“There was once a simpler term commonly used to describe the intellectually disabled. Unfortunately, that word was easily weaponized into a common insult. By moving to terms like ‘intellectually disabled’, it had the effect of weakening the insult, reducing it to a more generic insult. Sure, it meant giving away…

“I just think there is a fundamental misunderstanfing of how English works as a language. Where typically it folds lots of meanings into one word, and then usually requires additional words to sort out that meaning. Like instead of having different words for romantic love or brotherly love, we just have the word…

“Its more a response to something I’ve seen in the past. I used to be very involved in church culture, and there is this term “a demon under every stone”. I’ve seen people get so worked up on things that someone saying they can’t watch a show because they mentioned seitan (the meat replacement) and it sounds too…

Just because you can’t see something as an issue doesn’t mean it isn’t one. We all have blind spots, especially in areas outside of our experience such as regarding marginalised groups we’re not a part of.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that it’s important to listen to the people who do experience…

By that logic we could do a crowdsourced vote on whether your tea is too hot to drink without pain or not.

Your original comment before it was edited mentioned something to the effect of “those of us who have loved ones in that minority group”. If I interpreted that incorrectly, then I got that wrong I guess.

Why is having a discussion about language use and listening to different perspectives, especially those in the group who the conversation is about, interpreted as “policing”?

Do you think all blind people have completely no sight whatsoever? There are plenty of legally blind people who do have enough sight to use phone and computer screens, usually in large print.

Disability advocates have definitely criticised the use of disability as metaphor.

If you don’t experience a particular kind of discrimination, you’re not generally equipped with the cognitive tools to even judge if something regarding the group who experiences the discrimination is innocuous or not, any more than you are equipped to judge if the tea someone else is drinking is hot enough to burn…

How would you be qualified to judge what is a “correct” level of touchy if you do not experience ableism?

Nah, it’s the use of disability as metaphor in general which disabled people have been asking for people to reconsider their use of for quite awhile now.

Is it absurd, or it it just that it’s never even occurred to you to think critically about how language use such as this both reflects and reinforces attitudes about disabled people?

Easier for whom? Blind people themselves, or for abled people who don’t want to have to think about how the way they speak regularly affects disabled people?

How about you listen to what the disabled community is saying rather than assuming things on our behalf and throwing fascism accusations around? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of actual fascists around at the moment either.

Disabled people absolutely have a problem with using disability as a metaphor. If you’re not aware of this already, you haven’t actually been listening to disabled people.

I’m disabled and queer, and frankly you can save your manufactured offence on our behalf, it’s pretty gross to use it as an excuse to dismiss being asked to consider how everyday language use reflects and reinforces how society views disabled people.

Malicious intent isn’t required for harm to occur. But if a disadvantaged group (who the word is actually about, no less) has made clear that using the word in a particular way is harmful to them and the response is dismissal and continued use of the word or term, that would be hard to interpret as anything other than…

When a person thinks another person or group is being “too sensitive”, it’s usually because they’re sensitive to different things than the person making the judgement.

Just so you know, the term “differently abled” is viewed pretty negatively by disability advocacy communities.