SATELLITE KRITIKS

SHELLS

LINK

L-CRAZY
Using crazy towards persons with mental disabilities or to describe something as
good or bad
McCarthy 10 [Rachel MCarthy, feminist blogger, FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way
forward, Ableist Word Profile: Crazy, May 17
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/05/17/guest-post-from-rmj-ableist-word-profile-crazy/
LMcf]
Like every ism, ableism is absorbed through the culture on a more subconscious level, embedding itself in our language like a
guerrilla force. Crazy is one of the most versatile and frequently used slurs, a word used sometimes

directly against persons with mental disabilities (PWMD), sometimes indirectly against persons
with able privilege, sometimes descriptive and value-neutral, and sometimes in a superficially
positive light. As a direct slur against PWMD: Crazy as a word is directly and strongly tied to mental
disability. Its used as a slur directly against PWMD both to discredit and to marginalize. If a
person with a history of mental illness wants to do something, for good or bad, that challenges
something, that persons thoughts, arguments, and rhetoric are dismissed because that person is
crazy. If a PWMD is going through pain because of something unrelated to their mental state, culpability for the pain is placed
solely on their being crazy. Even if their suffering is related to their disability, it is, in a catch-22, dismissed due to their craziness;
the PWMD is expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they want to be viewed as a valid human being. Examples: I cant
believe Britney shaved her head. Crazy bitch. Not only is Dworkin cissexist, shes fucking crazy! As a way to discredit neurotypical
people: Crazy is also often used to describe a neurotypical person that the speaker disagrees with.

Its used to discredit able-privileged persons by saying that they are actually mentally disabled
and what could be worse than that? Examples: Tom Cruise is fucking crazy. Seriously, hes batshit insane about Prozac, yelling at
Matt Lauer and shit. Did you hear that Shirley broke up with Jim? She thought he was cheating on her. Yeah, shes crazy, Jims a
great guy. As an all-purpose negative adjective: Crazy is often used even, still, by me and other feminists to negatively describe
ideas, writing, or other nouns that the speaker finds disagreeable. Conservatives are crazy, acts of oppression are

crazy making , this winters snow is craziness. This usage makes a direct connection between
mental disability and bad qualities of all stripes, turning disability itself into a negative
descriptor. Whether it means bad or evil or outlandish or illogical or unthinkable, its
turning the condition of having a disability into an all-purpose negative descriptor. When using
crazy as a synonym for violent, disturbing, or wrong, its saying that PWMD are violent,
disturbing, wrong. Its using disability as a rhetorical weapon. Examples: They took the public option out of
the health care plan? Thats fucking crazy! Yeah, Loretta went crazy on Jeanie last night. Gave her a black eye and everything.
Crazy as a positive amplifier: On the flip side, crazy is often used as a positive amplifier. Folks say that they are crazy about
something or someone they love or like. But just because its positive doesnt mean its a good thing. Crazy as a positive adjective still
mean overly or too much. Its meant to admit a slight lack of foresight or sense on the part of the speaker. Furthermore, a slur is
a slur is a slur, no matter the context. Crazy is mostly, and overtly, used to mean bad, silly, not worth paying attention to, too
much. Persons with mental illnesses are none of these things as a group. The positive use is not that positive, and it doesnt absolve
the mountains of bad usage. Examples: Ive been crazy busy lately, sorry I havent been around much. Im just crazy about ice
cream! Crazy a destructive word, used to hurt people with mental disabilities. Its used to

discredit, to marginalize, to make sure that we feel shame for our disability and discourage selfcare, to make sure that those of us brave enough to publicly identify as having mental disabilities
are continually discredited.

L-GENERIC ABLEISM
Ableist language is derogatory and excludes disabled bodies from spaces
Kris 14 (Kris is a writer whose last name was not provided for confidentiality purposes. Kris has
been professionally diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Personality
Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder and General
Anxiety Disorder. Dear Author: Being crazy: An insiders view on ableist language. Published
October 28th, 2014. Accessed July 25th, 2015. http://dearauthor.com/features/letters-ofopinion/being-crazy-an-insiders-view-on-ableist-language/) TheFedora
Crazy, batshit, nuts, psycho, deranged, mental, crack pot, insane . Those were just some of the
words I told my therapist I had seen in reference to Hales behaviour. She asked me what was it about them that hurt me so much.
My response to her was it felt like they were directed at me. That the words so often used in a derogatory

way to describe mental illness felt like a punch to my gut every time I saw them. I have a mental illness.
Actually I have been diagnosed with several types. My name is Kris and I have Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive
Compulsive Personality Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social
Anxiety Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder. In the scheme of things my mental illness is a relatively new
thing. Although I have suffered from depression off and on for many years, the events triggering my Bipolar Disorder and with it the
myriad of others only occurred three years ago. It is still new to me. And it is something I struggle with daily. I particularly have
difficulties with acceptance, not only acceptance from others, but also acceptance of myself. That I have to live with, to try
and manage, my mental illness for the rest of my life is so big. It is like a constant weight on my shoulders. I feel the

