Gov. Palin Uses Ableist Insults
Continuing on the theme of harmful rhetoric, VP candidate Gov. Sarah Palin thinks that ableist speech that belittles disabled people is acceptable (NYT):
PALIN: In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it. Of course we know what a vice president does. [emphasis mine]
Using lame as an insult is ableist for the same reason that using gay as an insult is homophobic: it relies on the idea that being lame is synonymous with being bad, stupid, or whatever else you’re using it to mean.I t’s rude and insulting to people with disabilities, because those insults are talking specifically about them (see Sweet Machine’s post, “Why I don’t use the word ‘retarded’”) and demean them.
I stopped using retarded as an insult years ago, and a few months back, I realized that if retarded was ableist, so was lame. By the same logic, so was dumb. I don’t use any of those ableist insults anymore; it’s disgusting how difficult it was to eradicate lame from my vocabulary. It’s surprising how much unthinking prejudice exists in the logic behind that defines certain words as insults (using whore or prostitute as an insult is anti-sex worker and often sexist; redneck is classist; wetback is racist). Seemingly innocent words that drip with hatred and systemic discrimination: stop using them.
On the minus side: it’s hard to change up habits of speech and thought.
On the plus side: the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Someone–a teacher or a Girl Scout troop leader–explained why using retarded as an insult was wrong. Reading in the blogosphere and learning about able-bodied privilege helped me draw the connection from retarded to lame. Dumb came shortly thereafter as a natural extension of that thinking and self-examination. It becomes easier as you go.
