When it's Ableist to say it's Ableist

It’s spelled weird, isn’t it? Ableism. It’s all in that “e,” mucking about right before the suffix, but moving it around, making it “abelism” makes less sense somehow. Removing the offending party, “ablism,” doesn’t sit right either, the “a” doesn’t feel like a true vowel any more, the slide into the suffix is too sudden. It’s a nasty word to spell which is a shame given the ease in which it is spoken with the mouth starting in that forced smile of a long “a” to close down to pop out a “b” which already compresses the tongue towards the teeth where the start of the “ism” rolls us home into a miraculous tour of the mouth in a mere seven letters. I have to say it a lot, regrettably. I live in a rapaciously ableist society, we all do, and I am compelled, by an agnostic divine light, to ensure that everyone, as Tracy Gilchrist would say, holds space for it.

But some fuckers are out here conflating the concept of ableism with their precious desire to ensure humanity’s culture remains advertiser friendly and large language model compatible.

There is an overwhelming amount of spite I’m holding in a comically small cup right now. It overflows, refills, overflows into the overflow cup, overflows that, and then somehow loops back around through Cronos’s urethra to fill it all again. Deciding which cup needs to leak so as to make room for new spite is, forgive the continued allusion, Heraclean.

So we ball. Enjoy the following dramatic organisational categories.

Technosupplicants

I tire of being told that encroaching technologies are inevitable, and I tire of the manufactured consent vomited by drones paid to usurp the interests of their communities. I especially tire of it all being built on a platform suggesting that these technologies improve accessibility. Large language models (LLMs), generative AI tools, wearable cameras - in isolated moderation tools of that nature could be an absolute boon to the disabled community, but we’re not living in a state of isolated moderation. Corporations own these tools and corporations peddle them for ends opposed to our interests. Generative AI, and those that sell it, are not our friends. Those technologies scrape vast amounts of data from across the published world and reproduce it alongside, at best, wickedly inaccurate information and, at worst, bigoted garbage.

The entire industry is settled on schemes that strip artists of their work while dumping shit into our mental and physical communities. The continued use of LLMs leads to our most vulnerable communities seeing their electricity bills spike and, in some cases, having said power turned off in favour of the nearby data centre powering the sycophantic ghoul in everyone’s phone. The intense resource draw is well-documented, and we’re now seeing the testimony of folks who have to live near these monstrosities.

Some time ago the fools behind NaNoWriMo made a claim that banning the usage of LLMs to create writing is ableist. (You can explore that controversy and more here. There’s a reason they went under.) Gang, LLMs like ChatGPT and its ilk have only been in the mass zeitgeist since 2023-ish. They’ve existed since before then, yes, but not to the extent that we see today. And yet, we have libraries full of books written by disabled authors. Writing the actual novel has never been the challenge for disabled folks nor will it ever be; the publishing industry, which itself is adopting more of a pro-LLM stance, has historically been the arbiter of what disabled stories are “worthy” of being told.

Suggesting that disabled people need a corporate algorithm, trained on the stolen material of their comrades, to write a story is one of the most repulsive sentiments put on by an organisation that claimed to champion writers. It is also ableist as fuck, but I’ve seen that nathair lurking among my contemporaries as well. Usually to a reassuring and resounding dressing down from a righteous horde, but there still exists a sentiment that disabled people need LLMs and generative tools to create art.

I hope I don’t have to explain how that is insulting, but it is popping up for a reason. It suggests the methods that tech companies are employing to manufacture our consent for these tools. It’s using the disabled body as a source of pity to point at and say, “See? We must develop our technology! For the sake of the cripp- I mean differently-abled.” They are hoping that that rhetoric will sway other folks into allowing the continued propagation of LLMs throughout their lives while condemning those who are vocal about their reservations or hatred to be ableist.

There is a twisted tragedy hidden in there as there are legitimate use cases for LLMs to support disabled folks. I’m not going to play devil’s advocate here as I don’t think we could develop those tools ethically under the system capitalism allows, but I do want to at least admit that an ethically produced technology can be used as a boon. The creation of art, however, even in those situations is not among the list of accessibility allowances of such a utopia.