stigma
me incredibly sensitive whenever the topic of mental illness is raised. Crazy,
batshit, nuts, psycho, deranged, mental, crack pot, insane. These are not just words to me. Ableism
is recognised as a form of discrimination towards physical, intellectual and mental disabilities. It
reflects a point of view in which able-bodied people are those who are considered to function
normally in everyday society whereas those with disabilities are abnormal and should strive to
become more normalised, more like their able-bodied peers. As a result, having a disability becomes a bad
thing. Disabilities become marginalised. Ableist language is words and terms, usually descriptors
and fillers, which target individuals with disabilities. Words like spaz or retarded can be used
intentionally or casually in day-to-day speech, but because of their invested meaning/s are problematic and can
insult and cause harm to those who have disabilities. Crazy, batshit, nuts, psycho, deranged, mental, crack pot,
insane. These are not just words to me. For me, such terms increase the stigma of mental illness . For me, such
greatly. It makes

terms have triggered some of my own mental health problems to the point I am seriously considering whether I want to remain part
of the book community. A community that, despite being one of my few connections to the outside world, has been so full of hate
speech and lack of acceptance towards mental illness during the past week it has been devastating to me. I have had to wonder if it is
doing me more harm than good. Something I am still thinking about. Am I advocating censorship? Am I setting

myself up as the language police? Am I being too PC? No, I am not . What I am suggesting, no, fuck it, what I
am stating outright is that as a society we seem to have become so desensitised to the meaning of
certain words we forget words have power. They have the power to transform and they have the
power to harm. As a community where words are loved and the stories they help tell are cause for so many emotions, I believe
we are perfectly placed to talk about ableist language, to consider the terms we may intentionally or inadvertently use, to take a step
back and ask ourselves in what other ways we can express ourselves to describe a situation or an action or an individual. Crazy,
batshit, nuts, psycho, deranged, mental, crack pot, insane. None of us can know if Hale has any mental health issues. More
importantly, and regardless if she does have an illness, it does NOT make her behaviour appropriate. Being triggered, does NOT
justify her response. Whilst mental illness may give insight in to an individuals thoughts and actions it certainly does NOT absolve
responsibility. What Hale did was wrong. She was an arsehole. It is as simple as that. Crazy, batshit, nuts, psycho, deranged, mental,
crack pot, insane. These are not just words to me. Be mindful. Words have power. Words hurt.

Ableist language perpetuates the shared societal belief that disabled individuals
are inferior, affirming the practice of their exclusion
Cohen-Rottenberg (Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg has a masters degree in History and Culture at
Union Institute & University. Huffington Post: Doing Social Justice: 10 Reasons to Give Up
Ableist Language Published August 10th, 2014. Accessed July 24th, 2015.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachel-cohenrottenberg/doing-social-justicethou_b_5476271.html) TheFedora

Disability metaphors abound in our culture, and they exist almost entirely as pejoratives. You see
something wrong? Compare it to a disabled body or mind: Paralyzed. Lame. Crippled.
Schizophrenic. Diseased. Sick. Want to launch an insult? The words are seemingly endless: Deaf.
Dumb. Blind. Idiot. Moron. Imbecile. Crazy. Insane. Retard. Lunatic. Psycho. Spaz. I see these terms
everywhere: in comment threads on major news stories, on social justice sites, in everyday speech. These words seem so "natural" to
people that they go uncorrected a great deal of the time. I tend to remark on this kind of speech wherever I see it. In some very rare
places, my critique is welcome. In most places, it is not. When a critique of language that makes reference to disability is not
welcome, it is nearly inevitable that, as a disabled person, I am not welcome either. I might be welcome as an activist, but not as a
disabled activist. I might be welcome as an ally, but not as a disabled ally. I might be welcome as a parent, but not as a disabled
parent. That's a lot like being welcomed as an activist, and as an ally and as a parent, but not as a woman or as a Jew. Many people
have questions about why ableist speech matters, so I'll be addressing those questions here. Please feel free to raise others. 1. Why
are you harping so much on words, anyway? Don't we have more important things to worry about? I am always very curious about
those who believe that words are "only" words -- as though they do not have tremendous power .

