#YouMightBeAbleist If Jobless Is Your Favourite Insult.
How confidence can be undermined by thoughtless language.
(Image description: a woman’s portrait. She is looking upwards, sad and thoughtful. The background is blurred.)
Have you noticed that for a lot of people, ‘jobless’ is one of their favourite go-to insults? Celebrities use it to shut down trolls and haters, and regular people use it to put down so-called friends, or people they don’t like.
I’ve never quite understood this because being jobless does not make anyone less worthy than those with jobs. But given that we live in a capitalistic world, quotes like Chuck Palahniuk’s “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank,” although impressive in reel life, are moot in real life.
One’s work is directly related to their social status, which is probably why absolute strangers feel comfortable introducing themselves by their job title. And then they immediately demand to know the other person(s) line of work with a ‘So what do you do?’ But I digress.
Prior to my clinical depression diagnosis in 2018, I used to think that the J word was just another below the belt insult. I used to think that it was popular because of its foolproof ability to immensely upset whoever it was directed at.
I now know that calling someone jobless is pure and simple ableism, and anyone who does this may be ableist.
Unemployment comes with an insidious stigma that is hard to navigate even for abled people. It is a far more serious issue for those of us who are disabled — and the COVID-19 pandemic has only made matters worse. Here is a shocking statistic from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
“The unemployment rates for persons with and without a disability both increased from 2019 to 2020, to 12.6 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively. Data on both groups for 2020 reflect the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it.”
In a dystopian time like this, when more and more of us are experiencing job insecurity, it is high time we remove the derogatory usage of the word ‘jobless’ from our collective lexicon. The economy is not going to bounce back after the COVID-19 virus is a thing of the past. In fact, even before the pandemic, far too many people were not gainfully employed in the first place. For no fault of their own, many disabled and abled folks are unable to find the jobs they seek.
The system was always broken; it is now our duty to try and fix it.
Owing to gender inequality, women around the world are more likely to be unemployed than men. But disabled women get the shortest end of the stick because they are twice as likely to not get hired than abled women. I know this for a fact because of late, I have been applying for full-time jobs to supplement my freelance writing income. My credentials, recommendations, and work experience are at par or higher than my abled female counterparts. Yet my decades-old struggle with depression has put off prospective employers from hiring me. A simple Google search is all it takes for them to find my mental health writing and disregard me as a suitable hire. One hiring manager even suggested that I apply again once I recover and some friends have suggested I stop writing about depression. The sheer ignorance and discrimination are baffling.
If someone like me, who is currently underemployed, feels bad when someone insinuates that she is jobless, I can only imagine how terrible it must be for an unemployed people to hear this slur. Looking for a job and failing to get one is hard on the soul and can cause internalized ableism.
When you can’t fix our problems, don’t make them worse.
It’s possible that some people use the J word to encourage a loved one to find a job. However, when there are many uplifting ways to motivate your unemployed friends and family, why would you say something unhelpful and unkind? Many abled folks I know are unaware that the J word is an ableist slur. Fair enough. If you are one of them, there is simply no excuse to use it now that you’ve read this article. What’s more, not all disabilities are visible, which means you may be ableist without being aware of it. We need to be more inclusive, woke, and compassionate as a society. One of the ways we can achieve this is by being mindful of the way we use jobless in everyday language.
The new normal needs to be inclusive for all of us. So please, for the love of whatever you believe in, stop calling out anyone as jobless.
My name is Mahevash (pronounced Ma-hey-vash) and I am a disabled writer from India. I talk about culture, society, and mental health so that you and I can help make the world a better place — and be whoever we want to be. You can connect with me at https://www.mahevashmuses.com/.
