It’s time to talk about casual ableism. I saw this post by http://preen.ph  on Instagram and want to share it because it’s important that we all unlearn harmful behavior. Ableism is ingrained in our everyday language, so it’s very likely that you use ableist words. Thread.

Disabilities are often used as insults. Especially my fellow Dutchies should take note, as there’s a lot of insults based on disabilities and a lot of swearing with diseases. Just because ableist language is so deeply rooted that we see it as normal, doesn’t actually make it ok.

Just because you like you’re stuff organized doesn’t mean you have OCD and when something upsets you it doesn’t mean you’re triggered. You’re not autistic when you mean that you like things to be done in a certain way... say what you mean without using disabilities!

Some words are never acceptable to use. But it’s not offensive to refer to disabled people by the terms they use for themselves. However I want to add that some people prefer person first language (person who is blind) and others prefer identity first language (blind person)

I know that a lot of people love swearing with diseases and use ableist insults, I know it’s seen as acceptable and funny and normal but it’s really time to unlearn and change that. Let’s work together to make language more inclusive (“take a step” unfortunately isn’t inclusive)

And when you don’t want to stop using certain words ask yourself why. Why is it that you want to keep using ableist language, knowing that it’s ableist? Why have you not started to unlearn these things and why are you not willing to start today?