For sure, especially for our neurodiverse comrades, even in the slower chats the interwoven conversations were a headache to say the least.

Yeah I get you, and I’m certainly guilty of that as well. The main issue really is associating “Having a brain that works good” with being a good person, and having a brain that doesn’t work good with being a bad person

If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.

You’re right, its certainly not on the same level, and I’d never claim it was!

I’m just of the mind that it’s not useful, it doesn’t make for good insults in any way to affect change in whoever you’re insulting, and it causes harm to some. Just don’t think it’s worth it, y’know?

The other site or rules are irrelevant to why I made this post, I made it because someone bringing up “hey lets avoid insults like this” got massively downvoted and the person insulting them was upvoted. A discussion on this is clearly needed

Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation comrade, I appreciate it a lot <3

Like calling Zuck a robot/lizard person.

this one is interesting as well actually, we talked about it on the Neurodiversity and Solidarity episode of The People’s Podcast, I hadn’t considered it problematic either but apparently that’s not universal in the ND community. The example given was asking “why do we only talk about the Zuck like that and not jeff bezos, if the thing that makes them a robot/lizard person is their utter lack of humanity from being a capitalist monster and not his social weirdness?”

It was an interesting conversation, can’t wait till editing is finished and we can post it :D

Could very well be true, I quite often miss stuff like that, could be the case here. And no way, I’m not going to disregard you comrade, you were respectful and gave me info about another perspective outside my own which I always appreciate :)

Thanks comrade, I appreciate it. It’s been incredibly upsetting and has made it really hard for me to formulate my thoughts and express my feelings

Strive to be better, friends, we’re all in this together.

Exactly! Thanks comrade :)

When I first found this community one of the first things I saw was the line “To each according to their need, from each according to their ability.” I cried after seeing that quote and reading the comments of people discussing it. I’m neurodivergent. I have Autism and ADHD, and pretty much until I found this place and leftism in general hated myself and was crushed under my own ableism and brain worms. If I couldn’t understand something simple everyone else could it must be because I’m just stupid, if I couldn’t do something others could it’s because I’m a failure.

So, seeing this was pretty much the first time I felt like I was allowed to exist, that it was okay there were things I sucked at. That it’s not that I am bad, but that the expectations of hellworld are. That I didn’t have to punish myself for this ‘failure.’ It’s one of the most pivotal moments of my short life, without a doubt.

I absolutely understand where you’re coming from :)

But what I’d ask is this: Is using intelligence based insults (and other ableist language as you mentioned) productive? Does it allow for uniquely powerful rhetorical uses? Does it do a job better than any other insult or criticism could?

In my view, insults like these are not only less effective than criticizing people for their actual monstrous beliefs and actions, but when they’re used instead it means the person isn’t getting criticized for those (fundamentally bad) things.

Gonna drop a quote here from @hogposting because I think they said it better than I can

Big difference between wokescolding and: “Hey you know how we all figured out that using the r-word is pretty fucked? Maybe we should think a little about how we’re using other, less severe insults designed to communicate the exact same thing.”

Even if you’re not bought in on that, there are so many more creative, precise ways to insult someone that aren’t “ur a dum dum.”