Stuff like "stupid, idiot, moron, dumb," you know the ones. If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.

Just saw a thread on here where a user was stubbornly refusing to adjust their language when another user politely pointed out that it was harmful to our comrades as well, and the person refusing was massively upvoted and the comrade trying to explain why it was harmful was downvoted. Thought we were better than that

I'm not calling anyone out, just wanted to make a post explaining my feelings on it and that when stuff like that happens (not the intelligence based insults, I know its hard to switch, but getting insulted for asking people to avoid them) it hurts and makes me feel less welcome here </3

Using words like “You’re being ignorant” or “That’s a cruel belief” is actually more effective than just going “lmao idiot”.

If those are the words you actually mean to convey I'd say use them instead :)

Edit: if the reception this post got isn't a good proof that this is something this community needs to grapple with, I don't know what is.

    • QuillQuote [they/them]
      7·
      4 years ago

      Under capitalism being neurodivergent is treated as a personal failing

        • QuillQuote [they/them]
          16·
          4 years ago

          I'm very glad its not something that affects you and those you know, that's wonderful. I and those I know can't say the same

          Edit: downvote me just for sharing my own experience, awesome! I really feel the love and support right now, super validating

        • Helmic [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          While I don't think of myself as "stupid" or "dumb" or think that the r-slur is at all accurate in describing me (I'm autistic), those words ARE used against me specifically because of said autism and its conflation with learning disaiblities. I dislike autism being used as an insult, so it'd be hypocritical of me to not extend solidarity to comrades with cognitive disabilities. And besides, society at large will be lumping us together regardless - the normalization of using cognitive function as an insult harms me as well despite me being "booksmart" in a way that tests well.

    • KiaKaha [he/him]
      1·
      4 years ago

      Social standards are productivist. Cruelty and selfishness are considered preferable to inability, which is why attacks on intelligence and strength are so popular.

      • QuillQuote [they/them]
        3·
        4 years ago

        Ableism is woven into our culture and language very deeply. Can't speak to other languages and cultures though

    • gayhobbes [he/him]
      2·
      4 years ago

      dumb and stupid barely even correlate to any disabilities, they’re generally associated with personal failings

      That's the whole point. Intelligence based insults don't really engage with an argument or the philosophy. Liberals aren't stupid. Conservatives aren't stupid. They have a different set of values. Those values are fucked, but it's not because they're dumb that they embrace that way of thinking. It's a lazy shortcut to accuse them of stupidity.

    • Civility [none/use name]
      3·
      4 years ago

      Something doesn't have to be a diagnosable disability for attacking people on the basis of it to be ableist

      People born with below average intelligence are both inherently less powerful than people born with above average intelligence. Our society values intelligence highly and people with below average intelligence are often made to feel like shit about it while people with above average intelligence are praised for it, especially as children.

      Insulting/attacking/tearing people down for being less powerful than other people, especially when there's not much they can do about that lack of power, is anti-communist.

      Insults like "dumb", "stupid" and "idiot" are essentially saying "you are lesser because you were born with less power" so they're gross and anti-communist and we shouldn't use them.

        • Civility [none/use name]
          2·
          4 years ago

          While early socialist writers got a lot of things right, they also failed to overcome a lot of social prejudices. Engels, for example is documentedly a homophobe and there's no documented evidence (to my knowledge) that Marx ever saw a problem with or pushed back against that. Marx denied his daughter permission to marry the man she wanted to marry and there's no evidence Engel's pushed back against or saw a problem with that. Despite coining the maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" they were probably both fairly ableist. Modern communism has moved past Marx and Engel's latent sexism (which they to their credit did write about) and blatant homophobia. I hope we can move past their ableism as well.

          Calling your comrades intelligence based slurs or thinking of them as lesser because they were born less intelligent than people around them isn't self criticism it's bigotry. Calling reactionaries ableist slurs is also bigotry. If there are flaws in your comrades ideology or reasoning then pointing out those flaws is doing them a service. If reactionaries haven't thought through their arguments or are being evil fuckers then absolutely point out those flaws and tell the world they're scumfuck shitlords who deserve to die screaming for their sins. You don't need to use bigoted slurs to do either of these things.

          On "there will always be some people born smarter/stronger/etc and they will be more powerful than others because of this" yes, but it is our responsibility not to socially exacerbate this. To the greatest extent that we can shouldn't make people feel more or less valued or accepted because they learn, build muscle or make friends faster and we certainly shouldn't award people more commodities because of these traits. We shouldn't treat people's ideas as more or less valid because we think that person is less intelligent and we shouldn't respond to ideas we think are bad by saying "I think the person who came up with this is less good at thinking than other people".

          When you call someone stupid or dumb for saying a certain thing, it probably won't have that much effect on them if they don't get called that outside of the context of internet arguments. But if they spent most of their childhood feeling stupid or being told they can't try things because they're mentally incapable then using insults/slurs based on them being below average intelligence is in effect a social bludgeon attempting to shame them out of the discussion for being incapable of understanding it. Aside from being a really shitty thing to do to someone mentally/emotionally in the context of trying to do self crit/ideological recruitment this has the effect of saying to them "you're too unintelligent to understand communism so you'll just have to do what I the smart person who understands communism says" and overall creates the impresssion that communism is for smart people only. Which is very damaging especially in the capitalist anglosphere where a lot of the working class have been told that the reason they're poor is because they were too stupid to get a real job.