Those of us who use words understand the world through them. We use words to construct
frameworks with which we understand experience. Every time we speak or write, we are telling a story; every time
we listen or read, we are hearing one. No one lives without entering into these stories about their fellow human beings. As Arthur
Frank writes: Stories work with people, for people, and always stories work on people, affecting what people are able to see as real,
as possible, and as worth doing or best avoided. What is it about stories -- what are their particularities -- that enables them to work
as they do? More than mere curiosity is at stake in this question, because human life depends on the stories we tell: the sense of self
that those stories impart, the relationships constructed around shared stories, and the sense of purpose that stories both propose
and foreclose. (Frank 2010, 3) The stories that disability metaphors tell are deeply

problematic, deeply destructive and deeply resonant of the kinds of violence and
oppression that disabled people have faced over the course of many centuries. They
perpetuate negative and disempowering views of disabled people, and these views wind their
ways into all of the things that most people feel are more important. If a culture's language
is full of pejorative metaphors about a group of people, that culture is not going to
see those people as fully entitled to the same housing, employment, medical care,
education, access and inclusion as people in a more favored group.
Mental disability isnt the reason bad things happen
Kesler 11 (Jennifer Kesler is a freelance online writer and proclaimed feminist blogger. She is
the creative lead at Lojo Group, a branding, marketing and advertising agency based in
Sacramento, California. What Privilege: Replacing crazy for ableism and preciseness of
language. Published February 10th, 2011. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
http://whatprivilege.com/replacing-crazy-for-ableism-and-preciseness-of-language/)
TheFedora
The weather or your job cannot be schizo or bi-polar. Only people can be those things
[ETA: reader Mel Health left a great comment about this: one should not say that person is bi-polar, or that person is a
schizophrenic, it must be phrased that person has schizophrenia. The point is to avoid identifying someone only by their disorder
(which sadly happens anyway).] . Just dont ever use these terms unless youre discussing them in a mental

illness context. That doesnt mean you can speculate out of frustration, I think Politician A has
bi-polar disorder. First of all, it doesnt matter if she is or not, because mental illness is not
the reason people do or say horrible things .
Ableist language stigmatizes the disabled
Aaron 15 (Jessi Elana Aaron is an assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the
University of Florida. The Washington Post: Lame, stand up and other words we use to insult
the disabled without even knowing it published May 13th, 2015. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/lame-stand-up-and-otherwords-we-use-to-insult-the-disabled-without-even-knowing-it/)TheFedora
New meanings arent random At the same time, much media attention has been paid to the use of slurs such
as retarded. Similarly, the stigma associated with psychiatric disabilities has left its mark on many words,
rendering them insults, such as crazy and insane.

L-IGNORING PRONOUNS
Misgendering someone after pronoun disclosure can is invalidating their identity
but can also threaten safety
Finch 14 [Sam Dylan Finch, a transgender writer and unapologetic feminist, What Your Really Saying When
you Ignore Someones Pronouns, Lets Queer Things Up, Queer Feminist Politics, 9/15/14,
https://letsqueerthingsup.com/2014/09/15/what-youre-actually-saying-when-you-ignore-someones-preferredgender-pronouns/ LMcF]
It cant be emphasized enough: Coming out as transgender or any variation thereof is downright terrifying. It is often met with
criticism, resistance, and invalidation. When I came out to friends, it felt like the world was crashing down all around me. And by
far, the worst part was the resistance I faced when asking others to stop saying she. Beyond coming out, we also ask others to
change a very ingrained habit to use different pronouns when speaking about us . This is where I encountered the most turmoil.

When
someone states their pronouns (he, she, ze, they, etc), they are asking for your respect. And
when you choose not to use these pronouns, and instead opt for your own, you are not only
invalidating someones identity, but you are also saying a plethora of harmful things that you
likely never intended. So what are you really saying when youve decided to continue using a pronoun that someone doesnt
Some folks simply dont understand what they are saying when they refuse to use someones stated gender pronouns.

identify with? Here are just a few things you could be suggesting when you use the incorrect pronouns: 1. I know you better than you
know yourself. When you make the decision to not respect someones pronouns, what you are

ultimately saying is that their personal truth is something you are more knowledgeable about
than them. You are saying, How could you possibly know your gender? Only I could know that,
and youre wrong. The reality is, someones gender identity how they relate to their bodies, and to the notions of
femininity and masculinity is only for that person to discover and declare. You are not living their life, and therefore, could not
possibly know their gender better than they could. When you use the incorrect pronouns, though, you are

saying that you are intimately more familiar with who they are than they are. And logically speaking,

that doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Since when are you the expert on other peoples lives? If she says shes a woman, I would
think she would know better than you do, just like she knows her favorite food is spaghetti, shes a Buddhist, and her favorite color is
teal. 2. I would rather hurt you repeatedly than change the way I speak about you . Each time we misgender someone,

we are inflicting harm. Would you rather hurt someone? Or simply change the way you are
speaking? 3. Your sense of safety is not important to me. When we misgender someone, we run the risk of
threatening their personal sense of safety, as well as their physical safety. When someone feels
invalidated or disrespected, they may not feel safe or comfortable in the space . We might also risk
outing them as transgender to other people around us folks who may not know they are trans, who may
become aggressive or even violent if they realize this person is transgender. This could cause
harm that we did not intend. A transgender person could lose their housing, their job, or even their friends if their status
as transgender is revealed. If someone has asked you to use their pronouns, it could be a matter of safety whether its their
sense of safety, or their physical autonomy and security. The bottom-line: If they ask you to use
specific pronouns, use them unless they ask otherwise. Their safety could and often does depend
on it. 4. Your identity isnt real and shouldnt be acknowledged. When you ignore someones pronouns and opt
for your own, what you are saying is that you do not recognize their identity as authentic, and
you are refusing to acknowledge it as such. In other words, you heard their truth, but you are not accepting it.

