A Partial History of Ableist Language

Adam Thometz angryautie.wordpress.com I recently came across a post by Lydia Brown at Autistic Hoya, one of my favorite autism/disability blogs, in which she creates a glossary of ableist vocabulary. The reason for including some of the words should be immediately apparent to anyone with their head in this century (eg. “retard,” “mongoloid,” “suffers from ___”) but there are some words, the inclusion of which seems questionable or just overly sensitive or PC to the average person (eg. “idiot,” “dumb,” “moron”). I myself was shocked to find these words as well but it turns out that these words have a dark history that most people are not apparently aware of. When I debate with someone about autism in real life, I might perform what the average person would see as nitpicking: criticizing the use of certain words or phrases. My reason for doing this is that they invisibly propagate the…