You can, of course, say you were blinded by the light of the sun/ headlights/ a flashlight and not be ableist, because this is what happens when you look into bright light. However, if someone misses an obvious detail and you say "You’d have to be blind not to see it", it is ableist. Note that in the ableist context, you could also call that person "stupid" for missing a detail, when all you meant to say was "You missed this detail." Using the phrase "You’d have to be blind not to see it" normalizes the idea that blindness is a bad thing that should be avoided. Blind people should have agency over the connotation of the word blindness and not be influenced by our negative usage of it to think that their condition is inherently bad.
Ableist slurs and expressions are commonly used to convey frustration and outrage. If a person is thoughtlessly hurting you and is seemingly not paying attention to how you feel, you would be rightfully outraged. Some people would call that person a psychopath, or sociopath. As most of us are not medically trained professionals who can tell the difference between a cruel person (or merely a cruel act committed by a person) and an actual psychopath/ sociopath/ etc., the disabled community would argue that terms like these, which pathologize certain behaviors, are ableist outside of a medically diagnosed context. Calling someone who commits something evil a psychopath/ sociopath/ etc., or using a descriptive word like insane/ crazy, assigns an inherent evil to anyone suffering from such associated conditions. Using it in this way implies that all people with these disabilities are evil. If someone is treating you cruelly, call them out on this, as is your right, but be mindful of how you interact with others. Some people are cruel, and some things happen by accident and/or with no ill intent.
Similar to how you wouldn’t mock or bully a blind person for their blindness, you also shouldn’t do this to someone who has a hidden disability. ADHD, autism, diabetes, Crohn's disease, and a multitude of other physical and mental disabilities have an array of issues that are not always obvious to non-affected people. Some of us are sensitive to noise or bright lights, others are so restricted in their diet that they can’t eat vegan or vegetarian. The point of being less ableist both in deed as well as in word is to not judge someone for needing special accommodations, may that be offline or online. We as a community ask you to be mindful of each other’s boundaries and needs, our seen and unseen struggles.
It is on us to communicate, learn, and resolve conflicts amicably instead of using ableist insults or terms as a default. It takes effort, and no one is naturally good at this, but as human beings, we are able to learn, adapt and overcome our differences. The disabled community would appreciate if we made a collective effort to try and be less ableist towards each other, to make both the site but also our everyday lives more accommodating for everyone, whether we are ourselves disabled or not. If you find yourself using ableist language, please take a moment to examine how your perspective has been informed by ableism. We've all participated and been subject to ableist structures, and now more than ever it is essential for us to unlearn our conditioned acceptance of ableism.
If you are interested in learning more about ableism and the use of ableist language, we have a small, non-comprehensive list of reading materials you may want to check out. The last three links lead to external websites, the ones before to Anna’s Archive:
Constructing Ableism - Stephanie Jenkins
Mothers of children without disabilities’ conceptions of inclusive education: unveiling an exclusionary education system privileging normality and ableism - Sultan Kilinc
The Relationships Between COVID-19 Anxiety, Ageism, and Ableism - Amanda A. Arcieri
Counteracting Dysconscious Racism and Ableism Through Fieldwork: Applying DisCrit Classroom Ecology in Early Childhood Personnel Preparation - Christine L. Hancock; Chelsea W. Morgan; James Holly
Ableism in the medical profession - Neilson, Shane
Ableism (The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice) || Contending with Ableism from Internalized Ableism to Collective Action - Narioâ Redmond, Michelle R.
Hostile, Benevolent, and Ambivalent Ableism: Contemporary Manifestations - Nario‐Redmond, Michelle R.; Kemerling, Alexia A.; Silverman, Arielle
The Ableism of Quality of Life Judgments in Disorders of Consciousness: Who Bears Epistemic Responsibility? - Reynolds, Joel Michael
Ableism (The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice) || Justifying Ableism - Nario‐Redmond, Michelle R.