Instead, you are ignoring it. You are saying, You said this is so, but I dont believe you, so I will reject your truth and replace it with
my assumptions. You said you have a dog, but I like cats, so Im going to pretend you have a cat. Here, have a bag of cat food. You
said you have cancer, but thats too much for me to deal with, so Im going to pretend youre healthy. Lets flush your medications
down the toilet in celebration! You said you are filing for divorce, but that makes me sad, so Im going to keep pretending were
married. Where do you want to get dinner tonight, honey? You said you live on the third floor, but I hate climbing stairs, so Im
going to throw your housewarming party in the apartment downstairs, which Ill pretend is yours. You said youre a man, but that
would force me to use different pronouns, so Im going to pretend youre a woman. What youre ultimately doing is living in a makebelieve land. Someone has told you the truth, their lived experience and their reality, but you have replaced what you heard with
your version of what you wish were true. We should treat each other as the experts on our own experience,

and respect the identities we claim. To do otherwise is to live in denial. The truth will not change no matter how

adamant your refusal to see it may be. 5. I want to teach everyone around me to disrespect you. When you continue to use the
incorrect pronouns, you are teaching everyone around you to use those same (incorrect) pronouns. Your transgender friend now has
to correct not only you, but all of the people youve taught to use those same pronouns. You are working against them, and forcing
them to come out as transgender over and over again. You are making their already very difficult job much, much harder. 6.
Offending you is fine if it makes me feel more comfortable. What you are really saying is that your sense of comfort is more
important than offending someone else. You are saying that you are okay with hurting someone repeatedly, as long as you get to

remain comfortable and unchallenged. Its okay to be disrespectful, as long as it keeps things easy for you. 7. I can hear you talking,
but Im not really listening. Yes, I heard you speak your truth, your lived experience, your journey but I wasnt really listening. Im
going to ignore what youve said, and continue misgendering you. I will hear what youre saying, but I wont truly listen to you,
because your experience isnt important to me. 8. Being who you truly are is an inconvenience to me. Rather than being proud of you
for living your truth, or commending your courage for revealing that truth to me, Im going to ignore what youve said, because your
identity is an inconvenience. I should never have to change how I refer to you. I shouldnt have to change anything. I should be able
to be comfortable at all times. Valuing your identity is a burden on me. Even though transgender people face disproportionate rates
of violence, suicide, homelessness, and discrimination, the REAL inconvenience here is me having to change which pronouns I use
to refer to you. Because your struggle isnt difficult enough as it is. Its MY struggle, the struggle to switch pronouns, that is the real
tragedy here. 9. I would prefer it if you stopped being honest with me. When someone reveals their truth and you ignore and
invalidate it, what youre really saying is that youd prefer that they werent honest with you. Youd prefer that they lied to you, so
that you would never be burdened or inconvenienced by their identity or their struggles. What youre saying is that youd prefer if
they were always dishonest, just to make your life easier. You would rather them live a lie and make things easier for you, instead of
embracing their truth and happiness, and moving forward as their authentic, best self. You like dishonesty, it seems, because
dishonesty allows you to maintain the illusion of what you would rather this person be. 10. I am not an ally, a friend, or someone you
can trust. Because I have criticized, rejected, and invalidated your identity, and refuse to acknowledge it as real, Ive proven I am not
someone you can talk to, not someone you can feel comfortable around, not someone who will listen and advocate for you. When I
choose to misgender you, I have decided my own interests are far more important than your safety, validation, and dignity. And
when I made that decision, I probably gave you the impression that I am not someone you can trust. Yikes. Thats a lot of nastiness,
isnt it? No, I imagine that this isnt really what you are trying to say. But the intent is different from the impact. While you may not
intend to say any of these things, that doesnt change how it impacts the person on the receiving end. When you misgender

someone, these are some of the take away messages that are received when you invalidate them.
When someone takes the brave step to come out to you, it is absolutely essential that you respect their journey, TRUST their lived
experience, listen intently, and celebrate their identity. Rather than replace their reality with your own assumptions, celebrate their
choice to move forward and live as their most authentic self. Someones gender identity is never for you to arbitrarily decide nor a
doctor or parents decision, either. Only YOU can know, and consequently name your gender identity. You may not understand their
identity gender is complicated, and the transgender spectrum might be a whole new concept for you. Its not important that you
understand everything perfectly. Theyve had years to arrive at this conclusion, and youve likely only had a few minutes, if that. Its
important that you listen, and trust that, with time, you will begin to understand how they came to know themselves. Transition can
be an exciting time. For me, I finally felt free to live as I was destined to be living, in the body I was intended to have. A supportive,
caring friend can make all the difference in the world. Its as simple as using he when he asks you to, she when she asks you to,
they when they ask you to, or even ze if ze asks you to. Using someones pronouns is just another way of saying, I trust and
respect you. Using the correct pronouns is a way of validating that we ALL have the right to live our truth, however that truth looks
or however that path twists or turns. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

