Saying what we mean

Several years ago, I was in a volunteer meeting, and we were going around making introductions. The volunteer manager asked us to introduce ourselves and share our pronouns. And one of my peer volunteers, when they introduced themselves, asked if they could make another request to the group about language.

They asked that we not use the word “crazy.” In American English, this is commonly used as an adverb (as a synonym for “very”) and as an adjective (sometimes as a synonym for “hectic” and sometimes as a synonym for “absurd”).

They asked that we not use a word that is commonly used to stigmatize mental illness and to write off the people who had it—because societally, we joke about mental illness in the way we never do with things we consider to be “real” medical conditions. And this is hurtful.

The volunteer offered alternatives such as “wild” or “ridiculous” or “outrageous” for when actually we meant that something was nonsensical or unpredictable. “Very” also has many synonyms. Something can be supremely good. And if we’re busy or work is hectic—we should simply say so.

It was my first introduction to ableist language as a concept. Ableist as in it reinforces ableism. If you’re unfamiliar with ableism, think of it like racism or ageism, but instead of being based on race or on one’s age, it’s based on “valuing certain bodies and minds over others,” as summed up by the Berkeley Disability Lab. (Of note, there is a lot of overlap between ageism and ableism, and intersectionality of all the -ism’s since we all have multiple aspects of our identities.)

Now, there are others who have explained ableist language, and I’m not here to attempt to poorly copy their explanations. This is not about being politically correct. As Lydia X.Z. Brown points out in “Ableist Words and Terms to Avoid,” we can also adjust our language out of respect for other humans and general common decency.

I’d like to argue that furthermore, we ought to say what we mean.

If we think someone made a bad decision, then let’s say that we think they made a poor decision or that we disagree with them. If we mean that a situation was emotionally intense, then let’s say that. Better yet, let’s share the fear we felt, how our heart was pounding so loud we thought the other person might hear it, too. If that dish was extremely delicious, let’s tell the chef that we wanted to lick the plate! (Okay, maybe I’ve been known to literally lick a plate or several…)

This is not a call to be more restrictive, but to be more creative.

Listen, I’m a poet – I love a good metaphor. But in poetry, an effective metaphor is one that brings us closer to the truth, not further from it.

Saying that “work is crazy” or “the world is crazy” doesn’t really help me understand what you mean. There are so many assumptions piled into a single word that we’re trying to force to carry an awful lot of weight. Tell me more. Is work so busy that you haven’t been home for dinner in two weeks? Or is it that your boss changes his mind multiple times a day and then blames you for not listening to his instructions? Is it that the world is being run by people who say one thing while doing the opposite at the same time right in front of us? Or is that the world is full of things you could never have imagined, in ways both good and bad? Or none of those?

I won’t know if you won’t tell me what you truly mean.

July is Disability Pride Month! July 1990 is when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law in the US, although Disability Pride Month is celebrated worldwide. If you’d like to learn more about how the ADA came to be and the disability rights movement in the US, I recommend watching the documentary Crip Camp. If you are worried about offending people, Emily Landau wrote a great book titled Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally. And if you’re interested in disability culture and how disabled people tell their own narratives, check out the Disability Visibility Project.