Write Like The Stars Are Behind You

— Asked by Anonymous

(It took me a while to figure it out; anon was bothered by this post.)

Okay, sure, I’ll try to do that. That said, I want to encourage people engaged in anti-ableism efforts that take the form of asking people not to use certain words to put their energies elsewhere. Firstly, I think they make the disability advocacy community inaccessible to a lot of people, since having to relearn which words are “allowed” is overwhelming and particularly difficult for people who have limited access to words in the first place.

Secondly, every time I’ve seen this implemented it…hasn’t made anyone less ableist? People who scrupulously remove “crazy” from their vocabulary in favor of “irrational” still treat the people they’re talking about like unpersons. Often the recommended replacement words are just as good at suggesting “less valuable person” as the words they replaced. I think there’s some value in asking “does our use of words surrounding disability to mean ‘bad thing’ come from a place of treating disabled people like tragedies?” and often it does, but that doesn’t mean that challenging that mindset is as easy as changing out the words. 

Thirdly, I think it emphasizes the wrong concerns. I saw a newspaper headline the other day saying “the president’s plan will be a crippling blow to the economy” and one about the “crippling burden of student debt”. I’d think that the fact the president’s plan includes making it harder to get SSI, or the fact disabled students are way less likely to graduate and likelier to end up in debt, is a much more urgent problem than the turn of phrase used in the headline. 

Lastly, it seems like the anti-words advocacy often pretends at a false consensus in disability activism. There are physically disabled people who are bothered by that newspaper headline and those who are not. There are mentally ill people who are bothered by use of crazy and some who couldn’t care less. But no one ever says “hey, that word bothers me personally because people have used it to be mean to me”, they say “it’s ableist towards physically disabled people,” as if all physically disabled people agree on this (or as if the ones who disagree are just obviously confused poor souls and don’t merit a mention). “There are physically disabled people who dislike the phrase ‘crippling anxiety’ and there are physically disabled people who don’t care and there are physically disabled people who have, themselves, described their anxiety as crippling” is much more accurate, but less compelling.

— Answered by theunitofcaring

kazaera:

whetstonefires:

beatrice-otter:

cacodaemonia:

Not to mention how constantly making previously common words or terms into ‘bad’ ones discriminates against older members of all kinds of communities, from queer people to disabled folks. So they suddenly become the enemies of younger community members over the use of words rather than behavior.

But yeah, treating any group like a monolith is a bad idea.

I’m 40 years old. This is relevant because in my lifetime, I have seen multiple renaming/rebranding efforts to find words that are not as hurtful to disabled people.

And each and every one of them failed. Within a very short time of going mainstream, the words that were supposedly neutral and less pejorative became, in practice, every bit as nasty and horrible as the word they replaced.

This is called the euphemism treadmill.

Why? Simple.

If someone thinks a group of people are scum who shouldn’t exist, and you tell that person “please don’t use [old word] for that group, use [new word] instead” you have not actually changed their mind about the group they hate one bit. They still think they’re scum who shouldn’t exist! It’s just now they have two words that mean “scum who shouldn’t exist,” [old word] and [new word]. There is no vocabulary change that will make them think about the group they hate any differently. You can shame them into not publicly discriminating (if you have the social buy-in from other people) and sometimes, sometimes if you have a relationship with someone you can over time influence them to be less hateful*, but just changing the word they use does absolutely nothing.

*If you want to work to change peoples’ perspective, the Hidden Brain podcast has an excellent episode on how to handle conflict that touches on “how can you influence people who disagree with you to move their position closer to yours.” Relationships 2.0: How To Keep Conflict From Spiraling

So while I try not to use words that will hurt people (because knowingly hurting people is a jerk move), I also don’t put that much effort into policing mine or other peoples’ language. Because there are so many other things that are more important to spend my time and energy on.

frankly the harder my disabilities are hitting me the more appreciation i have for the word ‘crippling’

honestly, the ableist word stuff makes me so angry nowadays.

Which. Historical context.

I cannot prove this, but I am about 90% sure that the way we talk about ableist words and ableist language has strong roots in the Ableist Word Profile series run by FWD, a blog by feminists with disabilities that ran 2009-2011. I was hanging around there from the start, guest-posted once, and not only was it the first time I had ever seen anyone call out the ableist underpinnings of some common terms like that, I remember it taking off wildly from there through the social justice sphere even at the time. By now it’s gd everywhere, but hey, things do start somewhere.

At this point I would like to quote the bloggers who contributed to the column:

Here’s what this series is about: Examining word origins, the way in which ableism is unconsciously reinforced, the power that language has.
Here’s what this series is not about: Telling people which words they can use to define their own experiences, rejecting reclamatory word usage, telling people which words they can and cannot use.
You don’t necessarily have to agree that a particular profiled word or phrase is ableist; we ask you to think about the way in which the language that we use is influenced, both historically and currently, by ableist thought.

