YOURE INSULTS MATTER

TW: anti-fat bias, ableism

I’ve been re-watching How I Met Your Mother during my morning workouts. And like all sitcoms made before 2018, it is filled with jokes that (hopefully) wouldn’t be allowed to air today. It’s alarming how we all grew up with a slew of anti-fat, homophobic and transphobic garbage disguised as cutting comedy. I’m relieved to know that there have been great strides in making this type of behavior no longer societally acceptable. But I have noticed that there is one area where people are still allowed to throw punches without any repercussions. And that area is people’s intelligence.

Think about people’s dating profiles. If you saw someone say “no fat people, please” you would be disgusted. But if you saw someone say, “If you can’t tell the difference between your and you’re keep swiping,” you wouldn’t think much of it. As a society we have somehow decided that not being able to use grammar correctly is a moral failing. We assume that misspelled words mean someone is dumb or careless and we wouldn’t want to associate with dumb or careless people. This type of thinking is so engrained in us, that we don’t even realize it's a form of ableism.

Now I didn’t come to this realization because I am better at deconstructing harmful societal messaging than everyone else. I came to it because I am someone who struggles mightily with grammar and spelling. Sometimes I struggle so much with how to spell a word while texting that I have to change what I want to say because I can’t even get close enough to the intended word for my phone to correct it for me. I make my living as a writer and yet my first drafts are filled with me using the completely wrong word and making the same grammatical mistakes over and over. Most people don’t realize I have these issues or think that since I am clearly “smart” in other ways it won’t matter if they bash random people for attributes I have. But I notice what people say. And it takes a whole lot of self-confidence not to internalize it.

Sometimes when someone makes a remark about not being able to date someone who uses the wrong version of “your,” I’ll mention that I do that all the time and I can see the person scramble to come up with a reason why it is okay that I do it but not other people. I think what leads to this kind of prejudice is that it’s hard to conceptualize a brain that operates differently than yours. Or to accept that someone might have huge strengths in one area but severely struggle in others. We were taught to base intelligence off of the things we were graded on at school. And being graded on those things allowed us to get in the habit of consciously or subconsciously ranking other people’s intelligence against our own. If teachers can do it, why can’t we?

But the problem with “ranking” intelligence is that I don’t think it’s helpful or even possible. There are too many types of intelligence and there is too much bias already at play to be able to look at this area objectively. Ranking also feeds into the idea that being smarter makes someone “better” or more worthy, while all humans hold equal value. Intelligence is something that is shaped by a multitude of biological and social factors. And yet we still act like it is someone’s personal failing if they don’t perform at the level we expect intellectually. How quickly do we jump to calling someone an idiot when they make a mistake or take a bit longer to add up a bill? Our judgment of other people’s intelligence is still thrown as freely as fat jokes in a 90’s sitcom. And that just doesn’t sit right with me.

The purpose of this post isn’t to make everyone feel guilty for still using terms like “idiot” or “dumb” or “so fucking stupid.” I grew up saying all those things, and I’ll admit that sometimes I still do in the heat of the moment. But I do think it is worth taking the time to reexamine how we conceptualize and talk about intelligence. Who is it serving to make people feel badly about how their brains work? Why do we need everyone’s brains to work the same way? And who are we hurting when we flippantly insult people for things that are out of their control? Just something to think about in our own way on our own time.

xoxo,

Allison