(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

What's the proper response on TradeMe when you leave someone *very polite* neutral feedback for items that were frankly not as you expected, including the phrase "seller was handicapped by not knowing X", and the seller responds by flipping out and saying "DO YOU NO WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE HANDICAPPED? I DON'T TAKE THAT LIGHTLY. DON'T TRADE WITH ME AGAIN."? (I ended up apologising - but I'm not sure how I could have phrased that in a way that doesn't offer an insult - that was the most neutral phrasing I could come up with. The closest synonym to handicapped in this context is "struggled with" and frankly that seems nasty to me.) Am I completely wrong? Are people who talk about golf handicaps being insensitive? Can the word handicapped no longer be used without presenting an insult? (I mean - I am usually totally onboard with changing meanings of words and, for example, find the "that's so gay" construction offensive as well as puerile. But I had felt that handicapped in the context I used it in retains its original meaning.)

Comments

[skadi.livejournal.com]

This has been an exceedingly hot topic in a lot of the feminist blogs right now. (If you search for "ablest language," you'll find stuff.)

I ... gosh, I don't want to sounds like a jerk here, but I think that's unavoidable. Obviously, I try not to say stuff like, "Oh, man, those people are being too sensitive!" because I'd get annoyed if someone said that to me when I argued that a commercial/tv show/whatever was sexist. On the other hand, I have a lot of trouble getting worked up about so-called ablest language. I guess you can only pick so many battles before you get worn out, and I was worn out way before I got to this (relatively) recent concern over ablest language.

But, yeah, it's out there, and you can find stuff about it on Feministe, Alas A Blog, and many others.

And I don't know how US-centric this is. The blogs I read are mostly American.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Thanks for connecting me up to that. I did a bit of reading last night and I have to say I found it pretty tough going - no-one's really been able to offer words that can be used instead of crazy, say, or lame. On the other hand, testimony of people who say that use of language like that negatively affects them makes me feel pretty terrible. So who knows? I will probably clean myself up, at least a bit.