Why the little things matter.

[feuervogel]

Once upon a discussion with my libertarian now-ex-boyfriend, he told me that I shouldn't get so upset over "the little things," like "that's so lame" or the eleventy-millionth depiction of bisexual women as slutty, indecisive, or outright evil, because ... I don't know, I guess because sharia exists, or something. The Real Problems, as defined by a white, middle-class, straight, cis man, because bisexual women don't get to define our own problems, I guess.

sohotrightnow has this excellent post on why little things matter.

Do not ever forget that it started small, that the Holocaust was merely the logical conclusion of the gradual devaluing and dehumanizing of large swaths of people -- some people claim that focusing on microaggressions and trying to end them is reductio ad absurdum; I'd go in a different direction and call the Holocaust an increscio ad absurdum: a completely logical series of steps from one degree of devaluing and dehumanizing to the next, on up to the most horrifying and completely logical conclusion. But don't forget either that there were a lot of people, along the way, who did fight, who didn't simply accept the tiny little ways their society had told them, day in and day out, for their entire lives, that certain lives were worth less than others, that certain people were less human than others. Don't use the latter fact to write off the former, because if more people had spoken up from the beginning, if more people had examined their assumptions and their language and the casual everyday ways they devalued and dehumanized the undesirable, maybe the more dramatic actions of the Righteous wouldn't have been necessary. But don't let the former cause you to lose hope, to think that there is nothing you can possibly do in the face of widely-held, systemically-enforced, popularly-approved and -perpetuated injustice. And by God, don't let it be an excuse to do nothing, to ignore the microaggressions because there are "real" problems, "real" injustices: because -- I know I am saying this over and over again, but seriously -- if more people had stopped and examined the small injustices they were committing or simply ignoring from the beginning, there may not have been a need for a few people to give up their lives trying to stop huge injustices.

And as far as the casual throwing around of "lame" as a derogatory term, who does it hurt to make the effort not to use words others find offensive? Ask yourself, if someone said "that's so gay," would it piss you off? Would it add to the hundreds of papercuts of society-wide injustice perpetrated against the LGBT* community? If yes, then STOP USING LAME as a replacement for gay in that sense.

Comments

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

The notable difference between "gay" and "lame" is that I don't hear people describing themselves as lame, while I do hear people describing themselves as gay.

That said, I eschew it because people say it's offensive, and it's certainly not my place to say that it isn't.

[feuervogel]

True. But the middle-school "that's so gay" when they mean some negative sentiment or other perpetuates homophobia, and the disabled feminists say that lame perpetuates ableism. I'm not gonna argue with them, and for god's sake, I can excise one stinking word from my vocabulary. It's not that bloody difficult.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's mainly because you know more gay people than you know lame people. As I just commented, since I read a lot of disability communities, I do read posts from people who self-describe themselves as lame.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

Which I don't find surprising. I mentioned it because "lame" to describe a person doesn't come up in common discourse nearly so often as "gay" does, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to accept it as an insult. It's more common to hear about "disabled people" than "lame people." I don't think I would describe someone as lame unless they did it first, because it seems a little outdated to me. Dickensian. I'd be more likely to say "that child has a limp" than "that child is lame," and I suspect the same is true for many other people. "Lame" as a personal descriptor just doesn't come up that often.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Right, but as far as I can tell, it actually isn't outdated among people who have trouble walking. The term is alive and well. The group just isn't being talked about that much.

I pretty much had the same reaction, except with a few others tied in. First off, my introduction to disability came first through the blind community, and most people in the blind community tend to actively get annoyed with people's efforts to avoid sighted language around them. Although I suspect it's because people tend to be more inclined to try to filter out things like "See you later" which aren't offensive than things like "blind to reason" which could be (there are better examples, but I can't think of them offhand - blindness is actually vastly used to mean ignorance or incompetence, although sometimes it is used in a supposedly positive but childlike way, and then there are "blind dates" and such. You can turn a "blind eye toward it" (which I've done!) or be the "blind leading the blind" (which works far better than the Bible implies that it does if at least one of those blind people is competent and so forth). But despite the huge extent to which blindness is used metaphorically, sight is used even more within the language and when people try to filter out all sight terms for no really good reason or act as if blind people wouldn't understand the concept it's quite annoying to most blind people I've read the opinions of on the matter. So, coming initially from that community, it biased me toward most disabled people would really like you to just stop being incredibly awkward in your language use around them, when the actual state of things in the wider community is a bit more nuanced.

Then there is the fact that I am lame, but don't really mind the use of the word (but came into it as an adult - most people who really get hurt by the terms tend to have had their problems from childhood, and it is a reminder of years of childhood taunts).

Then I posted about how I didn't really think of "lame" as much of an issue and found out that I knew someone who did self-identify as lame who did find it hurtful and yes, there are actually real people who do. It was not just an issue invented by non-disabled people who thought it might be. And since then, having read enough stuff by those who have spastic conditions to learn how hurtful the term "spaz" can be, I can imagine that those who grew up lame would likely have similar issues, despite the fact that I never even would have thought of the connection for "spaz".

So, it feels outdated, but it isn't for those who actually are going around being lame. Although some primarily self-describe as "crippled" or "crip" or "gimp" or "handicapped" and others hate any of those terms that I just listed for various reasons. About the only term though that I can find that is universally hated and I don't know anyone who self-identifies with is "handicapable". "Differently abled" is generally reserved for people who are both disabled and have superpowers, such as Professor Xavier. He is differently abled, and it rocks.

Oh, and "wheelchair-bound" is offensive to a lot of people, and I find it very offensive. There are wheechair users. Very few people are actually whelchair-bound or "confined to a wheelchair". It makes me want to talk about the poor, struggling masses of "car-bound suburbia" who are completely incapable of surviving without their expensive, environment-damaging disability aids. How tragically they grew up unable to run at 55 miles per hour or to carry home 12 bags of groceries at once, and they are now pathetically confined to cars for the rest of their lives.

It probably is different among different groups of disabled people, but that's what I've found so far.

Although, avoiding the word "lame" for people who have trouble walking is annoying. I get why people would and do. But I can't think of a good, easy replacement. It seems people have to use sentences to replace the term. And you would refer to someone as blind or visually impaired. It's not like mentioning the specific disability is always offensive.