Welcome to c/disabled, an anticapitalist community for disabled people/people with disability(s).
What is disability justice? Disability justice is a framework of activism which centers disabled people of multiple intersections. Before participating in in this community, please read the Ten Principles of Disability Justice.
Do I count as disabled/a person with disability(s)? "Disability" is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
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Let's kick back and have fun!
As of December 2025, there is a Matrix Chat Room that adheres to the same rules as the community. If you want to join, it is an invite only server. Just knock to join. Should you have trouble with the link, you can contact the mods for help: https://matrix.to/#/#Hexbear_Disabled_and_ND:matrix.org
This post would not have been possible without the dedicated feedback and work put into it by the community of c/disabled, and I wish to extend the mods heartfelt thanks to all who pitched in to help make it better.
If anyone has questions, the disabled community is ready to listen and help explain. Thank you to you all for reading and caring enough to check the post out! 
Would you like this post site-pinned for a couple days, or no?
I'd appreciate it, yes, thank you!
Great post! Thank you to all the comrades who have taken the time to think about this.
Trying to be better with this every day. 
Thank you too, comrade, and we're all trying to be better with this 
Good post.
I wish I had saved it but one person in the comments of one of the rules change posts had a nice effort post on the issues with insults generally. It sounds obvious to say it but it's demeaning by nature and almost always involves a comparison to some group that shouldn't be viewed negatively, whether the insult is racist, sexist, ableist, etc. The "acceptable" insults tend to just be facts, i.e. "they're a fascist." Don't want to go too deep into it since this is a post about ableist language and that can extend into more than just insults ofc.
others are so restricted in their diet that they can’t eat vegan or vegetarian
I appreciate the acknowledgement! it sucks because you can try your best, but your body ultimately determines what they will eat and not your mind 😩
I feel you comrade, I am myself struggling with this exact same problem, and I would like to go full vegetarian at the minimum. However, recent developments in my own health now force me to stick with eating specific types of meat. It's frustrating, it makes me feel bad even though I know it's not my fault. 
good post
common disabled community W
On the blind usage, another way to phrase it if you want to be snarky or show you think the person is intentionally missing something is asking if they are being deliberately obtuse or just calling them obtuse
This is a very good example too! Thank you for sharing it <3
Incredible post comrades!
I have struggled with saying something, realizing it is ableist, but not knowing what to say instead. Some stuff like the r-word I haven't used in years, even prior to finding out I am autistic, because I knew it was bad to say, other people around me however refuse to drop that word from their vocabularies and it makes me mad, specially because it's one that's rather easy to just not use at all. I'll make sure I check which words to avoid using from now on and find replacements for it.
Also to complement the quote about language being political, in the very first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon talks about how language is also a form of violence, in the book it's in the context of colonization, but its still something important to keep in mind.
Ableist Language is still present in most media and as someone who learned English from Movies and Books, it's definitely hard to know what may be ableist because I mostly 'repeat' lines of English than 'speak' English, if this makes sense.
Thanks for the post I appreciate it.
I find myself often unable to express my extreme distaste for things without resorting to ableist language.
Is there a good lists of insults somewhere?
Atrocious, antithetical (to...), awful, appalling, craven, cowardly, classless (the bad kind), despicable, dreadful, dire, deplorable, detestable, ghastly, ghoulish, gall/galling (personal favourite), horrific, horrendous, hateful, heinous, inimical (to...), ignorant, insipid, Milquetoast, mealymouthed, loathesome, laughable, nasty, odious, obnoxious, objectionable, reprehensible, revolting (the bad kind not the good kind), rotten, risible, repellant, tasteless, tactless, vile.
Loredrop:
One time in grade school my teacher threatened us with having to read the dictionary if we forgot to bring out book during reading time.
Me, having been raised by wolves and needing to test boundaries in order to feel some sense of security and to establish trust in authority figures for being consistent and reliable while not acting punitively, did what I did and tested the boundaries. So I ended up reading the dictionary during the reading period. Turns out I found it fascinating. I didn't do it every reading period but I definitely did it for quite a few of them. So now you know where this comment originated from.
"annoying"
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).
I could have either left off the last part or phrased it differently, maybe “and I just don’t realize it.”
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.)
This reply isn't meant to drag you
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.
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
your phrasing unintentionally implied that blind people are unaware/oblivious/ignorant
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.
Damn I really liked 'bonkers' and how it sounded. I always associated it with getting hit on the head (no idea if that's how it relates then to ableism or not) and always imagined a 'bonk' effect. Thought it was super harmless, but I learned something new today! Good post, thanks for the info!
Also super happy to find "dipshit" on the list of acceptable replacement words. That's one of my top ones that are at least still mean to use on fascists.
/s 13 hours on a pinned post and I'm the first to point out that annas-archive.org no longer works? You libs never read do you?
/srs I can't find an alternative however,
are listed but don't work, at least not from g€rmon€y
This is slightly offtopic, but the first two alternative domains work if you enable DNS over HTTPS in your browser
ooh awesome thanks
made my day thank youuu
Another innocent German citizen lost to RuZZian propaganda, SMH.
I have just changed the links from .org to .li, and they should all be working now! Let me know if they don't <3
Thank you~
Thank you so much. I apologize and regret my recent use of ableist language. It was in ignorance, not malice, but I recognize it's offensive.
Lately, I've been thinking about the ways people use the idea of others lacking empathy, and I'd be interested to hear takes on this. On one hand, there are societal factors that cause one group to have less empathy for another, but on the other hand, people definitely also use the idea to say "those who disagree with me on this must have a mental disorder". The language used for these is basically the same, and I don't want to silence voices when they are not academically correct enough, but also don't want to good-faith interpret my way into spreading ableism.
I’m not sure if a lack of empathy should be considered a disorder. But I think saying that someone lacks empathy should be evaluated similarly as any psychiatric diagnosis: you can not look into someone’s brain so you shouldn’t use it lightly. However if you know what you’re talking about and have good reason to believe it might apply to someone and it is valuable to mention as it can explain certain behaviours then it should be fine to do it. Obviously it shouldn’t be done to insult or belittle someone.
Good post
I've been seeing a lot of people here say things are "lame" lately
does it apply to you? if not, kindly don't speak for those of us with impaired mobility who do not and have never understood "lame" as meaning anything other than uncool outside of the extremely dated biblical use.
I think people should really consider the etymological fallacy when it comes to this stuff. There are words which obviously have ableist undertones like stupid, the r-word, dumb, etc., but even these words have undergone a transformation over time through semantic bleaching to the point where the original meaning is considered archaic.
Words like "idiot," "moron," and "imbecile" used to be genuine medical terms and were once considered neutral (albeit during a problematic period in medical history for other reasons). They were transformed through pejoration into generic insults, and we now view this new meaning as ableist because these words are currently used to mock someone’s intelligence.
There was a time when the word "silly" meant someone was blessed or happy, and "villain" used to refer to a peasant or farmhand. What really matters is whether a word is being used in an ableist way today, either based on context or the word itself if it’s strong enough. I also don’t think "lame" qualifies unless someone is going out of their way to use it in an old-fashioned way because, as you said, it broadly just means something is uncool or boring.
I don't want to see every "blamed"