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There's a discussion about a recent racial incident going on in a friend's journal. She's a nice liberal person, her friends seem to be nice liberal people, and they're starting from the sort of basis of anti-bigotry that I expect from my friends as well.
Then someone used the term "spaz". I politely asked them not to, explaining that it's a derogatory term deriving from an older word for people with cerebral palsy, "spastic". I was agressively told to stop sanctimoniously monitoring other people's language, and that the term didn't have the meaning I claimed any more.
I've just about stopped shaking, and I still feel rather sick. I didn't expect to come across this sort of attack in that environment, let alone to be told that I had no right to request that someone stopped using such an offensive term. I'm particularly distressed that someone who is capable of having an intelligent, sensitive discussion about the finer points of racism, someone who evidently means well, is perfectly happy to use disability as an insult and cannot see the problem.
So for the benefit of all those people who don't think there's anything wrong with the term "spaz", let's look at how it's defined. I'm using Urban Dictionary, which I reckon is a decent barometer of current slang usage. I'm picking out the ones which particularly strike me, but they're all derogatory and about 90% refer to some feature of disability.
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1. Spaz - From spastic, the disability.
Means a person that acts insane or mentally retarded
Dave ran around screaming with his tounge hanging out like a spaz
2. Someone who is hyperactive, or overly energetic
She can never sit still, she is a bit of a spaz
6. freaking out, twitching, temporary loss of control of mind and body
oh my god quit spazzing!
i'm having a spaz attack
10. short for spastic - derogatory term attributed to a person who has trouble controlling his or her limbs, a clumsy bugger
I don't want to go jogging thanks, I'd rather not look like a spazzy baboon
8. A term for a person who acts mentally retarded. Also may apply to people who may or may not have mental retardation and cannot control themselves or act normally.
Also can apply to people who are nervous, jumpy, hyper and needs to take medication to calm down. Uusally a spazz will blurt out unneccasary things to get attention.
People think im a spaz.
13. a spaz is someone who freaks out when something wierd happens. they also laugh at anything and everything. People who are spazzes usually can be very good friends but you don't want one as your enemy... they crave revenge.
wow... she's such a spaz
28. A person that isnt handicapped but should be. Always acting retarded.
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This is what someone with disabilities lives with every day. Casual hatred, so socially acceptable, so normal that someone otherwise intelligent and perceptive can be outraged at having it challenged. Disability is seen as fair game for mockery, as something inherently unpleasant and there to be laughed at, as a good source for insults. Lack of control on an animal level (#10, #1), not really human so why take them seriously? Contempt doesn't even begin to cover it. #28 is the one that's really haunting me, the idea that disability should be inflicted on someone as a punishment.
People someone talk about something being the last acceptable form of bigotry, homophobia for instance. At least the word "homophobia" exists. There is no term for hatred of people with disabilities. There's "disablism", but it's so rarely used that it hasn't worn off the rough edges yet; plus the usage appears to be more of an equivalent to "heterosexist". If I went to the police and complained of a disablist attack I would be laughed at. (Assuming I could get into their building and last long enough to lodge the complaint without physical collapse, that is.) "Disablism" sounds like problems with getting up an awkwardly constructed wheelchair ramp, not the sensation of knowing that merely getting outside your home is immensely difficult, that you will be stared at as if you have forfeited your right to privacy, that strangers will come up to you and say, "What's wrong with you?" in an unpleasant tone, that by using a mobility aid you are signalling yourself as vulnerable to attack, that people will judge whether or not you deserve to use the mobility aid, that people will speak as if you are not there, that pity is one of the better responses you can get.
That the national press carries regular articles about benefit fraud, characterising people with disabilities as scroungers who are robbing the righteous tax-payers, encouraging legions of comments by the public which are baying for the wholly insufficient money we are given to be taken away from us. That people with disabilities are at hugely increased risk of assault, sexual, domestic, or other, and unlikely to be believed if they report it. That most of us are living in poverty, often in social isolation too, and leaving your own home for an hour can be a miracle. That you have to beg and plead for months if not years to get enough help to bathe and eat every day, and if you resist, say, the suggestion that you cut all your hair off, you can be denied any help at all. That you don't dare mention that you have a sex life, because people with disabilities aren't meant to be in relationships at all. That things as basic as being able to work or have a family can be a distant dream. That you may be constantly fighting to be believed, constantly having to justify yourself to strangers who think they have the right to judge you, constantly having your identity attacked.
And language continues to let us down. I can't think of any terms that have been fully and happily reclaimed by people with disabilities, the equivalent of "queer" or "gay". "Crip" gets used occasionally, but that's closer to "nigger", something which is used within the community only and with a great deal of irony, not something that can be used as a general term. I can't think of any positive terms at all, come to that, just a constant drudging fight to beg people not to use the more obviously insulting ones. There's a grand tradition of using disability and illness as metaphors for everything negative right up to absolute evil, particularly blindness and cancer. King Lear isn't about what it's really like to be blind, it's about selfishness and inability to form good relationships, and so many other books and films and anecdotes borrow the idea of disability as a way of self-indulgently exploring the faults of someone healthy, or marking them out in a nice, simple fashion as the baddie. I can think of two famous science fiction novels offhand which use the idea of the whole world suddenly going blind as a way of exploring how nasty people really are underneath. They're good novels, well-respected.
So yes. If someone uses language which indicates that they hold people with disabilities in contempt, I will be upset and I will be angry. If they silence me yet again and tell me that I have no right to complain, that I have no say in the language which defines me, I will be absolutely bloody furious.
Then someone used the term "spaz". I politely asked them not to, explaining that it's a derogatory term deriving from an older word for people with cerebral palsy, "spastic". I was agressively told to stop sanctimoniously monitoring other people's language, and that the term didn't have the meaning I claimed any more.
I've just about stopped shaking, and I still feel rather sick. I didn't expect to come across this sort of attack in that environment, let alone to be told that I had no right to request that someone stopped using such an offensive term. I'm particularly distressed that someone who is capable of having an intelligent, sensitive discussion about the finer points of racism, someone who evidently means well, is perfectly happy to use disability as an insult and cannot see the problem.
So for the benefit of all those people who don't think there's anything wrong with the term "spaz", let's look at how it's defined. I'm using Urban Dictionary, which I reckon is a decent barometer of current slang usage. I'm picking out the ones which particularly strike me, but they're all derogatory and about 90% refer to some feature of disability.
---------------------------------
1. Spaz - From spastic, the disability.
Means a person that acts insane or mentally retarded
Dave ran around screaming with his tounge hanging out like a spaz
2. Someone who is hyperactive, or overly energetic
She can never sit still, she is a bit of a spaz
6. freaking out, twitching, temporary loss of control of mind and body
oh my god quit spazzing!
i'm having a spaz attack
10. short for spastic - derogatory term attributed to a person who has trouble controlling his or her limbs, a clumsy bugger
I don't want to go jogging thanks, I'd rather not look like a spazzy baboon
8. A term for a person who acts mentally retarded. Also may apply to people who may or may not have mental retardation and cannot control themselves or act normally.
Also can apply to people who are nervous, jumpy, hyper and needs to take medication to calm down. Uusally a spazz will blurt out unneccasary things to get attention.
People think im a spaz.
13. a spaz is someone who freaks out when something wierd happens. they also laugh at anything and everything. People who are spazzes usually can be very good friends but you don't want one as your enemy... they crave revenge.
wow... she's such a spaz
28. A person that isnt handicapped but should be. Always acting retarded.
---------------------------------
This is what someone with disabilities lives with every day. Casual hatred, so socially acceptable, so normal that someone otherwise intelligent and perceptive can be outraged at having it challenged. Disability is seen as fair game for mockery, as something inherently unpleasant and there to be laughed at, as a good source for insults. Lack of control on an animal level (#10, #1), not really human so why take them seriously? Contempt doesn't even begin to cover it. #28 is the one that's really haunting me, the idea that disability should be inflicted on someone as a punishment.
People someone talk about something being the last acceptable form of bigotry, homophobia for instance. At least the word "homophobia" exists. There is no term for hatred of people with disabilities. There's "disablism", but it's so rarely used that it hasn't worn off the rough edges yet; plus the usage appears to be more of an equivalent to "heterosexist". If I went to the police and complained of a disablist attack I would be laughed at. (Assuming I could get into their building and last long enough to lodge the complaint without physical collapse, that is.) "Disablism" sounds like problems with getting up an awkwardly constructed wheelchair ramp, not the sensation of knowing that merely getting outside your home is immensely difficult, that you will be stared at as if you have forfeited your right to privacy, that strangers will come up to you and say, "What's wrong with you?" in an unpleasant tone, that by using a mobility aid you are signalling yourself as vulnerable to attack, that people will judge whether or not you deserve to use the mobility aid, that people will speak as if you are not there, that pity is one of the better responses you can get.
That the national press carries regular articles about benefit fraud, characterising people with disabilities as scroungers who are robbing the righteous tax-payers, encouraging legions of comments by the public which are baying for the wholly insufficient money we are given to be taken away from us. That people with disabilities are at hugely increased risk of assault, sexual, domestic, or other, and unlikely to be believed if they report it. That most of us are living in poverty, often in social isolation too, and leaving your own home for an hour can be a miracle. That you have to beg and plead for months if not years to get enough help to bathe and eat every day, and if you resist, say, the suggestion that you cut all your hair off, you can be denied any help at all. That you don't dare mention that you have a sex life, because people with disabilities aren't meant to be in relationships at all. That things as basic as being able to work or have a family can be a distant dream. That you may be constantly fighting to be believed, constantly having to justify yourself to strangers who think they have the right to judge you, constantly having your identity attacked.
And language continues to let us down. I can't think of any terms that have been fully and happily reclaimed by people with disabilities, the equivalent of "queer" or "gay". "Crip" gets used occasionally, but that's closer to "nigger", something which is used within the community only and with a great deal of irony, not something that can be used as a general term. I can't think of any positive terms at all, come to that, just a constant drudging fight to beg people not to use the more obviously insulting ones. There's a grand tradition of using disability and illness as metaphors for everything negative right up to absolute evil, particularly blindness and cancer. King Lear isn't about what it's really like to be blind, it's about selfishness and inability to form good relationships, and so many other books and films and anecdotes borrow the idea of disability as a way of self-indulgently exploring the faults of someone healthy, or marking them out in a nice, simple fashion as the baddie. I can think of two famous science fiction novels offhand which use the idea of the whole world suddenly going blind as a way of exploring how nasty people really are underneath. They're good novels, well-respected.
So yes. If someone uses language which indicates that they hold people with disabilities in contempt, I will be upset and I will be angry. If they silence me yet again and tell me that I have no right to complain, that I have no say in the language which defines me, I will be absolutely bloody furious.
