I usually get that feeling around certain kinds of questions, for a similar sort of understand-link-is-missing reason. Unfortunately, a lot of the time they’re also the kind of questions people will angrily repeat, often without even token attempts at clarifying, until you give them a satisfactory answer. :/ Which of course, I generally can’t.

We are currently involved in some “SJ” discussions on Tumblr, but we often find that the majority of those discussions are not focussed on actually creating more welcoming environments for people with different thinking styles or body mappings, but by policing the use of others’ language, and focussing on language to the exclusion of behaviour that demonstrates bigotry. It is less about intentions, and more about “are you speaking our language? Do you belong to our special clique, with its secret verbal handshakes?” That I find problematic, and it is something that is far from ideal when trying to promote others’ rights. Constantly pointing to others’ language and saying “this is ableist” is less effective than other methods that are not predicated on making sure that others’ language does not conform to that used by a social clique. It is frustrating, and I wish that there were more material communication.

—Noël

I also have problems with the “s____ j_____” term, though not at a full-on bitey level. That’s one which, for me, is more of a combo of slipperiness, not necessarily the best associations, and possibly bad interaction with my synaesthesia. Some words and phrases I just can’t stand–some make me queasy or give me a headache–just because of the synaesthesia. But, yeah, that is not the same as the brain-bitey “divide by zero error” type ones which just do not seem compatible with my brain at all. And no matter how many times I run across them, I react that way, and have also repeatedly looked some up without being able to remember or probably make good sense of it in the first place. It’s like a blind spot in a mirror or something. And running into certain words can really send me for a loop, making it hard to do other language-based stuff for a while.

Actually, as similar as the effect is to what certain musical sequences will do to me (short of, or before, triggering what I’m still pretty sure are seizures), now I’m wondering if it might have something to do with what is looking increasingly like my “weird” temporal lobe activity in general. They seem to do a lot of very relevant language-related stuff. Just speculation, trying to make sense of things. :)

Let me just say straight out that I would rather deal with one person who gets words “wrong” (and may even use lots of words deemed offensive due to not being able to keep track of that kind of thing) and may sound “clueless” to the social intricacies of communities or the meaning of words, but has good ethics and a grounded sense of reality; rather than a hundred people repeating all the right words with only a superficial take on the issues at hand and a tendency to want to blend in more than to solve real problems.

Well said. I’ve also run into similar responses when I’ve had trouble with the expected vocabulary, and it’s ridiculous to put it kindly. Shows where priorities lie in some cases, I’m afraid. I have meant to write something about this kind of behavior in terms of *actual nonviolence* among other things, but have not been able to yet.

I have to admit monotropism is kind of slippery.

I also think that the social justice thing is often too focused on making sure everyone is using precisely correct language and people who are not malicious at all get bullied and piled on because they used a word that was deemed wrong and problematic.I’ve also found a lot of people aren’t particularly open to debate as to whether a word is problematic or not, even if they are debating a word that affects them directly or indirectly. I also think there’s a lot of energy invested in the belief that if only we can get everyone to say the right things all the time that this is a worthy cause, but it really strikes me as a fairly superficial cause. Someone on tumblr or twitter using a slur isn’t the source of anyone’s problems.

It’s actually more remake than a straight translation.

And yes, wordsmith, that’s the word.