It’s Time We Retired These Ableist Terms
‘Insane’ and ‘crazy’ have got to go.
It’s 2020. A deadly pandemic is raging, causing millions to get sick and lose their employment. Families and communities are coming apart at the seams, while the police execute innocent Black people. Donald Trump may secure four more years.
From Twitter to our dinner tables to anchors on the news, we find ourselves reaching for words that sufficiently capture the relentless parade of horrors characterizing this year. English is diverse enough that we can be heard and avoid using terms that hurt our disabled and neurodivergent family and friends.
Ableist language runs rampant in Liberal and leftist media; its unchallenged ubiquity responsible for similar harm to those inflicted by racial and/or gender slurs. Not only do ableist slurs detract from the author/speaker’s message, their invocation perpetuates the erasure of disabled folks’ identities, voices and lived experience.
This is unacceptable, in 2020. Even for 2020.
The following five terms are commonplace today, just as ‘psycho’ and ‘mental’ were a few decades ago. And like those and the ‘R’ word, these offensive slurs should be immediately retired.
