MNHQ .. Can we talk about disability bashing?

so mn hq you can now see from TheFlyingOnion post that you can't educate some people they will still go out of thier way to offend and upset and troll

TheFlyingOnion no retard is offensive and disablist, but you know that don't you, are you enjoying your wind up.... cos I am hiding you now>>

LeninGrad we do but mn hq don't

Agree shoesy. I do very much indeed want to supprt the absolute necessity of avoiding disablism. I just feel that objective is badly pursued in this case (the case of "moron")

You have never seen anyone call someone a retard FO? I have seen it several times.

When someone politely points out that it is offensive some posters will aplogise and even thank them for explaining but many will argue that its fine to use it and its meaningless.

I am not sure about moron tbh. Its not a word I associate with people with LDs because its not been used for so long in an official sense. I am however willing to listen to those who feel its inappropriate.

I am willing to listen to anyone explain why they find something offensive. That comes from years of having people dimiss me when I challenge their use of language.

I just think we have to be careful not to go overboard, some words like idiot have been in common use since I was a child and I am very old, same with moron, if we go to far we loose support,

I don't think I was being hair-splitting. In ancient greek it simply meant something like 'stupid'. It was introduced as a "medical" term in 1910 and dropped as such a few decades later. Currrently, I imainge that its status as a former diagnostic term is unknown to almost all of its users. It is linguistically legislative to insist on returning to a superceded use in order to label users of it as disablist. This is what I had in mind when I posted earlier about values becoming 'exsanguinated': there is no real connection here to the actual linguistic pactice of the speakers.

don't be so silly, Lougle

If I call you a dude am I saying "an ill-bred and ignorant, but ostentatious, man from the city" (wiki it if you don't believe me)

Wise up to the 21st century...

Except, there are times when I think we must be, because it is the only rational explanation for the utter ignorance on this thread.

That, Shoesytwoesy (good to see you btw) is because we are not in the 19th century

Lougle, to be honest, I don't think they don't get it. I think they don't see it as interfering with their business interests and as such, they just don't care. To a certain extent, I think it suits MNHQ to have these debates for some reason. It is horrendously patronising to cast people with disabilities, their parents and carers into the role of "educator" in this context but I suppose it generates traffic and that, after all, is the raison d'etre of the site. MN peddles a certain sort of identity but for some reason, disability politics is deemed outside of this white middle-class female agenda. God knows why, disability matters are very much feminist matters with many women and parents of disabled children pushed into poverty as a result of dealing with disability. But it's not a matter of interest to MN, for whatever reason. Reflecting society's prejudices as a whole, I guess?

If someone were to take a case, suddenly MNHQ would become very keen to promote a disability-friendly editorial policy. Interesting how when Riven's situation was in the media, there was much trumpeting about the rights of the disabled?

MNHQ are doing bad business in this case but perhaps they fail to see it. More fool them.

The piece I posted above is from an essay on internet communities but says a lot about the nature of cyberspace fora like this one. It was referenced in a documentary on BBC2 last night and it has certainly made me think..

TheFlyingOnion...you are saying 'You fucking person with a mental age of between 8 and 12'.

If, infact, the person you are directing that to, does NOT have a mental age of between 8 and 12 years old, you are insulting them by using a disabled person's condition against them.

Just as it would be racist to say 'you fucking paki'.

sorry in my 16 years I have never met anyone with a dx of anything that includes moron or idiot.
mental retardation, spasctic cp, for instance are proper medical terms, offensive when used in other contexts.

I can Lougle: "you fucking moron"

same as idiot in my world...

Words like moron or idiot are used in common parlance away from any reference to disability though. I don't really see how you can insist that people on a discussion site stop themselves using language that would be reasonably acceptable in any newspaper. That is quite different from tolerating hate speech against people with disabilities.

Threadworm, if we are going to split hairs, then the original meaning of 'idiot' was 'uneducated or ordinary layperson'. It was only in the 18th/19th century that the word 'idiot' was used to describe those people who had a mental age approximation of 3 years. According to wiki anyway.

I suppose it's a question of drawing a line. There are some words which have such general usage that context is all-important.

There are other words which can only be offensive, IMO.

I mean, can anyone come up with a legitimate phrase that involves the word 'moron'?

wow I don't think I've ever seen anything "disabilist" on MN.

do you mean people calling each other names? I wouldn't say calling some stupid, an idiot or a moron is disabilist!

In fact, most of the time everyone is pussyfooting like mad around the issue - "oh don't slag off someone's spelling, they might be dyslexic!" "my child's friend isn't naughty he might be ADD!"

am surprised

No lenin, spastic is clearly offensive,

I didn't, Aitch, but I have read back.

What I would say, is that language does evolve. It is true that people sometimes use words without knowing their meaning or origin. But that doesn't stop those words being inappropriate. It also doesn't absolve the individual, nor the publisher, from responsibility.

'Ignorance is no defence in the law' or somesuch phrase.

The law is the law. The moment the publisher is made aware of the meaning of a word, and that the use of the word is in contravention of the law, they need to take decisive action.

For example, SWMNBN centred around one phrase. Now, it certainly wasn't intended to be more than banter. The poster in question probably took less than 30 seconds to type it. BUT once SWMNBN became aware of it, MNHQ were dragged to a legal battle.

I have been horrified by some words I have used in ignorance. I had no idea, for example, of the origin of 'Handicap'.

Another example:

We've established that the use of the shortened form of Pakistani is offensive and racist. As soon as someone used that phrase to generalise about members of the Pakistani population, MNHQ would delete it. Even if the poster didn't know it was Racist.

This is no different.

If I share an opinion that I find something offensive, then MNHQ can say 'hide the thread'.

However, if I give a reference to the origin of a word, that clearly puts it in 'disablist' territory, I would expect MNHQ to respond to the law that protects my daughter, and her associates - in this case me.