Meta glasses are marketing, in part, as a tool to assist Blind folks in navigating their world. There is a camera integrated into the frames that can use AI to describe what its filming to the wearer. It is, in isolation, a neat tool that many Blind folks are loving. But need I remind us all that it is a camera owned by Meta that is constantly pointing at whatever you are looking at. We can not trust Meta. Each word in that sentence is a different hyperlink.

It is a shame that all the tools we develop are used to degrade the quality of our lives for the sake of the petulant egos of those who profit from them. Braille stems from night writing, a code that was adopted by soldiers to communicate silently in the dark. My cane is made of materials developed primarily for the sake of making weapons of war more lethal. Any useful tool that emerges from LLMs will carry with it the legacy of pain caused by its merciless creators.

Linguistic Sesquipedalophobics

I hope the extent of your exposure to the recent trend of urging authors to use simpler, shorter words is contained to the people admonishing such a suggestion. Engaging earnestly with anyone who thinks we should strive towards the monosyllabic leaves you to the mercy of a mind that was “not left behind” by Bush with alarming frequency. It has to be a joke, right? I have to be just completely oblivious to the chuckles of these people when they see me grow flustered. Where is the camera? The trope of hooligans who will emerge, howling, to send my reaction to Tom Bergeron? They can’t be fucking serious!

It would be irresponsible of me to not take them at face value though as my career in education has shown me that these folks are, indeed, incapable of surviving encounters with words more complex than what you’d see on the menu at your local Burger King. I have some students who subscribe to my writing, who read my wares long after they passed my class, and they flatter me, but I do believe they can also vouch for my claims. The amount of times I’ve assigned something that has language erring on the obscure side just to witness a mass admission of “I didn’t read it cuz the words were long and boring and confusing” has left me stunned. I assign readings that even the trashy, hung over fraternity fucks were able to read back when I was in college, an age that is not all that long ago. The masses contain, broadly speaking, the most powerful dictionary to ever grace our hesitantly literate society in their pockets! I HAVE OFFICE HOURS.

I have yet to hear a student of mine claim that these “boring” words are inherently ableist to use, likely due to fearing my wrath, but I’m waiting for the day I get asked what I think about the idea.

I watch these “readers” sweat through explanations of how authors should be mindful of their disabled readers when integrating their diction and I am appalled at how oblivious they are to their own ableism. Disabled people have been reading words exceeding the monosyllabic for the entirety of their existence. Your own inability to comprehend the novel does not translate to ableist writers, but a negligence towards your own internal culture. It is, again, weaponising the most tired of disability stereotypes for the sake of an agenda they can not comprehend the maleficence of. Who benefits from the collective dumbing down of our society? Who could possible want you to be less capable of parsing technical, specific, esoteric language? Could it be, perhaps, the lawmakers who weaponise said language in such a way to get you to vote away your own rights? Could it be the casual cabal of technocrats and fascists who would love nothing more than for you to ditch the complex beauty of Louise Erdrich for the minimal alphabetical expressions on the infinite feeds?

I would never suggest to know the answers to those questions. I’m only a writing teacher.

I only have two categories for you. I’ll face your disappointment with bravery and assure you that I had more, but none as potent as these two. I can’t help but mention “previous drafts” in my non-fiction writing as I do mourn the ideas that live behind control+z, but there’s a reason they are gone. I held ire for fellow disabled comrades who I perceive as inappropriately monetising their platforms, and I do think I’ll write about that some other day, but it didn’t fit here. This was an exploration of the folly of those who believe futurists and how they’ve weaponised our real sensitivities into false flag accusations to further their own bullshit. I also didn’t feel like critiquing my community again today. I’ll admit to a festering righteousness of what the disability advocacy community should value and I’ve recently grown afraid of taking that too far.

But for every critique against my comrades there are six loaded in the barrel pointed at the ableist sheriff slinging hate from the safety of his privilege. These people out here using our language against us are that sheriff. They are hiding behind the language of resistance and empathy to further a status quo of stagnant hate. There is a rope swinging empty in the town square for every organisation that claims disabled people are capable of creation only with the soulless regurgitation that comes from LLMs. There are ropes swinging on either side for the claim that we are afraid of novel words. That we need our cultured simplified for our engagement. They swing empty, blown by even the most precious breeze, but the gallows aren’t constructed without a hangman in town to pull the lever.