This return to a post of January 2019 is a reminder that the use of ableist language is not merely about a certain choice of words but rather produces (and reproduces) certain ableist ontologies and epistemologies. Some philosophers and theorists of disability continue to employ the ableist term people with disabilities which has been dubbed […]
Ableist Language and Other Everyday Assaults on Disabled People (or, Stop Talking About “People with Disabilities”!)
Language, a ubiquitous sociopolitical mechanism, operates intentionally and nonsubjectively, and can produce microaggressions whose effects are far-reaching. Language, Lane Greene remarks, is a genius system with no genius. “Bound by rules, yet constantly changing,” Greene notes, “language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge” (Greene 2018). In systems of language, words and […]