Inclusivity: What's the Point, Really?

00:00:00
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00:43:09

3 August 2022

43 mins 9 secs

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About this Episode

I'm currently disabled from a recent injury, and thinking a lot about what it means to be "able-bodied", and this idea of ableism. And that gets me thinking about the tremendous social pressure these days to use "inclusive language". No one likes to feel excluded, and I can say now with experience that it's no fun to feel like the world was designed without you in mind... But is it really possible to help marginalized people with language? Is that the sort of help people really need? Or might we be enforcing such language for more nefarious reasons, like promoting our own self-satisfaction? Ultimately, it is inevitable that we all feel excluded from time to time, alienated very fundamentally from the world and others, and I just wonder what the point is to use nicer language around hard truths. I, for one, don't feel much better to be coddled and pandered to through language. I'd much prefer real help, like through attention, love, medicine, encouragement, etc. Ultimately, our lives are much more impacted by interpersonal relationships, not through any sort of hegemon of language and systemization. So why don't we work to be more inclusive where it actually matters?