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So far, PARC is not seeking to cancel the word dumb because of this. But rosters of oppressive language inevitably expand, as does the number of reasons to declare words unacceptable. One can imagine a future list condemning bananas not just because it too mocks mental illnesses but also, perhaps, because it dismisses the hard work of those who pick the fruit.
Or to banish the expression rule of thumb because of an obscure and probably false folk etymology—namely, an antique British law that allowed men to beat their wife as long as the instrument used was no wider than a thumb? Elsewhere our language crusaders miss that replacing an expression with negative connotations is like swatting away gnats, because those same connotations regularly coalesce on the new term as well.
Crippled was changed to handicapped ; after a while, this needed replacing, and thus came disabled ; today terms such as differently abled attempt yet again to elude the negative associations some assign to physical disability.
If this mouthful somehow catches on, then fast-forward about a generation and people will have conventionalized it into mental-health-condition people. And we could expect the same treadmill fate for person without housing as a replacement for homeless person. Are we next to say persons without freedom? For all I know, the composers of this list would say yes. But the list reveals more about a sensibility particular to the authors than about injustice in society as a whole. The PARC list further teaches us to not refer to people as survivors of a traumatic experience because it implies that what they went through is their essence.
Not long ago, survivors was itself the euphemism-treadmill alternative to victims. Today, we are urged to describe them as having experienced or been impacted by something bad. Who would really welcome this verbal Kabuki? A person who has been impacted by an earthquake? A person who has been impacted by cancer? We must wonder whether the composers of the list would in fact tell someone who has been a victim of racist abuse that they really ought to phrase it as though they have merely experienced it.
To be sure, the list specifies that some people may prefer the terms now being battled. But this seems to ultimately be a handy out, allowing terms such as victim to be used when rhetorically powerful. Only faintly does one perceive genuine concern with life as it is actually lived. But these sanctions are based on no general agreement among even sensitive, sociologically concerned people. Couched as compassionate counsel, this list is mostly a series of prim concoctions by people who, one suspects, simply need more to do.
In the end, working to change conditions is much more important than obsessively curating the words and expressions we use to describe them.
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