L-IGNORING CONTENT WARNINGS

Not including content warnings or refusing to edit language when discussing
potentially distressing content can be extremely harmful and works to exclude
people from participating in discussions
Finch 16 [Sam Dylan Finch, feminist writer, When You Oppose Twigger Warnings You are
Really Saying these 8 Things, Everyday Feminism, 6/9/16
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/opposing-trigger-warnings/ LMcF (Content warning:
suicide , PTSD)]
Ive heard a lot of debate around content warnings (popularly but problematically referred to as trigger warnings) and Ive got to say, Im stunned.
Who knew a simple request could cause this much of a stir? If youre not familiar, a

content warning is a very simple

statement at the beginning of an article, film, or comic that lets the audience know that
something potentially distressing will appear in the content theyre about to consume . Some pretty

common ones include sexual assault, alcohol consumption, or violence. If someone has trauma around one of these areas, and could find themselves
triggered by the material, it allows them to opt out or brace themselves before they have a traumatic reaction to it. For example, a dear friend of mine is
a suicide attempt survivor. In the years after her attempt, she tried to avoid articles and movies that had some kind of detailed reference to suicide.
Because she had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of her attempt, engaging with anything that included suicide would cause a panic
attack and flashbacks, and it was very harmful for her mental health and recovery. For me, content warnings are sort of a no-brainer. As a writer, I want
to make sure that my content isnt harming my audience, and that Im sensitive to the needs of those who are still trying to heal from trauma or dealing
with a disability like PTSD, anxiety, or a phobia. Life is already difficult for survivors, so why make it harder? But there is a lot of resistance still, despite
it being a fairly simple request. So I want to explore that opposition namely, what were actually saying to folks with disabilities and trauma when we
ignore or mock their requests for content warnings. You may not be literally saying these things, but the following might be implied whenever you
dismiss a survivor of trauma. 1. Adding a Couple of Words at the Beginning of My Content Is So Hard Many people talk about the inconvenience of
content warnings. As a writer, Im calling bullshit on that. Even

if writing an additional sentence at the beginning of

my article were difficult (which its not), it will never compare to the inconvenience of a serious
panic attack, a flashback, or a dissociative episode that a survivor might have if they encounter a
trigger in my work. As writers, filmmakers, content creators, or even educators, we regularly encounter demands on our work. Some people
can ask for the most ridiculous things. But a sentence at the beginning of our work or syllabus ? A sentence to help survivors
preserve their mental health? Id say thats the least bizarre or inconvenient request Ive ever gotten. 2. PTSD? Lolz, Who Cares Many of
the folks who request content warnings are people dealing with PTSD. Symptoms of this disorder can be very debilitating,
including panic attacks, dissociation, flashbacks, hyperarousal, and difficulty sleeping. Content
warnings can be important for people with PTSD who are trying to avoid content that may
trigger one of their episodes. When people oppose content warnings treating them as though
they are frivolous requests coming from oversensitive people they completely undermine the
seriousness of conditions like PTSD. What youre saying to survivors is that PTSD isnt a
condition that you recognize or care about, and that you have no interest in helping folks who
are dealing with such a devastating disorder. Content warnings make content more accessible
for people with PTSD because it allows them to have fair warning and choose to engage with that
material when theyre in a place that allows them to do so. When you oppose those warnings,
youre saying that PTSD isnt a legitimate enough condition to warrant a slight adjustment in
how we present material so that folks dealing with this disorder can actually participate when
theyre ready and able. In other words, youre suggesting that you just dont care. And thats pretty lousy. 3. I Really Want to Make Your
Already Difficult Life More Difficult Ive heard a lot of folks who oppose content warnings saying to me, Welcome to the real world! If you cant deal
with this article, how are you going to deal with real life? You dont need to tell a survivor that the real world is hard, because they already know that.
Theyre already living in it, trying to survive and trying to heal. And

your refusal to include content warnings takes

already difficult circumstances and makes them even harder. Whats the problem with making writing, film, and
(yes) classrooms more accessible for people with trauma? Even if the rest of the world is going to be a challenge, why
add an additional struggle onto their plate? Its like forcing someone to wear heavy weights
while they run a marathon, under the guise that running is hard, and if you cant deal with the
weight, maybe you shouldnt run a marathon! Yes, the real world sucks. Survivors know that better than
anyone. So we should work hard to make safe spaces wherever its possible to do so especially
when its as easy as adding a content warnin g. 4. Go Ahead, Have a Panic Attack Today If youre not interested in preventing a
panic attack, especially when its so easy to avert, it kind of sounds to me like you dont care if it happens. Im just saying. 5. I Dont Think Making My
Content Accessible Is All That Important Folks with disabilities like PTSD, anxiety, and phobias deserve to be able to make educated decisions about
whether or not they engage with triggering content. It

