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

[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.