Episode 190: Left of Center

If you target non-disabled people using an ableist epithet, you're still an ableist.

Video: Why I Left The Left

Transcript

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Laura 0:00

I'm sorry. Did my moral outrage hurt your feelings?

Male VO 0:04

This is Bad Attitudes.

Laura 0:21

Hello, friends and strangers. Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes, an uninspiring podcast about disability. I'm your host, Laura.

Laura 0:31

This week's supporter shout-out goes to Jennifer Kellogg. Thank you for your continuing support.

Laura 0:37

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Laura 0:50

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Laura 1:04

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Laura 1:22

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community, but I am not the only voice.

Laura 1:38

A while back, I watched a video from a creator I follow called Why I Left the Left. Now, thankfully, he didn't leave the left. He was reacting to short-form videos of other people who had parted ways with the left and made the move to the more conservative side of politics. I'll post a link to the video in the episode notes in case you want to check it out for yourself.

Laura 2:01

Aside from the obvious one-issue voters, a lot of the reasoning seemed to boil down to the left is mean sometimes.

Laura 2:11

I'm sorry. The left is mean sometimes? The left is mean?

Laura 2:17

Remind me, who was it that constructed a gallows with the intention of hanging Mike Pence for the crime of ratifying the 2020 election results? Which side regularly refers to military veterans as suckers and losers? And the leaders of which political party are out here calling opposition leaders the arcelor? And let's not forget the death threats and libtards and snowflakes thrown around in social media comments when someone criticizes their red-hatted messiah. But sure, the left is mean.

Laura 2:57

I'm under no illusion that the left is without problems. The left has a lot of problems. There's elitism on the left. If you're not boycotting or sacrificing the way certain people think you should, then you're not liberal enough. Politicians aren't listening to what the average citizens on the left want. To be honest, the Democrat social media account calling Stephen Miller an ugly fuck is the kind of energy we've been asking for. We want leaders with spine who will stand up against the corruption we're seeing on an hourly basis from this administration. Most of us want massive reform within the Democratic Party, and I think we're going to see that reflected in the midterm outcomes.

Laura 3:42

But I'm getting off track.

Laura 3:44

What really stuck out for me was the last video in this collection. It was a white man, of course, sitting at a table telling his story to a small audience. He talked about seeing Trump mock that disabled reporter during his first presidential campaign and being disgusted. He goes on to explain that someone in his life showed him how Trump had used that same mocking gesture multiple other times before, not just towards disabled people. And somehow, because Trump used this gesture to mock non-disabled people, it really wasn't all that bad.

Laura 4:23

What episode of the fucking Twilight Zone am I living in right now?

Laura 4:28

If you're confused, the gesture I'm talking about is often used in a mocking way to indicate that the target is somehow mentally defective. It's a limp wrist held to the chest with a screwed-up facial expression and a mocking approximation of the appearance of people with certain disabilities. It was very popular among kids in the 90s to indicate when your peers did something you thought was somehow out of line. But since it's not being directed to only disabled people, it's okay.

Laura 5:00

It's the same excuse people are giving when trying to justify the renewed use of the r-slur. We aren't calling disabled people r-slurs, so it's fine. It is in fact not fine. I think creator Remy Anders explained it best, so I'm going to paraphrase. It used to be popular to call things gay. We used it for anything we found off-putting, silly, or just plain bad. Dude, that's so gay, was the rallying cry of the 90s kid. Generally speaking, the epithet was not directed at gay people, but they are the ones who reaped the damage.

Laura 5:38

Calling something gay in a pejorative manner implies a negative connotation with being gay. The more you use gay in this way, the more ingrained a negative definition becomes. If over and over and over again we hear that something is gay, we're going to associate being gay with something bad. That is incredibly damaging to the community.

Laura 6:02

The people you call the r-slur may not be mentally disabled, but that is the community that reaps the damage. You create a negative connection between the definition of the r-slur and the community it describes. Because when someone uses the r-slur, we all know the stereotype they're referring to. And now they've built this avatar of these individuals as unintelligent or incapable or lacking in mental capacity when that's often not the case, or at the very least, not the whole story.

Laura 6:36

Trump's gesture is the physical equivalent of the r-slur. It doesn't matter who he's targeting. It's never okay to direct that at anyone. It is no less disgusting to mock a non-disabled person in this manner than it is to mock a disabled person. The man in this video seems to think by spreading his ableism around, Trump is not as bad as he seemed. In reality, what anyone with any sense knows is that it just proves Trump is and always has been an ableist asshole.

Laura 7:12

Anyone who uses this language or this type of physical gesture to mock someone, whether or not their target is a member of the disabled community, is harming the disabled community. Full stop. It is ableist behavior. Directing it towards non-disabled people doesn't make it less disgusting.

Laura 7:32

If we say someone is a racist for the way they treat black people and they go on to behave in a racist way towards other non-black people of color, they are still racist. If they make racist jokes where only white people can hear them, they are still racist. If they say there are good people on both sides, but one side is almost exclusively made up of white supremacist groups, they are definitely a racist. And you're an ableist asshole if you call someone the r-slur, even if that person isn't disabled. You're an ableist asshole if you use a gesture to mock someone as intellectually disabled, even if you know the person is not disabled.

Laura 8:14

I feel like it should go without saying that mocking a disabled person isn't inherently ablest, unless you're mocking them because of their disability. If we think back to when Jasmine Crockett called Greg Abbott Hot Wheels, the problem wasn't that she was mocking a disabled person. Greg Abbott is undeniably worth mocking. The problem was that she went for the obvious joke and mocked his disability, and didn't use the term Sitler, which I maintain is comedy gold.

Laura 8:45

The guy in this video was looking for any excuse to justify his support of Trump. The one he chose is tissue thin at best. Just say the left is mean and be done with it.

Laura 8:59

Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you in the next one.