(Originally written in 2018. Some edits in September 2024. CW for some brief mentions of child sexual abuse.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve noticed some troubling patterns amongst disability activists that have caused me to feel frustrated and alienated. Even though I may agree with these people conceptually\u2014we all agree, for example, that disabled people deserve human rights and respect precisely because we are people\u2014the approaches some people use feel needlessly reductive for me. I don\u2019t mean to say that their approaches don\u2019t have merit or that there hasn\u2019t been significant thought put into their efforts, but that I find that they obscure the complexity of people\u2019s individual and collective experiences. I\u2019ll focus on two phenomena I\u2019ve noticed: the fixation on lists of words as a way to combat ableism, and the idea that even discussing the ways in which people learn is an ableist concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m uncomfortable with the fixation on reforming language to the exclusion of other methods of activism as an effort to help dismantle ableist mindsets. I\u2019m not saying that people should use cruel names to refer to disabled people. What I am saying, though, is that some people who tend not to think verbally or who have language-related disabilities may not be able to memorise the long lists of Words Not To Use that circulate on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. What I care about is people\u2019s underlying attitudes toward disabled people, more so than I do the specific words they use. When people use metaphorical language, their brains may not process it in the same way they may an overtly cruel word directed at a disabled person. For example, There are also different historical contexts attached to words, but I don\u2019t see that context discussed very often; everything is treated as equally offensive. For example, “r*tard,\u201d \u201cidiot,\u201d \u201cmoron,\u201d and \u201cimbecile\u201d were formerly used as diagnostic categories, often connected with the institutionalisation and social exclusion of people diagnosed with intellectual disability. \u201cStupid,” on the other hand, was never a diagnostic category. It\u2019s insulting to call someone stupid, but it doesn\u2019t come with the same cultural baggage that the aforementioned “r*tard,” \u201cidiot,\u201d \u201cmoron,\u201d and \u201cimbecile\u201d have. The same goes for the \u201c-phobia” ending; while phobia is now a diagnostic term, it\u2019s also had a less specific, nonclinical meaning for years to refer to extreme fear or hatred. I have had disabled friends ostracised from groups that ostensibly exist to support people, but zero in on language to the exclusion of actually offering support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I understand, on the other hand, that many autistic people and people with similar disabilities tend to use and interpret language literally: what they hear is what they see, and it is difficult for them to associate a meaning with multiple contexts. I am not<\/em> one of those people; while I can often have a literal visualisation of a word in my head, I tend to see words in a holistic way that combines literal and figurative meanings, translations, shades of meaning, subtleties, and historical contexts. I actually have a hard time with overly simplistic, decontextualised explanations and will start tuning out or growing frustrated if people do that with me. That\u2019s been the case since I was very young. I don\u2019t just see a thing; I see the processes, ideas, concepts, history, and relationships connected with that thing. I have a hard time understanding overly concrete thinking. I think this issue is complex and can\u2019t be collapsed into a list of dos and don\u2019ts. If you have a hard time juggling multiple meanings of words and have an easy time with rote memorisation, then those “ableist word profiles” may work on you. For me, things intrinsically have multiple meanings. I\u2019m also very poor at directed rote memorisation, even though my long-term memory is excellent. This isn\u2019t a universal approach, though, and people should recognise that when constructing these profiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen some disability activists claim that the concept of intelligence\u2014meant here to refer to differences in the ability to learn, recognise patterns and interact with with information, and the neurological differences that are associated with these differences\u2014is ableist in and of itself<\/a> (I hate<\/em> that article). I disagree<\/a> with this idea, but I understand why people may say things like this: they may know about the sordid history of IQ testing to determine people\u2019s right to live within the community and to raise a family, or racist interpretations of the achievement gap that insinuate or claim baldly that Black and brown people are inherently less intelligent than white people, or other ways in which hateful people have misused the concept of learning differences to marginalise, abuse, and punish. Some advocates for gifted education have expressed ableist or elitist attitudes toward people with more typical learning ability or people with intellectual disabilities, too. I\u2019ve also seen nondisabled people use the intelligence of some disabled people as a bludgeon: \u201cIf you\u2019re so smart, you should be able to manage a bank account \/ work a 9-5 job \/ clean your house every Saturday \/ make meals.” Sometimes this is even an institutional requirement; some developmental disability organisations and government agencies will only serve people with an IQ below 70, even though