#1
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Today I got banned from a subreddit for saying that I didn't think blocking any post that uses the word "crazy" for "ableism" was an important or good thing to do.

I've never seen a genuine discussion about ableism. It seems like every space that discusses it either takes the validity of the construct for granted (and is lead by disabled people) or takes its ridiculousness for granted (and has no participation by disabled people)

me, I'm definitely skeptical. part of this is just the liberal in me eyerolling at the inevitable euphemism treadmill that's going to occur whenever you ban use of a word that refers to genuinely negative states. some day maybe we'll be able to stop getting people to drop n-bombs, because the negativity attached to black people is a product of social constructs and conditions, but it will never not be bad to be mentally disabled. I could fairly be accused of goatsteinism (OR WORSE) in bitching about word usage, but a.) anti-ableism sometimes demands particularly significant intrusions into vernacular english, far more than anti-sexism or anti-racism, and does so for the benefit of a relatively small group and b.) it doesn't end there. take, for example, autists' objections to Autism Speaks because it advocates for seeking a cure for autism

but I think some of the foundational texts of ableism are ones I haven't read and a lot of people here have so maybe I'm totally wrong? or maybe I'm overstating the downsides because I'm an asshole and just need to suck it up for the comfort of disabled comrades? i dunno, what do you fuckers think

(DISCLAIMER i am hard of hearing to a degree that lightly but routinely interferes with my life so i'm totally allowed to talk about this)
#2
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On principle i think any discussion which has the actions of reddit.com moderators as its pretext should be illegal and i'm not going to read the rest of this post for that reason.
#3
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that's very fair
#4
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it's a concept almost always deployed spuriously in online communities to derail and shut down discussion. red spaces must be inclusive of people with disabilities, but this is not achieved by a zero-tolerance language prescriptivist policy which pretends words like "crazy" or "stupid" have the same connotation as something like "retard" (which i think can and should be avoided)
#5
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what's the difference between those beyond their relative positions on the euphemism treadmill?

or is it just dumb to not accept euphemism treadmills as a natural part of living in a modern human society that at least pretends to give a shit about people's feelings?
#6
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to the extent that we should consider the material conditions of the people around us such that we can create space for them to be productive contributors in the socialist project and anti-imperialist struggle, and how they can be provided for "by each according to their ability, to each according to their need," nailed it ableism discourse is very good

to the extent that it is a pissing match about who gets to be smug and self righteous and who has to shut up, never go on reddit

i also skipped most of the op (no disrespect) but i think that should cover it?
#7
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shriekingviolet posted:

but i think that should cover it?


should disabilities be cured over the objection of groups who consider it tantamount to genocide? and, if yes, can we really blame those who oppose it when we validate a concept that makes a strong implicit comparison between people with disabilities and women/POC?

#8
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thirdplace posted:

what's the difference between those beyond their relative positions on the euphemism treadmill?

or is it just dumb to not accept euphemism treadmills as a natural part of living in a modern human society that at least pretends to give a shit about people's feelings?


i see what you did there

but to answer your question, retard is generally considered by reasonable people to be a genuine slur, that's the difference

#9
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thirdplace posted:

should disabilities be cured over the objection of groups who consider it tantamount to genocide?


that's a different question, to which the answer is fuck eugenics and fuck autism speaks

#10
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i am mentally ill and often call things crazy and mental, like posting on reddit for example. often i advocate for a cure to mental illness i call marxism-leninism
#11
[account deactivated]
#12
Dont Mess With Sucess
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Thanks to this thread I learned that Crazy Horse's name Thašuka Witko translates more accurately to "His Horse Is Crazy," which well illustrates how our "arbitrary" standards of horse sanity serve power.
#13
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We should all reflect on comrade Michael Alan Weiner's treatise Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder in our discussions on mental health and ableism
#14
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Petrol posted:

thirdplace posted:

should disabilities be cured over the objection of groups who consider it tantamount to genocide?

that's a different question, to which the answer is fuck eugenics and fuck autism speaks


one of my clients is someone whose life was completely destroyed by the birth of her severely autistic son; when she was unable to care for him, it led to the removal of her other, healthy child, despite the fact that almost anyone would have trouble caring for the autistic kid. if it weren't for incidental facts which led to the application of better (tribal) laws, she would have definitely lost parental rights to both kids years ago. so coming from that place, when I see high-functioning internet autists attack it for seeking a cure/screening test or for being too centered on caregiver concerns I'm not very sympathetic to the attackers

