I just realized this thing that's weird. When we talk about language being harmful, folks think we're talking about our feelings being hurt like that's The Thing.

So they say we just need to be tougher and not let insults hurt us.

But they're not getting it.

Insults are just insults. Harmful/oppressive language isn't harmful because it hurts our feelings.

That language is harmful because it contributes to our oppression. It conveys ideas like "You're lesser and deserve to be oppressed."

That's the harm we're talking about. We're talking about the harm of language that comes from and strengthens and conveys the idea that people like us are fundamentally lesser and oppressing us is just the way things are supposed to be.

I'm not "sensitive" about language. I'm OBSERVANT.

I notice patterns and connections. I'm concerned with how language is utilized to reinforce and maintain existing oppressive power structures.

I want to tear those oppressive power structures down and if you think that can be done without dealing with the role language plays, good fucking luck, see you back here when you find out it won't work.

This seems like a thing I should've realized a long time before now but I think I was just circling around it and never really landed on it.

So of course I get all these insults about just being overly sensitive every time I talk about ableist language because people think this is about my feelings.

I mean it is, in a way. I feel extremely goddamn angry about oppression and being oppressed.

I'm not saying that language doesn't do individual harm, too. Dealing with that kind of targeted oppression can be really painful and do a lot of damage to people's health.

But it's not because it's an insult. It's because it's oppression.

Do I think putting words around this before Thursday night would've prevented this recent debacle? Fuck no.

But it does clarify some things for me.

Thanks to our buddy John Jaycob Jason Jude Jingleheimer Grace for helping me with this one. Thinking about that assholery gave me direction.

If you haven't met Joel, he introduced himself to us in a most spectacular fashion. In that he made a spectacle of himself. https://twitter.com/EbThen/status/1041080081093992448

I'm really pleased about putting words around this. Good result.