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.

  • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Ditto on the perspective, comrade. I've always been a bit torn on the whole intelligence-ableism complex, but that's probably because I identify myself a lot with my oh-so-functional brain - which I'm working on.

    Perpetual becoming, eh?

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

      I've never trusted myself much on anything, let alone an authoritative take on what's right and wrong, so taking other people's perspectives and grappling with them, trying to synthesize them, is one of the methods I've found to help myself feel comfortable with my own conclusions :)

      Perpetual becoming

      what's this?

      • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Ok, so, I've heard that turn of phrase somewhere - and I like it for it's acknowledgment that nobody and nothing is in any kind of solid state; we're all changing, learning, developing, becoming forever, until we die - and even then. But, because I wanted to look up where that's actually from, I just found out it's the title of Alanis Morisette's biography and now I'm kinda torn on it lol

        • QuillQuote [they/them]
          2·
          4 years ago

          Oh HELL yeah. That's awesome! Knowing that I'll never be 'finished', never be done growing and learning and developing is a huge source of solace for me. Realizing that helped me stop beating myself up for my past mistakes, times when I harmed others because I didn't know better.

          It's what drives my excitement to keep going, to keep making mistakes and learning the lessons.

          Thanks comrade, now I have a dope phrase to describe my outlook <3