allows them to access your work or your classroom namely,

by ensuring that they are in the right place to participate . We label the deep end of a swimming pool, for example, so

that folks who cant swim can make a smart decision about whether or not they should be on that end of the pool. We create ratings for movies so that
parents can decide if their children should be watching violent films. We label foods that have allergens so that folks with allergies can decide if they
should eat that particular food. We would never tell someone who cant swim that theyre too sensitive for asking how deep the water is, tell a child
welcome to the real world as we turn on a horror film, or tell someone with allergies to just get over it and eat some peanut butter. Content warnings
operate on the same principle. Theyre there to prevent danger or distress, so that, like labeling the deep end of a pool, people can make smart choices
about where theyre going to swim (or, in this case, what theyre going to read or watch ).

Content warnings make content more

accessible by allowing people to make the right choice and avoid threatening situations that can
jeopardize our mental health. Its not unreasonable to ask for those warnings, especially when they impact a great number of people. 6.

Stigmatizing Mental Health Conditions Is a Cool Hobby of Mine Telling people with serious disorders like PTSD, anxiety, or phobias to just deal with
it or trivializing it by saying theyre being too sensitive upholds a lot of negative stereotypes about what these mental health issues really look like.
Mental illness is not about being too sensitive or about being politically correct. Mental illness is a serious and valid struggle, and writing it off as silly or
making a meme out of it completely trivializes what should be a very serious deal. When you act like content warnings are just a silly request, what
youre really saying is that mental illness and the people who are surviving with it every day are just silly. I dont know about you, but I dont think
that night terrors and insomnia, repeated flashbacks of the worst moment in your life, and panic attacks that leave your hands numb and your
breathing restricted are all that funny. Instead of treating mental health struggles as a joke, we need to treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. And
if thats a little inconvenient, so be it. 7. I Like to Ignore My Audience and My Impact If you dont care about the impact that your work has on the
community that you are serving whether its with your articles or your films or a lesson you give in your classroom what exactly is the point of what
youre doing? As a writer, Im concerned if there are people who cant access my content and learn from it because each time that they try to, they are
harmed by what Ive put out into the world. As a writer, Im concerned if my impact is way different than my intention. I recognize that I wont make
every single person happy with my writing. There will always be individuals who are a bit disgruntled. But

I also recognize that when

a community calls on me to make my content better, I should tune in and see if theres a way
that I can do it. Entire communities have called on us to include content warnings because its a
significant enough concern to unite around. Instead of ignoring that, I feel that I and other
content creators have a responsibility to tune in. We should think critically about who our work
is serving. And if our work is not accessible to everyone, and if there is a community that is
negatively impacted by what were doing, we should think about ways that we can make our
work better so that anyone and everyone can participate. Theres a big difference between being displeased with your

work and actually being harmed by it. And if theres an easy way to prevent that harm, and to include more people in our work, I think its worth doing.
Otherwise, who are we serving? And more specifically, who are we excluding? 8. Your Trauma Doesnt Matter to Me Ultimately, the big takeaway that

many folks have when you refuse to include content warnings is that the trauma that they have experienced isnt important to you . Whether it was a
veteran who just barely made it out of combat alive, a black man who was the victim of a vicious hate crime, or a woman who was violently sexually
assaulted, what youre saying to them is that what theyve been through and what they need to survive is completely and utterly unimportant to you.
And if you arent the slightest bit concerned about that message, theres some deeper reflection that needs to happen. Because while no one is asking
you to fix their struggles for them or hold their hand, what they are asking is that you care enough to write a single sentence on that article or in that
syllabus, just enough to give them the chance to opt out or put some self-care in place if they need to. Their request isnt ridiculous. Whats ridiculous is
that people are still debating about this, as if your convenience trumps their trauma. *** So Im a little passionate about content warnings, if you
couldnt tell. Im passionate because it can make a world of difference for folks who are already struggling. Its so easy, and yet it can be the difference
between a decent day and a day ridden with panic and dysfunction. While we cant reasonably have a content warning for every single trigger that
exists, I dont think its difficult to have some guidelines some very basic warnings that folks can abide by so that we can prevent some of the harm
that is done to survivors of trauma. Many platforms, including right here at Everyday Feminism, have already made the shift. And guess what. It was no
big deal. Its not about censoring our work a heads up doesnt censor anything, just the way that labeling the deep end of the pool doesnt magically
change the depth of the pool, or labeling allergens doesnt change the ingredients in the food but rather, identifies them. I am committed to including
content warnings when I can because I believe that survivors deserve to make educated decisions so that they can manage their health and wellbeing.
When a community comes together and asks us to do right by them, I think we have an obligation to do our best to respond. And honestly? With a
measure that is so simple, the bottom line is that theres just no good reason not to.