#15
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thirdplace posted:

should disabilities be cured over the objection of groups who consider it tantamount to genocide? and, if yes, can we really blame those who oppose it when we validate a concept that makes a strong implicit comparison between people with disabilities and women/POC?


damn you for forcing me to be serious

having open and genuine discussions with the communities is important for this i think, no disability culture is monolithic in its stance. any organization that opposes people with disabilities seeking alleviation/cures of their own volition will never find real support even among their own culture, and the gross weird idea of "curing people against their will" isn't even logistically tenable before you get to the ethical questions. this is more applicable to matters of physical disability, but still applies to the mental/social field.

for things in the brain it is really putting the cart before the horse to assume we're ever even going to be capable of curing shit like developmental disabilities and mental illness. we certainly aren't truly capable right now, we can't even come to a scientific consensus on what these things are. our understanding of mental illness is extremely underdeveloped and is still carrying a lot of cruft. conversations that involve mass applicable cognitive/emotional ability "cures" are just science fiction at this point imho, we don't even really understand how lithium works (for the people that it does work on) for fucks sake. neurodivergence, who is "sick" and who just has a difficult personality, whatever you want to call it is mostly just a set of socially contingent normative statements at this point, and these are hopelessly contaminated at present by the pharmaceutical industry which both can develop things that are genuinely effective and will encourage doctors to diagnose every single child on earth with ADD because ritalin $$$. and the DSM is toilet paper. this is before we even get into the influence that total shit like murray's bell curve, superpredators, sam harris is a nazi, etc unfortunately still do have on legislators and policy makers, which heavily influences how health care is assessed and administered.

so this might sound like a copout but i don't think these kinds of questions can actually be resolved at present with the poverty of actual scientific data we have accessible. my own experience in the mental health field is modest (i don't do it anymore) but i talk about it a lot with professionals in the pharmaceutical chemistry and care industries, and have had close friendships with people running the whole gamut of cognitive function/disfunction. i increasingly feel a consensus among my peers that we can't actually build a true scientific understanding of what is a "healthy" and "normal" brain, or determine whether such a definition can/should exist, until we are free from exploitative and coercive interests that heavily taint the epistemic well.

#16
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thirdplace posted:

one of my clients is someone whose life was completely destroyed by the birth of her severely autistic son; when she was unable to care for him, it led to the removal of her other, healthy child, despite the fact that almost anyone would have trouble caring for the autistic kid. if it weren't for incidental facts which led to the application of better (tribal) laws, she would have definitely lost parental rights to both kids years ago. so coming from that place, when I see high-functioning internet autists attack it for seeking a cure/screening test or for being too centered on caregiver concerns I'm not very sympathetic to the attackers


good time for a cliche tldr version of my other post: that's awful, but is more of a policy and exploitative conditions under capitalism problem than a "should we cure autism" problem, and the autism question can be safely tabled until capitalism stops destroying our lives (and brains)

#17
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thirdplace posted:

one of my clients is someone whose life was completely destroyed by the birth of her severely autistic son; when she was unable to care for him, it led to the removal of her other, healthy child, despite the fact that almost anyone would have trouble caring for the autistic kid. if it weren't for incidental facts which led to the application of better (tribal) laws, she would have definitely lost parental rights to both kids years ago. so coming from that place, when I see high-functioning internet autists attack it for seeking a cure/screening test or for being too centered on caregiver concerns I'm not very sympathetic to the attackers


im not sure the solution in this scenario is finding a cure for autism, dude

#18
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if we discovered a cure for PTSD in troops tomorrow, would it be ethical to administer it to them all?



(the cure is bullets)
#19
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i dunno, shriekingviolet. while granting that you're undoubtedly right on all the details, that seems like kind of a punt when we're already doing prenatal screening for downs
#20
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yeah "destroy capitalism then ask me" is a total copout, there are serious eugenic things happening and its urgent but i find it increasingly difficult to see any way out. like no one really has control over this system, it is a shit feedback loop of deranged corrupt legislators, unethical companies setting unrealistic research goals for their cowed researchers, rich fucks who want designer kids with glow in the dark genitalia that can't produce nonwhite children, and overworked exhausted care workers who are stretched too thin to do anything. and it's not like an oil pipline or even a war or the prison system, it's intangible, there's no true primary authoritative body to organize around opposing or influencing that can really stop it outside of smashing the whole works.

