And of course older “ableist language” should have already been sent to the trash bin for its insensitivity... Like “crazy,” “wild,” “insane,” and “lame.” Even “walk-in” might “trivialize” the “experiences of people living mental health conditions.” Phrases like “long time no see” and “no can do” also “originate from stereotypes making fun of non-native English speakers.”
In my time, the idea of political correctness has run
at least two simultaneous courses. These are the one that actually makes linguistic sense, which isn't always apparent in the discussion, and the politically controversial caricature, a sosobra contrived explicitly for the burning. I can find a 2013 run-through of this bit about crazy, wild, insane, and lame; these suggestions emerge through particular interests, and would expect to purify and ossify the language for whatever unrealistic reasons—one version of the list reached back to someone's blog about autism. This is hardly definitive of "political correctness" or any cohesive progressive assertion.
Meanwhile, consider the present thread; see Motor Daddy at
#60↑, "then they have a SPECIAL NEED for a wheelchair ramp", and Sarkus at
#61↑, "their 'need' is to get in to a house". Now, here's a small detail, but think about it: I live in a maritime region, and am accustomed to marina pier gangways. And while it is true, "stairs are for able-bodied", so are ramps.
But before anyone frets that I might be complaining that Sarkus or anyone else has overlooked the prospect of building all houses with ramps, it's easy enough to stop and think about why stairs are such an obvious tool. Ramps take up a lot of space compared to steps. By the time we get around to discussing house and lot sizes, and start taking turns blaming capitalism, well, right, now we're talking ableism.
(Related: Americans have a hard time understanding that what we really need to do is build upward; part of our problem is our sprawl, but that is its own discussion. Vis à vis ableism, meanwhile, the electricity will occasionally fail, and we need to be able to house people in wheelchairs above street level. It's one thing to have a ramp, and even a solution for getting rollers up to their apartments when the power fails, but for the able-bodied, stairs might be useful, compared to walking four to five times farther just to carry groceries to the fifth floor. And if we stop to wonder why these sorts of engineering challenges must be viewed as extraneous problems, well, we're probably right back to blaming capitalism.)
There are reasons why a certain level of ableism is woven into the language, and even in the case of insults like idiot and moron, yes, people will not cease to dispute and doubt each other's comptency, so by the time we get to crazy, insane, and wild, I'm perfectly willing to suggest it is a matter of priorities: We can get around to that when circumstance informs that we must. Just like we finally got around to addressing
ageism↑ in the United States when we decided that what was really necessary for the sake of the economy and therefore the society was that retired people should go back to work. We still haven't properly countenanced LFD, though.
And, hey, there's a
good wonderfully reckless way to
turn back toward↑ the topic: Compared to LFD, I can promise
taliswoman is not the problem, here.
