intent

[pauraque_bk]

Earlier I was reading a blog post by a person who thinks using the word "lame" to mean "bad" is ableist. Of course, the vast majority of people who use the word that way are not intending to make people with disabilities feel bad, or even thinking about people with disabilities at all. In linguistics it's called semantic drift -- the sense of the word drifts until non-linguists are no longer conscious of the original sense. To most people who say "lame", the word means only "bad".

Their intentions are pure, so they feel perfectly justified in saying so, as they did in the comments to this blog post. They didn't mean to be offensive, and intent is what matters.

I don't actually think that intent does trump effect, but I'm surprised that people so often get stuck on that point when there's an even more devastating counter-argument to be made.

When you didn't know there were people who were hurt by the word, your intentions were pure. Now that you *do* know, going into the future, your intentions are not pure. You know it's a word that hurts some people's feelings, so in using the word, you're consciously deciding to take the risk that someone's going to be hurt in a specific way that you already know about. (This differentiates it from all the other ways that you could possibly hurt someone that you don't know about yet!) Once you know, there's no un-knowing, there is only ignoring. You could use a different word, but you choose not to. You're no longer innocent and your intentions can no longer be described as good.

Comments

[thimble-kiss.livejournal.com]

Well said! Interestingly (and depressingly), we have not only the equivalent of lame ('lam') used do mean bad or stupid in Norwegian, but people also have been using deaf ('døv') in the same context for a couple of decades. Makes me cringe every time I hear it, especially as it's usually spoken in tones of dismissive contempt. :/

This is something that came into the language in recent decades, by the way, you don't hear it much or at all from the older generations and you hear it mostly from teens/twentysomethings. I'm pretty sure the use of lame that way was picked up from American English, and deaf then seemed like a natural extrapolation when 'lam' had lost the shock effect? Says something about how crass and pervasive ableism is, anyway.

[pauraque]

That's interesting, I didn't know that about Norwegian. In English "deaf" is often used negatively, usually "Are you deaf?!" meaning "Aren't you listening? Don't you understand? Are you too stupid to understand?"

But you don't get "that's so deaf"="that's bad" in English, perhaps because there's also a slang word "def" that means "good". The origin isn't certain, it may be a shortening of "definite(ly)", but I wonder if it may have blocked the homophone "deaf" from taking on the "bad" sense.

[thimble-kiss.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and we use 'deaf' and 'blind' that way, too, of course, when someone 'isn't getting the point' or 'can't see what's right under their nose'. And those are even harder to root out because they arise from actual metaphor or recognisable, if faulty, parallels, so I guess they feel logical in a way that 'lame' and 'deaf' in the 'something bad' sense do not. But I'm really trying to be conscious of not using those first type of expressions, too. As you said in your reply to another comment: I have a good vocabulary and the language isn't going to run out of words if I stop using a few in hurtful contexts. Very good point, that.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the best counter-argument that I've seen. FWD posted about it a few times, too - no, disabled activists aren't expecting everyone to automatically know what's appropriate but they are expecting you to at least try to learn.

Weirdly enough, while I see "lame" being used to be "bad" online, offline I only hear it meaning "an animal having trouble walking". The joys of rural life!

[pauraque]

In the area where I grew up (I can't really speak for here, which is much more animal-filled and might be different), I think young people knew that "lame" had a "difficulty walking" sense if they thought about it -- they wouldn't be completely lost if it was used that way in a book -- but it wasn't something that was used in everyday life. It seemed like an archaic usage.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

We had a big old battle about this on who_anon. I learned a lot.

[pauraque]

I'm still learning about this stuff too. I think what it comes down to for me is that there are a lot of words in English and we're not in danger of running out (contrary to what you might think if you listen to some people in these debates), so if I know a word is gonna hurt some feelings, it's not a burden for me to pick a different word. I have a big vocabulary.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

I was already trying to cut back on 'retard', which was the hardest one because I grew up on the West Coast. 'Lame' is an easier one to quit because it inhabits the same place as 'sucks', which is the superior word.

Personally, I like gimp, and I am one, so I will continue to use it the same way I use dyke and pervert.

[pauraque]

Yeah I'm trying to get away from "retard(ed)" too, which is hard because it's so pervasive in gaming circles.

You've reminded me of something else I read countering the argument of "I have a friend with disabilities who calls himself lame". The other person was like, "uh, so you take the word he's reclaimed to empower himself and use it as a negative word? that seems worse, not better..."

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

Another excellent point.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

True. Though I think a lot of times when people use it anyway they're not claiming that they didn't know some people are offended by it, but making a statement of saying that they they think their offense is unwarranted and they're refusing to acknowledge it.

[pauraque]

I think that's often the same argument in different words. "Your offense is unwarranted" = "My actions were not offensive" = "I didn't intend for my actions to be offensive". They're still defining what is offensive using intention as the criterion, rather than effect.

Sometimes they mean instead, "I know other PWDs who aren't offended by this so it isn't offensive", which is a slightly different argument. They're accepting effect as a criterion for determining what is acceptable, but they're carefully cherry-picking which effects to consider. If I slap you in the face, the vast majority of people on Earth are not hurt or even affected by that. How do you decide which effect is the valid or correct one?

If they mean "I don't care if everyone in the world were offended by this, they'd still be wrong", well, there's not much you can say to that. Some people think the world is full of folks who "just want to be offended" and "need to grow a thicker skin". In my experience, this is probably not the case. It is interesting, though, that there are majoritarians who think the minority (of whatever stripe) is conspiring to control their words and actions, and that really pisses them off.