Zeborah

You know the joke: Someone says, "So-and-so is such a pig!" and someone else says, "Hey, that's offensive to pigs!" and everyone laughs.

The reason people laugh is that no-one really cares whether or not pigs are in fact offended. Most people care a certain amount that they're treated humanely, and good numbers would like them to be killed humanely or better yet, not killed at all. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many who care about the pigs' self-esteem, least of all among the pigs.

So in reality, the only one an epithet of "pig" is likely to offend is the person it's used against.

When, however, the derogatory epithet used is the name of a human, or a group of humans, or otherwise refers to a human or group of humans, the effect is quite different. Because now we're not disrespecting pigs, but humans. So saying "That's offensive to ____" isn't a joke anymore. It's a (very frequently painful) reality. It offends humans. It hurts humans. It makes it clear that the speaker doesn't care whether or not they offend these humans, and more than if they were barnyard omnivores. It reflects society's disrespect for humans, and it strengthens society's disrespect for humans.

( Cut for examples )

Two things:

1. Sometimes a member of a group thus maligned won't care. That's cool. But they can't speak for the whole group. Just because 1%, or 10%, or 50%, or 99% of a group doesn't care, doesn't stop it hurting the remainder of the group. And even if that remainder is only 1%, they're still human and deserve not to be hurt.

(Plus and moreover, I don't believe it's good for people to get in the habit of disrespecting a group of humans. It makes it harder to prevent oneself disrespecting other groups of humans, and one ends up in a constant struggle to prove that one is in the one true group of humans that deserves respect. Far better to just concede from the start the shocking notion that all humans are deserving of respect.)

2. To the inevitable woeful cry of, "But where will all this terrible politeness end?" I say: It ends where humanity ends. Women? Human. People of colour? Human. Gay people? Human. Insane people? Human. And you just don't get to use humans as weapons in your personal war of words unless you've secured their unanimous consent to be so used.

You can, however, malign pigs and snakes and weasels to your heart's content, and slow coaches, and sticks in the mud. Hey, I'll even give you arses: at least then you're maligning all humans equally.

Warning: this post almost certainly involves Fail related to mental-health issues and, specifically, the word "crazy". I'll do my best not to be a jerk about it, but I expect it'll still be there.

Warning on the other side of things: I reserve the right to be dictatorial over comments. That is, over comments who think I'm being overly "PC" or whatever. Comments calling me on ablism will have free range.

So. In various places I've seen people point out that using "crazy", "going crazy", etc, in various figurative/non-literal ways is ablist language. (If this is hopelessly vague I can try to find examples, but I think people likely to know what I mean will know what I mean?)

And. I don't want to use ablist language. It's relatively easy to avoid derogatory language based on specific conditions - eg "retard", "schizo", and my personal un-favourite "psycho" - and it's very clear why avoiding them is a good thing. Likewise I aim to avoid casually using words like "insane" which have a clear clinical meaning.

"Crazy", to me, feels much less clinical, much less targeted, and much more vernacular. And...

Hmm, let me back out a bit. What I'm having trouble with is, I regularly need to be able to describe:

a) the way one's feelings/emotions get when one is all confused/stressy/turmoil-y/all mixed up, and

b) the way people sometimes act either:
i) apparently-from-my-POV irrationally (which may not be actually-from-their-POV irrationally), or
ii) hyper'rationally' without apparent-to-me regard to ethics, morals, empathy, etc

And "crazy" in current vernacular covers those, and I haven't been able to think of other words/terms that cover any and/or all of them. (NB: I am totally open to suggestions here!)

[Fun story time from my teens! So sixth form (aka Year <counts> 12) was super-stressful. At one point I commented to my best friend that it felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown, and she was annoyed because I shouldn't joke about such things. (My point of view was that joking about it was one of the few things keeping it from actually happening; seriously I was super-stressed.) Not overly long later we were up on the balcony outside out maths class and she made some comment about jumping off, then was annoyed that I took her seriously and told a teacher, when it was 'obviously' just a joke. (My point of view was that, given that she was super-stressed too and various other things I knew about how she was coping with said stress, actually it wasn't anywhere near that obvious that it was a joke.) --Okay, look, I had a point when I started writing this parenthetical. I think it's that, at least for myself, I wasn't clinically depressed or clinically insane or clinically anything except a teenager dealing with stuff that was hard to cope with. But there need to be words that someone can use to express the nggh, the head-inside-outy, the argh!!! kind of feelings that just go along, sometimes, with being human. Because if you can't express what you're feeling then you just feel worse and that's not good for anyone.]

So I would like to be able to draw a dividing line and say, "Look, world! I'm using "crazy" to cover non-clinical craziness only, because the word seems appropriate for someone with good mental health who is nevertheless feeling/acting crazily/in ways that promote evil despite their good intention pavingstones; whereas it doesn't seem appropriate for someone who has schizophrenia who is being a sensible and decent human being."

At the same time I recognise that my personal definitions don't actually mitigate any hurt or harm that my use of the word may cause.

So.

??? <flounder> <flail> Thoughts, suggestions?