I went to catholic schools in a right leaning area, but while the term wasn’t used we did have to watch an in school video in which people with downs syndrome talked about how that word made them feel like shit and had to learn how to treat other disabled people. I think it worked because people only ever picked on me for being a loser, not for being hard of hearing.

I have literally never heard “ableist” in real life.

We used the word “retard” (the R word in case it gets censored on your instance) a ton as kids to insult each other (e.g. for doing poorly at something), and I’ve heard my kids say it as well. I personally don’t see the word nearly as problematic as the n word, because I’ve literally never heard it used to insult someone with an actual mental disability (have heard “mental retardation” [censor?] to describe such a condition though), it’s only used to tease friends.

I crack down on it, but mostly because we have a few people with such conditions in our community and I’d hate for them to be offended at something my kids say off hand. I don’t see it as “ableist” or whatever, and most don’t seem to associate it with people’s actual mental development, and instead I hear “slow,” which is much less censored and IMO more offensive since it sounds like you’re trying to hide a more ugly word in the hope that they won’t understand (and I bet they do). I crack down on any potential slurs, but it wasn’t that long ago that “idiot” meant much the same as “retard” (again, potential censored r word) does now, so banning its use just retards (“slows”, if censored) that process.

I think “the left” (not sure who to point at here, but they largely seem leftist) have gone too far down the “inclusive language” rabbit hole here and often do harm than good (e.g. “latinx” is offensive because it came from English speakers, not the Latino community). Creating special terms just highlights differences instead of focusing on similarities, which IMO causes more problems than it solves. But I also don’t want to offend anyone, so I try to enforce clean language and stick to technical terms (and not academic terms that dance around the issue) for things when I’m unsure of the acceptable parlance. I’ll ask as well, e.g. I use “black” since that’s what my black friends prefer. The “right” takes things too far the other direction, so I stick somewhere in the middle and try to ask when unsure.

Yeah its awesome and I love it in my own way. It definitely has issues, notably for a long time it was particularly hostile to hard of hearing people who don’t sign, but that’s been changing over the past few decades as both groups have been working to heal that divide. And I think that’s in part thanks to increasing discussions of ableism and audism as well as the social model of disability bridging the gap between the deaf understanding of “we aren’t disabled, we live fine” and the hard of hearing understanding of “we are absolutely disabled look at how hard we have to struggle in this society.”

And stuff like that, and audism and ablism aren’t really the things you’re going to be taught in an asl class for the same reasons they aren’t going to teach you much about American intervention in south America in a Spanish class. The goal is to get you in a place that you can communicate with native speakers/signers and have enough appreciation of the culture to both want to and to not make an ass of yourself.

And so on that I should say these terms gave me voice to my struggles. The deaf community taught me that the fact that my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents all were told by experts not to teach their hard of hearing child sign language (because we might prefer it and not bother learning English) was a form of systemic oppression. As is the fact that this language which is just generally useful to most people in some contexts, especially as most people will lose their hearing just isn’t bothered to be taught to most people.

The politically correct people are trying even when they miss the mark. When you get to the point of the part of the left that’s long been in discussion of ablism I actually think that’s where you get radical shit, like big queer events often have 'terps, and I’ve even been to a festival that had a deaf section to the camping area.

Idk this turned into a rant, sorry

Skill issue