Cultural and Impairment‐Specific Stereotype - Michelle R. Nario-Redmond
Online Othering (Exploring Digital Violence and Discrimination on the Web) || Othering Political Women: Online Misogyny, Racism and Ableism Towards Women in Public Life - Lumsden, Karen; Harmer, Emily
#MeCripple: ableism, microaggressions, and counterspaces on Twitter in Spain - Eva Moral; Agustín Huete; Emiliano Díez
Ableism, racism, and the quality of life of Black, Indigenous, people of colour with intellectual and developmental disabilities - Carli Friedman
Structural Ableism — Essential Steps for Abolishing Disability Injustice - Rupa Sheth Valdez; Bonnielin K. Swenor
The Association for Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), Identity-first vs. person-first language is an important distinction - Tara Haelle
Ly Xīnzhèn Zhǎngsūn Brown (Lydia X. Z. Brown) Ableist words/terms list as mentioned above
Language Style Guide - National Center on Disability and Journalism Disability
I very recently used one of the example words from your post in a way that didn’t feel ableist to me:
uses blind in maybe an ableist way
Maybe [my upbringing] had more impact [on my politics] than I recognize and I just am blind to it.Looking back on it, I could have either left off the last part or phrased it differently, maybe “and I just don’t realize it.” and going forward that seems like a better route than trying to determine whether I’ve used it in an ableist way or not when the context isn’t clearly on the acceptable side, but I’m still interested in feedback if anybody is willing: the way I used it feels to me like it sits somewhere between the example of derogatory usage and acceptable. Was my usage ableist?
As I am not myself blind, I don't feel qualified to reply properly to your question and would like a blind comrade to answer your question as well. What I can tell you as a general rule of thumb is that you thinking about how your choice of words may have been ableist is already a good thing (and incidentally also what the community wanted to achieve with the post).
And this is already a good way of analyzing what you said, and you're also thinking about how to say it differently. I appreciate you asking!
I'm not visually impaired but this is the position that I'd take:
What you said takes a disability and uses it in a metaphorical way. This is how ableist language and framing creeps into discourse.
Why metaphorical? Because you are using the concept of "seeing" as a placeholder for awareness. Thus, the implication of using blind in this sense is that blind people lack awareness. Obviously I'm not gonna belabor the point but the reality is that it's not the case whatsoever.
So if we get to the root of what you're communicating here in what you are directly implying (i.e. not in your awareness) then we arrive at some alternative words that lack ableist subtext (and all done dialectically, in fact):
"I was unaware of..."
"I was oblivious to..."
"I was ignorant of..."
If using a word like blind in this context casts blind people in a certain way, you can ask what it implies about blind people by you saying it. By doing so, you peel back the layers while unpacking some latent ableism and you arrive at words that are more suitable - your phrasing unintentionally implied that blind people are unaware/oblivious/ignorant etc. and thus those words are central to the concept you were communicating. This means we can cut out the ableist middleman term and go directly to using those words instead.
This reply isn't meant to drag you or anything, I'm just elaborating on an approach that I use to do this work in my own life. I've found that the more I practice this, the more I get into the habit of using a word like oblivious instead of reaching for a word like blind.
(This also happens to have interesting implications for the internal discourse within the disability community for a term like "time blindness", but that's a discussion for another day and I'm usually too burned out on addressing more harmful and overt forms of lateral ableism within my own communities of disability that I'm a part of so I never quite seem to have the spoons for tackling this discussion and, honestly, I'm not sure that they are remotely close to ready for this discussion yet.)
I asked for this feedback - I maybe didn’t do a great job of expressing it this way, but this was the perspective I wanted to hear. I don’t care so much whether I’m being “only a little bit ableist” vs “horrifically ableist” - both would be something I’d want to correct, even if the levels of harm I’m causing aren’t necessarily the same in each case.
When someone is “a little bit homophobic” or “a little bit transphobic” I am more willing to help them understand how their views/words/actions are harmful, if I think I can actually get through to them, but it doesn’t make whatever they said/did to make me see them that way hurt all that much less than when someone is blatantly so. If I’m not ok with “a little bit” when I feel impacted by it, I shouldn’t be ok with it just because I’m only impacting others.
Thanks, this resonates well - I get how my use is metaphorical while the example of non-ableist usage from the OP is not, and while I failed to recognize it as ableist in the same way as the “clearly ableist” example, it is actually still implying the exact same messages about blindness.
