Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity
I think it’s pretty clear, after all, that Jon Stewart doesn’t think that mentally ill people are ruining our society any more than someone who criticizes a referee for blowing an obvious call thinks that blind people are somehow worse than sighted people.
This isn’t to say that we ought not to worry about causing offense, or that we ought to say things once we know they will offend; it is instead a plea for us all to think carefully about the things that cause us to feel offended, to demand apologies when people have clearly crossed a line (I’m thinking here about hate speech), and to take ourselves a little less seriously when it’s either less clear that a line’s been crossed or when we have a difficult time coming up with an alternative to the offensive word.
I am a bit disappointed in this post from Mr. Kohenari. I think it’s no secret to anyone that he is one of my favorite Tumblrs. What I found disappointing is that brushing off ableist language is just a lazy argument. The argument about thinking carefully about the things that offend people with disabilities is privileged. It is privileged because it is not up to us, able bodied people to determine what disabled people have a right to be offended about. Just think of other disenfranchised groups being told the same argument: Oh, come on, the N word was just meant in jest!; Oh, please, I didn’t mean fag like that!; Oh come on, you are not that kind of whore!
It is difficult to think of ableist language and the myriad ways it permeates our every day communications. However, we cannot (and I cannot stress this enough), tell people that they should “lighten up” just because we would prefer to avoid the semantic/ dialectic exercise of having to rethink the way in which we utilize language. If we had applied the same argument to every other social cause, we would still find many derogatory terms acceptable. Precisely because of our privilege is that we have the obligation to consider the implications in the way we use words.
For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you. Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.