developmental disability encompasses other conditions besides intellectual disability. The assumption is that disabled people of average or above-average intelligence can fend for ourselves without help. Of course, things aren\u2019t so simple; there are many disabled people who learn with great facility but have a hard time with certain activities of daily living. (Hello, there!) These things are not mutually exclusive and can coexist in the same person. I get why people say things like \u201cIntelligence is an ableist concept,\u201d even if I think that that conclusion is too reductive and flattens the complexity of people\u2019s internal experiences and the outward expression of those experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, I\u2019ve noticed some patterns amongst the people who say, \u201cIntelligence doesn\u2019t exist at all,\u201d or \u201cThe concept of intelligence is intrinsically ableist.\u201d These statements typically come from highly intelligent disabled people who are overcompensating for Gifted-Child Syndrome. More specifically, it\u2019s a kind of intelligence that allows them to do well in school and doesn\u2019t isolate them from other people because of their divergent thinking. Things come to them easily and<\/em> they are easily understood. They may be intelligent, but they\u2019re not monsters<\/em>. Some of the psychological and sexual abuse I endured growing up was for my kind of intelligence. I was treated like a monster when I wasn\u2019t being treated like an invalid for being autistic. I generally passed most of my classes as a kid, but I didn\u2019t feel fully invested in most of them because I didn\u2019t have the opportunity to really challenge myself intellectually in most of them. I scared my parents (especially my father), who tried to suppress my curiosity by restricting what I was allowed to read. They also dismissed me when I tried to communicate with them in a more conceptual or abstract way; they\u2019d often look at me as though I\u2019d grown two heads or accuse me of being evasive or using \u201cpsychobabble” or “woe-is-me stuff” if I tried to give them nuanced explanations of my behaviour. They tended to perceive things very concretely and literally, at least relative to me. I know the common stereotype is that nonautistic people are conceptual, while autistic people are literal and concrete, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought I was crazy for years until I read more about how different kinds of learning ability can affect people\u2019s cognition and perception. I thought it was an autistic trait until I encountered autistic people, both in person and online, who thought more concretely and focused primarily on immediately observable phenomena rather than their underlying complexity. For a few years, though, I actually internalised the idea that intelligence was a disablist concept and started wondering what the hell was wrong with me again. I attributed everything to my being autistic again even though I knew autistic people who didn\u2019t see things the same way I did. To claim that these things don\u2019t exist, or that they can be subsumed under another label that doesn\u2019t necessarily come with those traits (for example, autism), feels like a form of gaslighting. I certainly felt different for being autistic, too, but these phenomena were separate from my being autistic. If intelligence is an unalloyed good in your life, it\u2019s easy to see it as a privilege. But if it\u2019s something that isolates you from your own family, makes you grow bored and disenchanted with formal education until you start using it instrumentally as an adult, leads you to see things that other people can\u2019t, and makes you doubt your perceptions because you confuse people, it is not the same thing. The idea of intelligence as an absolute privilege is wholly alien to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve also noticed that the vast majority of these people are also white or East Asian. Neither white people nor East Asians are routinely associated with low intelligence in the same way that Black, Latino, or various indigenous groups of people are. This isn\u2019t to say that East Asians don\u2019t experience discrimination or oppression. They certainly do experience racism, but this is not a stereotype typically applied to them. As a Black person, I\u2019ve definitely seen people of my race routinely treated as stupid or incompetent just because of the colour of our skin. Entire books like The Bell Curve<\/em> have been published to disparage us and our abilities. There\u2019s a cottage industry of \u201cresearchers” receiving money from the Pioneer Fund to \u201cprove” that we\u2019re less intelligent than white people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, these anecdotal observations aren\u2019t a universal statement; I\u2019m uncomfortable saying that an attribute applies to the totality of a population for a number of reasons. It\u2019s just a pattern that I\u2019ve repeatedly noticed and that I find frustrating and deeply alienating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If differences in learning ability did not exist, then we would not recognise the existence of intellectual disability and offer support for people who struggle with learning. I think that it\u2019s possible to recognise that people\u2019s ability to learn and interact with their environment can vary without attaching value judgements to people, institutionalising people, bringing down racist or misogynistic pronouncements, or treating IQ test scores as perfect reflections of people\u2019s intellectual ability. <\/p>\nLearning ability: throwing the baby out with the bathwater<\/h2>\n\n\n\n