Disablist

[tiredstars]

"This plan is so good it's retarded"

The other week there was a post on the f-word blog apologising for a previous post which had used "disablist" language. Disablist language is a fairly new concept to me, though the principle's familiar. It's language that implies that disabled people are worse than other people

Comments

[dissident_hope]

Yeah, all a bit complicated. I thought I heard "disabled" wasn't acceptable language anymore, so "disablist" might be "disablist

[tiredstars]

However, I'm pretty certain the standard, everyday definitions of these words count as changed from the original form.It's not just that - in many cases the (largely forgotten) technical definitions are not the original meanings (as much as we can say words have original meanings). The science of psychology picked up lots of words and gave them technical meanings, slicing up how people thought and talked about mental conditions in new ways