Edited by shriekingviolet ()

#21
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One time I was being serially harassed by my Tumblrina ex. This involved actually being stalked and hundreds of unresponded to texts/ phone calls at 3 am pretending to be other people. I told her she was crazy which she took as sexist harassment
#22
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My take is: some behavior, especially abusive behavior should be stigmatized. And reducing that stigma to prejudice can just enable bad behavior
#23
[account deactivated]
#24
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I won't have my anecdotal evidence be mocked
#25
Online
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thirdplace posted:

shriekingviolet posted:

but i think that should cover it?

should disabilities be cured over the objection of groups who consider it tantamount to genocide? and, if yes, can we really blame those who oppose it when we validate a concept that makes a strong implicit comparison between people with disabilities and women/POC?


theres some deaf people that hate other deaf people who get cochlear implants which allow them to hear. seems redarted to me (see what i did there...

#26
UNUSUALY COOL
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socialists should examine things from a socialist perspective imo... meaning that accepting liberal versions of those terms is lazy. if you don't feel there's enough of a socialist perspective on this topic and i think maybe there's a lot out there?? then maybe get something started yourself.
#27
Poronto
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actual questions of access, disenfranchisement and stuff need to be centred i guess
#28
[account deactivated]
#29
Online
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You could say wild. like whoa uhh that's pretty wild. Or maybe out there. Boy that guy is fucking out there. possibly you can say, wtf that's unfuckingbelievable
#30
Black Belt
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most things people call crazy arent crazy, theyre just stupid. ive gotten flak once for using stupid, but far more often for crazy. it isnt hard to change your own vocabulary, and if youre doing mass work youre going to be doing this a lot anyway. i dont see what the difficulty is on vocab change in the interim while also not evangelizing this position. we also need further development on the question, like others said upthread. seems like a socialist project could be to push for disabled housing, obviously theres a need there, but eh, wheres the theory. that said it may be out there already, unpopularized.
#31
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its reddit OP you were almost certainly banned for saying something sane, not for calling something crazy
#32
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while extreme idpol stuff can be a bit aggressive and overstated in equating un-pc words with more actively harmful slurs, it's pretty easy to crack open a thesaurus and use a word that probably fits what ur trying to say better and won't bug people as much
#33
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aerdil posted:

while extreme idpol stuff can be a bit aggressive and overstated in equating un-pc words with more actively harmful slurs, it's pretty easy to crack open a thesaurus and use a word that probably fits what ur trying to say better and won't bug people as much


hrmmm. sounds kind of subnormal to me

#34
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You could just refer to other people or characters, like boy that shakey guy is michael j foxed, or the panicked alcoholic living in perpetual white heat you could say, holy shit is that girl tpained, or the psychotic conspiracy nerd looking for The Narrative you could refer to by saying, god damn that guy is Mouldered
#35
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i mean we're talking like there isn't a guy literally named lenin in a wheelchair who just won a presidential election in ecuador
#36
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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in my experience people who get mad when you say things are "crazy" are completely useless for any purpose and are merely performatively outraged on the internet
#37
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socialism means to whatever extent decoupling people's self worth from what capitalists will pay for their labour. this is a massive massive win for everybody with a mental or physical disability
#38
UNUSUALY COOL
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there's also a responsibility on the part of the mentally ill to mitigate impact on others so far as they are able to recognize when their thought and behavior is symptomatic and deleterious to others... but that includes the entirety of practitioners of bourgeois culture. i'm not sure that "crazy" = "bad in a particular way" is something that should disappear so much as that people should apply "crazy" to actual instances of thought & behavior rather than to a class of individuals
#39
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cars posted:

there's also a responsibility on the part of the mentally ill to mitigate impact on others so far as they are able to recognize when their thought and behavior is symptomatic and deleterious to others...


this doesnt get said enough

#40
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I know the thread has moved on to more important things but I too would advise you stay away from Reddit. That subreddit in particular has a siege mentality from being actually sieged by the kind of people you would expect on a site that made "men's rights" and "the red pill" popular. The only kind of people who would moderate it are people who enjoy banning people and the power that goes with it. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it would be fun to go into D&D and ban every CIA agent who's put in thousands of hours of work and then mock brown moses when he whines about being banned. But it's not conducive to actual discussion or accountability and attempts at such devolves into fascists complaining about a r/socialism ban on anime catgirls and the whole front page being nothing but whining about it (yes that happened). As for that ablism policy, I agree with everyone here but I enforce it as a matter of democratic centralism.

Having said that through months of posting nothing but orthodox Marxism-Leninism I was given modship of that place as a joke and also as part of a political struggle. Kind of like when I was made a mod here years ago as a joke and now this forum is Marxist-Leninist and posts all Grover Furr all the time. Communism always wins 😎 so yeah if you want to be unbanned tell me your username. Might as well use this minor bit of power for the 'zzone homies