Happy Pride Month, day 13, persistent

[sonia]

13. I'm proud of being stubborn and persistent and good at figuring things out. It helps me in my job when I keep digging in to solve a problem or understand someone else's code, and it helps me find things I'm looking for online.

Growing up, I was taught that being smart was a measure of a person's value. I learned from reading David Hingsburger's blog that people with intellectual disabilities have the same value as everyone else. Here's an example post, Breeze. I never got in the habit of using the r-word as a slur, but I had to learn not to use 'stupid' and 'dumb' that way.

Now I'm wincing at work when people use ableist language, but I haven't come up with a good way to intervene.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

It’s challenging to intervene! My anger gets in the way of perfect advocacy. But then, requiring perfection is a symptom of the problem, not the path to solving it.

[sonia]

Yes to all of that. And also when there are macro communication issues, it’s hard to find a space to address micro aggressions.

[silveradept]

Persistence is important to solutions to problems, sometimes more so than brilliance.

Shifting language is still an ongoing project for me, but I have been trying to substitute "silly" and "foolish", among other things, because I've had enough life experience to know that smarts haven't helped me a lot when I'm in situations that call for wisdom. Or for figuring out how to make something work with the limitations and disabilities that I have.

Intervention is often difficult, and the best results on it seem to be that you have to know someone well enough to know whether they respond best to being told in the moment, or whether they need you to approach them away from everyone else and give them explanations, or whether they're going to be completely defensive and just need you to keep doing it at them until it sinks in.

[sonia]

You're right, analyzing the situation and choosing an approach is helpful.

Someone ranted to me recently that language change isn't as good as "real" action. I said both are good, and left it at that. Here I'll say that language change is good practice in compassion, and yay for all of us who are doing that work.

[silveradept]

How odd to say language change is lesser, somehow. When you change language, you're changing the way you think and approach the world. It's not direct action, but if you get someone to change their perspective, actions that help flow from that.

[sonia]

Yes, exactly! She was complaining that the change from 'master' to 'main' in source control branches was insignificant. Like you said, it's a step in the right direction.

[silveradept]

As opposed to getting rid of a vestige of slavery, in the same way that we use allow lists and block lists or deny lists, rather than referring to them by colors. Or how it's referred to as the injured list rather than the disabled list in sport. Making things more inclusive in language makes it more possible to be more inclusive in other aspects.

Which I'm sure you're familiar with.