I try to be as comradely as possible but I struggle with conveying tone sometimes and honestly I get it, hearing critical feedback is hard so this can create a perfect storm and I try to avoid this where I can. So I try to couch critical feedback in those terms to be like "I really don't want to start a fight, I promise!"
I'm glad my reply was helpful. I wouldn't ever jump down someone's throat over this choice of wording but these discussions are really valuable for developing a deeper understanding of how ableism circulates and functions in society.
I really appreciate you being open and approaching this from a place of genuine curiosity. I need to follow the example you've set here.
we're all blind to far infrared (unless aliens or other scifi entities read this someday idk).
not speaking for blind folks, but micro-optimizations like this aren't something I particularly care about when the language might apply to me.
I'm gonna disagree with you on this because the construction of disability is based on a foundation of normativity and since the norm is to not be able to see infrared it means not being able to see it isn't considered a visual impairment.
The flipside is that disability is not necessarily only a lack of certain function, although I understand why that's the go-to understanding, but also an "excess" of function or ability can also be considered part of disability; as an example, sensory processing disorder is characterized by either a lack of sensory sensitivity in domains but very often it's a heightened sensitivity in certain domains too. An obvious example of the heightened sensitivity would be people who cannot tolerate loud noises without it wreaking havoc with their nervous system.
Another example is any autoimmune disorder (or at least any that I can think of) - they aren't characterized by a lack of immune function but instead by an overactive immune function, or an excessive immune response. So is hypermobile disorders which are characterized by much higher levels of flexibility.
So I get what you're saying here and not to put too fine of a point in it but if I said "I have a visual impairment because I can't see beyond my peripheral vision and thus I have a disability" people would treat me like I was trying to make a joke because it breaks down the inherent normative assumptions in matters of disability.
most or all disabilities are a spectrum of severity and permanence. There are probably some people out there with cataracts, physical damage, disordered processing etc who effectively only have peripheral vision. I get migraines with aura and sometimes that's what it amounts to. Some impaired people can see vague blobs and don't need a cane or those yellow sidewalk panels, some can see a little bit at 2-3cm enough to read banknotes but navigate with a cane. Hypersensitivity to light would also fall under vision impairment disability if it's persistent. Not to over-focus on your example but yeah that would be a vision impairment disability, probably shouldn't drive with that condition.
blind in particular is a notion in some tension because we all very frequently experience temporary blindness, generic not being able to see stuff, selective attention, and the physical structure of our eyes creates blind spots because of the part that blocks the other part. The majority of the use of the term in the poetic or vernacular aren't about disability or disabled people at all. Our impetus is to eliminate blind (derogatory) because of the splash damage and GP certainly wasn't that.
In the limit we drop vision as a default sensory analogy entirely but that's not practically going to happen because "see" is one syllable, and not even hexbears are dork enough to say shit like "i couldn't ken that".
Yeah, but what I'm saying here is that functional capacity that either exceeds or falls short of the norm is considered a disability because the concept of disability is based on normativity, so by saying "I can't see the part of the visual spectrum which is normal to not be able perceive, therefore I could be considered blind in that respect" misses how the concept of disability exists in society.
i understand your point but the incredible majority of blindness has nothing to do with disability and that's why the figurative usages have developed the way they have. As in OP, only some of the language is problematic.
I think the same argument could be used to claim that the overwhelming majority of the use of the R-slur today isn't used against people with intellectual disability directly nor is it used to refer to intellectual disability itself and, if that's accurate, then would it also follow that the R-slur is not ableist by virtue of that fact?
(I get that this is reply gonna come off as a strawman because it's the most extreme example and I'm not trying to paint you as defending the use of the R-slur or anything but imo this is a really good test case for your argument because personally I am unable to come up with any objection to/defence of one without it applying to the other.)
yeah that's a stretch but just to loosely engage, I don't think there's a universal experience of whatever the current polite phrasing of what the r-slur means (or meant) and the deprecating use of the term is directly referencing disability. Blind has a bunch of contexts that aren't about disability because they're universal or missing the normative social construction.
i could bring up the casual hyperbolic use of OCD that people used to do but we don't need a third topic and i think we're on the same page with the trivializing misuse of a diagnosis.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: