#ableist terms

silly in English has a very different meaning actually, where ‘dumb’ means someone who is deaf or mute (and therefore must have low intelligence) and ‘stupid’ means someone of low intelligence, silly means foolish, often intentionally so, or basically ‘you know better than to do this, but you did it anyways’  and has no connections to suggesting the person whom you’re calling ‘silly’ is of low intelligence.

‘Silly’ has never been used to target specifically disabled people either, history is important in words. ‘stupid’ and ‘dumb’ are words that were developed to describe (and as a result, harm) disabled people, specifically people thought to have ‘low intelligence’ like learning disabled people (including, autism, down’s, adhd, dyslexia, dyscalcula, NLD, etc.). Silly was not (likewise with foolish). The history of the words is also why those two would have ableist connotations, where ‘silly’ doesn’t.

I don’t know how widespread this is, but “herp derp” and “hurr durr” were both ableist slurs long before the internet. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, where as children we’d mock each other by smacking the sides of our hands against our chests and making “herp derp” noises—basically, imitating the kids with developmental delays in a really offensive way, to indicate that our friends were acting like “retards.”  When I say this, most of the people I’ve talked to know EXACTLY what I’m talking about, but somehow don’t make the connection? Or try to act like the terms aren’t connected, which frankly I think is bullshit. source

Wow that comment was months ago.

Idk, I wasn’t aware that scientific sources, backed up arguments to unbiased websites like JAMA and the APA and cancer.org and logic were ‘ridiculous’. She’s 12, she’s uneducated, has actively used misinformation and disproven claims and you wanna act like I’m unintelligent and drop ableist terms in my ask box? 

I mean, at least I can do my research, find credible sources and put my face to my arguments. You don’t even have the guts to use your face, you gotta click anon before you can even open your mouth lmao.

You’re so pathetic it’s actually kinda funny. But do tell, how exactly was her using disproven, unsourced claims and emotional manipulation a more intelligent argument than my scientifically backed and unbiased sources exactly?