L-MENTAL DISABILITY TO KNOWLEDGE MODES

Attempt to create mental illness in opposition to rationality reifies systems of
domination and should be rejected
May & Ferri 5 [Vivian M, Beth A, Syracuse Feminism and Diability studies, Fixated on
Ability: Questioning Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Theories of Resistance, 2005, Prose
Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1&2 April-August 2005, pp. 120-140, LMcf]
Equating visual acuity with knowing is one common way to place disability in opposition to
knowledge. But many others are equally as frequent, including dualisms between mental illness and
rationality and/or characterizations of faulty knowledge models as. pathologies or illnesses.
For example, because Frederic Jameson relies heavily on ableist notions of schizophrenia and
pathological illness in his critique of the postmodern subject, these ideas inltrate Chela Sandovals reading
and critique of Jameson. Sandoval writes that for Jameson, the euphoria of the postmodern subject marks the onset of a new
form of mass cultural pathology. It is schizophrenic innature charged with hallucinogenic intensity (21). Similarly, June
Jordan (in Collins, Fighting 150) describes constructivist approaches to identity as a delusional

disease. In asserting her own social theory, Patricia Hill Collins writes that deconstructivist theory can be
crippling because it runs in circles and fosters nihilism ( Fighting 189). Once again, disability is
enlisted to represent foolishness and despair. Similarily, Susan Stanford Friedman, in querying whether
a doctoral education in an interdisciplinary eld such as Womens Studies is even viable, asserts
that way,madness lies (318). Other scholars refer to those occupying opposing sides of
theoretical or political debates as mad heads (Jamila 390), as crazy, or as wingnuts(Be
rube). As these examples illustrate, schizophrenia and madness more generally are often
placed in opposition to more reasoned approaches, arguments, or positions . Disability as a state
of unknowing, or irrationality, is invoked in order to be deplored . Reading our own works, we found that
Vivian discusses the crazed and troubled state ambiguity can elicit (May 366) and Beth discusses the paranoia about differential
birthrates that Eugenicists tried to evoke (Ferri and Connor).Schizophrenia can also be used rather

romantically, as a potentially liberating state of mind that allows us to think beyond given
categories and binaries,to free ourselves from modernist impulses of mind or from autistic
egocentrism! As Felix Guattari writes, in a certain sense people who are operating on the level
of social sciences or on the level of politics ought to make themselves schizophreni c. And Im not
speaking of that illusory image of schizophrenics, caught in the grip of a repression, which would have us believe that they are
autistic, turned inward on themselves, and so forth. I mean that we should have the schizophrenics capacity to range across
elds . . . of study (Guattari, 83).Obviously, Guattari is not alone in this rhetorical strategy. If we were to tell the origin story for
wanting to write this paper, it would begin with a talk given by Judith Butler in New York City reecting on the events of September
11th in which she made an analogy between post-9/11 experiences and schizophrenia. 7 Because she was using schizophrenia to
highlight the benets of destabilization, Butler could not fully grasp why her use of schizophrenia could be

problematic. 8 Yet the trouble with this kind of borrowing of disability, whether it is seemingly positive or negative, is that in
these instances schizophrenia becomes, primarily, a rhetorical device . Schizophrenia as an
embodied lived experience, a social and political history, an ontology with meaning in its own
right, disappears. Instead, it is transformed into an imagined state of dis/order available for
using , for deepening the audiences understandings of their own (able-bodied) lives and their
own modes of rationality.

L-MISGENDERING
Misgendering threatens the safety of a debater and perpetuates structural violence
Finch 14 [Sam Dylan Finch, a transgender writer and unapologetic feminist, What Your Really Saying When
you Ignore Someones Pronouns, Lets Queer Things Up, Queer Feminist Politics, 9/15/14,
https://letsqueerthingsup.com/2014/09/15/what-youre-actually-saying-when-you-ignore-someones-preferredgender-pronouns/ LMcF]
It cant be emphasized enough: Coming out as transgender or any variation thereof is downright terrifying. It is often met with
criticism, resistance, and invalidation. When I came out to friends, it felt like the world was crashing down all around me. And by
far, the worst part was the resistance I faced when asking others to stop saying she. Beyond coming out, we also ask others to
change a very ingrained habit to use different pronouns when speaking about us . This is where I encountered the most turmoil.

