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.

  • 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.