It was never about saying “these words are bad, don’t use them”. Nor was it ever the main focus of the blog. I’d ballpark estimate that it was less than 5% of the overall posts. And my friends, there was so much cool stuff on there, media criticism, awareness raising, intersectionality guest posts, information on web accessibility, so many incisive thought-provoking posts that stuck with you. The site’s still up, you can check them out.

Even back in 2010, people noticed that there was a… weird imbalance… in exactly which of those incisive thought-provoking posts were getting spread more widely and which stayed consigned to a smaller readership. Anna’s post Why Writing about Language Isn’t Enough is still absolutely worth a read over a decade later:

And yet, when trying to have discussions about ableist language, we’re back to the silo of disability. Instead of talking about ableist language as part of the manifestation of the disdain and abuse of people with disabilities, it’s treated as isolated – the problem, instead of a symptom of the problem.

Ableism is not simply a language problem.

and yet, and yet, of that amazing blog, the thing that seems to have made the absolute most impact in the social justice sphere in the long run is… language.

and not even in the nuanced, let’s examine how ableism influences our language historically and today, way it was intended as. In the incredibly reductive “hey, these are Bad words, use these Good words instead” way that the original bloggers actively wanted to prevent. The way that can make spaces hostile to non-native English speakers, people with specific verbal or cognitive disabilities or some people with OCD. The way that is both incredibly punitive and, at the same time, has ceded such important ground in the fight - oh, it’s a simple replacement, say Y instead of X, it’s just that the etymology is ableist you see, it’s that the word is triggering. It’s not like you need to worry that the concept you are trying to express in and of itself might have ableist underpinnings. no need to think about it that deeply.

ableism is just a language problem, don’t you know.

Even the goddamn web accessibility stuff hasn’t gone big to the same point, and that contained some serious low-hanging fruit for improvement. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone be publicly berated for no image descriptions, no subtitles on video, or non-descriptive link text the way people get over language. and when’s the last time I saw someone talk about whether a website was screen-reader accessible.

But really. Every time I see the “X word is ableist, don’t use it” it’s like I’m seeing the horrible bastardized knock-off version of the beautiful work my friends and community put so much of themselves into back then. And yeah. It makes me angry.

— Asked by shadowaccio6181

So I’m going to let you know three things before I reply to your ask.

First, is that gadje writing Romani characters (even those who want to be respectful) is something that is rightfully controversial.

Secondly, that in my personal opinion, there is always going to be problematic elements pertaining to Dick being a Rom and they need to be reworked in canon by a Romani writer. They shouldn’t be reworked by gadje who are well meaning but ultimately don’t have the knowledge & experiences needed to be able to rewrite Dick.

Third, I’m going to answer your ask, but I will also treat a portion of my answer to your ask as a general “gadje writing Romani characters” thing and also just using this as an excuse to talk about Dick Grayson some more.

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As I stated above, gadje writing Romani characters is controversial, and many Romani will tell you they feel very uncomfortable with it just due to the long history of misrepresentation of us in fiction. Many will flat out tell you they don’t want gadje to write Romani characters at all.

I am bringing this up so that you and other writers are aware of the views that most Romani hold towards this sort of thing.

I personally lean towards being very apprehensive but not inherently against it. I am not against it so long as gadje don’t overstep their bounds.

Saladin Ahmed’s writing for Quicksilver: No Surrender is my main examples of a gadjo writing a Romani character being done pretty well.
I will again stress, that many of us don’t like being written by gadje & that our culture/language is closed to outsiders, so that is something I really want you & others wanting to write Romani characters to keep in mind.

I recognize that ultimately people are going to do what they want regardless (if someone really wants to do something they’ll do it anyway), and it’s good to at least steer them in the right direction so we can avoid problematic writing & perpetuation of harmful tropes/stereotypes.

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I seriously recommend a Romani sensitivity consultant to help you if you’re planning on writing a Romani!Dick Grayson outside of just a passing mention that he is Rom.

You will find information of varying degrees of accuracy trying to research it on your own, without the knowledge to discern what is or isn’t correct.

Not to mention, not all information you’ll find is applicable to all Romani.

So for example, let’s say someone wanted to write a character that was Lovari, but all the information they read for research was about the Romanichal. Well, that character would be written to be practicing cultural traditions and speaking a dialect that a whole different group of Romani with their own unique traditions they practice different from the one the writer intended to write about, and the writer wouldn’t be aware unless it was pointed out just because they don’t have the cultural background to understand.

Speaking of dialect, I highly advise *not* having Dick speak Romanes because our language is closed to outsiders. Likewise our cultural practices are closed to outsiders, and I’m really not comfortable with gadje trying to write about them.

