(I’m not posting in the thread because the OP asked for disengagement and it was supposed to be a reply but isn’t an appropriate post for that context and I’m really fucking frustrated at how stubborn and defensive and inflexible people can be, just for the sake of avoiding a moment of sincere reflection and an apology. Comrades please how are we going to get anywhere like this.)

Foolish has similarly medieval medical roots to other ablest slurs that are more widely recognised.

illustrative examples:

  • early 13c., “silly, stupid, or ignorant person,” from Old French fol “madman, insane person; idiot; rogue; jester,”

  • also an adjective meaning “mad, insane” (12c., Modern French fou),

  • c. 1200, “sinful, wicked; lecherous” (a fool woman (c. 1300) was “a prostitute”) (even the phrase “fooling around” is problematic?)

  • Also used in Middle English for “sinner, rascal, impious person” (late 13c.).

  • the sexually explicit foolin came back into vogue in the 70s

https://www.etymonline.com/word/fool - I left out all the examples that don’t agree with this because non-problematic use does not rehabilitate a word once it has been turned into a tool of oppression (apparently.)

I look this up cuz I too at one point thought foolish was fine, but I had a tiny glimmer of doubt and I checked and whoops more badness.

The fact that nobody I’m aware of has been hurt by the word fool yet doesn’t change the potential for harm it carries. So why would I risk it?

What would it say about my attitude towards my comrades if I brought a sharp sword to the meeting and swung it around for my own edification? despite slashing a few of you and oops really badly hurting someone I don’t know that well yet. (Hey back off I like the sword okay? It’s messed up to ask me to stop being a dickhead with it.)

At one point I might have wanted, instead of adjusting my behaviour and making a concessions , to make a big performance out of the fact that the meaning of words is entirely derived from their context.

Materially, socially and the context of the words that come before and after them in the sentence and paragraphs that they arrive in. That’s USUALLY the most important part that lets you determine the meaning of somebody’s words.

But I’d be an asshole if I made this about that.

I might have been pedantically correct, Words don’t hurt people, people hurt people type shit.

But I’d be debateperverting, being even more of an arse on top of already hurting my comrades. If I’d be willing to do that, I might even dig in every time and cynically turn every opportunity for growth into a dishonest argument of deflection and talking past each other. So why would I do that?! That seems like really shit comrade behaviour.

Not only is it none of my business whether the core root causes of someone’s vulnerabilities are internally consistent and logically valid, it isn’t even relevant, because we aren’t attempting to calculate a truth. We’re trying to get along and create a pleasant safe space to hang out in.

So long as there are some coherent and consistent things I can do to accommodate vulnerable comrades then I don’t see how why I wouldn’t. What kind of fragile self centered baby would I be? I mean I’m just vibin and this other person has been shocked into a trauma response from my actions, they are hurt and I am not… perhaps I have a responsibility in multiple ways to take ownership of resolving the situation to MY COMRADE’S satisfaction. The harmed party, who I did that to. (I shouldn’t have done it! but now I have the window of opportunity to fix this as best I can and adjust.

I’m not being factitious about the way I try to act and respond to this. I do try to permanently shed these words from everyday use in my vocab.

Cuz I’m not trying to be a better comrade just so I can be a good hexbear.

If I’m learning how to be a better person then I would be irrational and mean spirited indeed if I went right back to not caring (or behaving as though I didn’t care) who I hurt in the rest of my life.

Low key I thought you all kinda felt like this too. I thought this was an aspect of my praxis. Sometimes inconvenient and might not get the satisfaction of a revolution to reward me for trying my best.

But its part of the deal if you ask me. What a tiny sacrifice. You really wouldn’t budge on this?

I don’t get it comrade. It aint nothin to me man, I got so many other words and every time I fuck up its a chance to do a better job of every other part of this meeting of communist minds.

Are you already as woke as you’re going to get?

    • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      Great. I was trying to find them some tools to solve the problem temporarily until something better could be figured out

      But I didn’t want to intrude on them either so I was just gonna find something and post about it.

      • Trying2KnowMyself [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        There are word replacer extensions for desktop browsers, but mobile support is a bit more lacking afaik. While that can help lessen the harm, if someone is able to use them, having the solution to ableism be “here’s how you can ignore the ableism” instead of “here’s how people can be less ableist” isn’t one I’d be particularly interested in.

        • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          I replied from the hip and missed the point you were making.

          The ableism is a part of it. There’s a lot of misogyny on here too. I am starting to wonder if maybe a significant number of posters are only not spouting constant transphobia is because its the one thing hexbear knows how to recognise and has spent sufficient time having it drilled that you have to defend against or you are not doing it right.

          But like that doesn’t mean you unlocked Exempt From Crit. In practice, if we keep to our tradition of protecting trans people but turn a blind eye to ableism then that’s gonna also fuck over a lot of trans people, and if you’re already exhausted from surviving it kinda doesn’t matter whether the argumentative little contrarian on HB throws transphobia at you or ableism they’ve still gone and fucked up the last good place on the net for you.

          I think I might stop apologising for being “a no theory having motherfucker” cuz I don’t think at the moment hexbear places value on anything like that, in aggregate. We just like when well read articulate people spoon feed us enough new shit to make us feel smart and more educated.

          • Trying2KnowMyself [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            There’s a lot of misogyny on here too.

            Oh yeah, I’ve focused on ableism since it’s the struggle session that brought us here, but we can definitely plug in misogyny/misogynistic in place of ableism/ableist in that post (and other terms too - racism/racist certainly).

            Last time I called someone out on misogyny, they doubled down, and even though the admins nuked them when I reported it, when I saw more from someone else that “wasn’t quite as bad” a couple days later I didn’t feel like I had the spoons to engage again, and while I should have just reported it without engaging, I walked away instead. I hope I do better next time.

        • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          3·
          3 days ago

          yeah I wanted to make sure whatever I recommended worked and that I wasn’t just throwing a problem at them to solve.

          it was the right move to leave though, hexbear made it very clear that we aint doin all that.

            • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              5·
              3 days ago

              It was too high of a price to pay to accommodate them.

              But we probably could have figured something out if people hadn’t taken an open post by the OP revealing their vulnerability as an invitation to bastardmaxx.

              I hope at least some of the people who go on an aggressive defensive as their first and final conflict resolution strategy have a bit of doubt about their own sincerity and motives in leftist participation.

              They won’t tho in all likelihood. I have to accept that some people just don’t care at all and enjoy being vicious.

              Tbh, while the OP was open and honest and showed at least enough self awareness to be able to communicate their discomfort clearly, the most charitable explanation I can come up with is that the other belligerents (and it isnt just this one thread) were also emotionally wounded enough to feel justified in their actions. But injured from what, the prospect that you might not have always been the perfect flawless final form all along?

              my leftists, dawg. yea

  • Salah [ey/em]@hexbear.net
    4·
    3 days ago

    I do wonder if slurs could have an expiration date. If a word was a slur over 1000 years ago, and its current uses are not ableist in any way, is it still a slur? I strongly believe that language is dynamic, but I also acknowledge that a word’s background can have implications for current usage. I don’t know if this would apply to the word fool, I don’t use the word and if I did I’d be happy to remove it from my vocabulary if asked by comrades. But I feel like the concept of dynamic language gets lost in these conversations sometimes.