I mentioned the stuff above just as a hypothetical situation to explain how it’s difficult for those that didn’t grow up in the culture to know what is or isn’t accurate.

I highly recommend reading up on anti Romani stereotypes common in fiction. It’s good to familiarize yourself with racist stereotypes so you can learn to recognize them and so you can call them out when you see them.

I’m mentioning that largely because the writing for Dick & his family is just rife full of stereotypes. Although there are some that can’t be avoided with Dick, as I’ll discuss below, one can easily avoid the very obvious ones such as “thief” or “exotic” as a whole for any Romani characters.

Also seeing as this is the section I’m using roughly as a guide for how gadje can write Romani characters while still being respectful and not overstepping their bounds, please don’t focus on anti Romani racism when writing a Romani character.

I understand that yes, it’s hard for poc in the world to avoid racism so it seems logical to include it in your writing, but it’s a topic for us exclusively to tackle. I’m bringing this up because I’ve read too many well meaning gadje writers that insert anti Romani racism into their story when they have a Romani character, so just, please don’t lol.

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Quick disclaimer for anyone and everyone looking to write about the Grayson family, do NOT use the story where Mary Grayson is thief, that story was stereotypical trash and you shouldn’t be writing about criminal thieving Romani characters.

Devin Grayson’s use of Dick’s Romani heritage as excuse excuse to exoticize him is also a good lesson in what not to do, we are not exotic fiery passionate sexual beings, we’re just people like everyone else.

I’m begging people who are writing Dick to please don’t do that. Some problematic things can’t be avoided when writing him, but the ones I listed above easily can be.

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I will also state the obvious, the Grayson family working in the circus is stereotypical.

Like fortune telling, portraying Romani characters as circus workers is stereotypical, but isn’t without it’s historical precedent, there were indeed Romani who had worked in circuses, and there are some Romani circuses still running. This loops back to having a Romani sensitivity consultant to help you to tackle this stereotype without removing a well established part of Dick’s backstory that is core to who he is.

My family didn’t work in a circus and they didn’t practice fortune telling, so please no one come to me asking for information about either subject, I literally couldn’t tell you a thing about them lol.

-

So Bruce adopting Dick is why I mentioned you can’t truly have an unproblematic Rom!Dick, because along with everything else, we have a white gadjo adopting a Romani child.

This is not great because there’s been a historical and still ongoing practice of Romani children being ripped from their families and placed into white families as a form of cultural assimilation to “save them” from growing up in Romani culture, it also happens due to the assumption that if we have children that are “too light” then surely we must have stolen them, despite time and time again those children with lighter skin/hair/eyes are always proven to be Romani children, not stolen white children.

I feel that the original backstory of Dick Grayson definitely wasn’t written to carry the weight of this discussion, because Dick wasn’t written to be Romani until very recently, so none of this is taken into account when he’s written.

Likewise, none of the writers at DC Comics (whom are all gadje) have addressed this because I don’t think it even really crossed their minds that it’s kinda sorta pretty problematic to have a chavo taken in by a white man.

I am not saying this to vilify Bruce, because I definitely love to watch/read Batman content, but it is something I really feel the need to mention because it is an elephant in the room that can’t go unaddressed when discussing a Dick Grayson that is Rom.

I don’t have a way to fix this, and I *definitely* don’t want non Romani writers to attempt to fix what they have no knowledge about. and this is why I’m always going to advocate for Romani writers to tackle Romani characters which have problematic elements to them.

I will also state that again, I don’t think erasing his being Rom is progressive either.

I’m going to reiterate that no Romani character in fiction who has existed for decades in the public conscious is unproblematic, and that we need to advocate for better representation along with advocating for Romani writers to fix these problems, not erase Romani representation further.

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With all that said, I don’t think you can remove Dick Grayson being the adopted son of Bruce Wayne because it is so fundamentally baked into the core of these characters and their relationship to each other, that removing it would be ripping a well established part of Batman lore.

I don’t really have a perfect solution for this as I was never super familiar with DC comics & as a result I haven’t thought a ton about how exactly I’d tackle this like I have with Marvel’s Romani characters.

I watched a ton of the animated DC stuff as a kid (especially Conroy Batman), while later in life I’ve been more into Marvel Comics. My suggestion would probably to just be to take from the Batman animated series, especially seeing as you’re basing your fic off of this series some.

Realistically, Dick would probably be taken in by family as that’s just what we’d do, but because it was established he only knew about his parents, he has no one.

So Bruce takes him in to protect Dick, to provide him a home, and because he sees himself in that child who is traumatized because he just lost his family.

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So uh, this is kind of a mess with how I wrote it. I definitely went all over the place and now I’m not really sure how to end this exactly lol.

I really apologize for how long it has taken for me to reply.

I appreciate that you’re reaching out to try to make a more accurate Dick Grayson & I wish you luck in your writing.

— Answered by nacht-nightingale