When
someone states their pronouns (he, she, ze, they, etc), they are asking for your respect. And
when you choose not to use these pronouns, and instead opt for your own, you are not only
invalidating someones identity, but you are also saying a plethora of harmful things that you
likely never intended. So what are you really saying when youve decided to continue using a pronoun that someone doesnt
Some folks simply dont understand what they are saying when they refuse to use someones stated gender pronouns.

identify with? Here are just a few things you could be suggesting when you use the incorrect pronouns: 1. I know you better than you
know yourself. When you make the decision to not respect someones pronouns, what you are

ultimately saying is that their personal truth is something you are more knowledgeable about
than them. You are saying, How could you possibly know your gender? Only I could know that,
and youre wrong. The reality is, someones gender identity how they relate to their bodies, and to the notions of
femininity and masculinity is only for that person to discover and declare. You are not living their life, and therefore, could not
possibly know their gender better than they could. When you use the incorrect pronouns, though, you are

saying that you are intimately more familiar with who they are than they are. And logically speaking,

that doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Since when are you the expert on other peoples lives? If she says shes a woman, I would
think she would know better than you do, just like she knows her favorite food is spaghetti, shes a Buddhist, and her favorite color is
teal. 2. I would rather hurt you repeatedly than change the way I speak about you . Each time we misgender someone,

we are inflicting harm. Would you rather hurt someone? Or simply change the way you are
speaking? 3. Your sense of safety is not important to me. When we misgender someone, we run the risk of
threatening their personal sense of safety, as well as their physical safety. When someone feels
invalidated or disrespected, they may not feel safe or comfortable in the space . We might also risk
outing them as transgender to other people around us folks who may not know they are trans, who may
become aggressive or even violent if they realize this person is transgender. This could cause
harm that we did not intend. A transgender person could lose their housing, their job, or even their friends if their status
as transgender is revealed. If someone has asked you to use their pronouns, it could be a matter of safety whether its their
sense of safety, or their physical autonomy and security. The bottom-line: If they ask you to use
specific pronouns, use them unless they ask otherwise. Their safety could and often does depend
on it. 4. Your identity isnt real and shouldnt be acknowledged. When you ignore someones pronouns and opt
for your own, what you are saying is that you do not recognize their identity as authentic, and
you are refusing to acknowledge it as such. In other words, you heard their truth, but you are not accepting it.

Instead, you are ignoring it. You are saying, You said this is so, but I dont believe you, so I will reject your truth and replace it with
my assumptions. You said you have a dog, but I like cats, so Im going to pretend you have a cat. Here, have a bag of cat food. You
said you have cancer, but thats too much for me to deal with, so Im going to pretend youre healthy. Lets flush your medications
down the toilet in celebration! You said you are filing for divorce, but that makes me sad, so Im going to keep pretending were
married. Where do you want to get dinner tonight, honey? You said you live on the third floor, but I hate climbing stairs, so Im
going to throw your housewarming party in the apartment downstairs, which Ill pretend is yours. You said youre a man, but that
would force me to use different pronouns, so Im going to pretend youre a woman. What youre ultimately doing is living in a makebelieve land. Someone has told you the truth, their lived experience and their reality, but you have replaced what you heard with
your version of what you wish were true. We should treat each other as the experts on our own experience,

and respect the identities we claim. To do otherwise is to live in denial. The truth will not change no matter how

adamant your refusal to see it may be. 5. I want to teach everyone around me to disrespect you. When you continue to use the
incorrect pronouns, you are teaching everyone around you to use those same (incorrect) pronouns. Your transgender friend now has
to correct not only you, but all of the people youve taught to use those same pronouns. You are working against them, and forcing
them to come out as transgender over and over again. You are making their already very difficult job much, much harder. 6.
Offending you is fine if it makes me feel more comfortable. What you are really saying is that your sense of comfort is more
important than offending someone else. You are saying that you are okay with hurting someone repeatedly, as long as you get to
remain comfortable and unchallenged. Its okay to be disrespectful, as long as it keeps things easy for you. 7. I can hear you talking,

but Im not really listening. Yes, I heard you speak your truth, your lived experience, your journey but I wasnt really listening. Im
going to ignore what youve said, and continue misgendering you. I will hear what youre saying, but I wont truly listen to you,
because your experience isnt important to me. 8. Being who you truly are is an inconvenience to me. Rather than being proud of you
for living your truth, or commending your courage for revealing that truth to me, Im going to ignore what youve said, because your
identity is an inconvenience. I should never have to change how I refer to you. I shouldnt have to change anything. I should be able
to be comfortable at all times. Valuing your identity is a burden on me. Even though transgender people face disproportionate rates
of violence, suicide, homelessness, and discrimination, the REAL inconvenience here is me having to change which pronouns I use
to refer to you. Because your struggle isnt difficult enough as it is. Its MY struggle, the struggle to switch pronouns, that is the real
tragedy here. 9. I would prefer it if you stopped being honest with me. When someone reveals their truth and you ignore and
invalidate it, what youre really saying is that youd prefer that they werent honest with you. Youd prefer that they lied to you, so
that you would never be burdened or inconvenienced by their identity or their struggles. What youre saying is that youd prefer if
they were always dishonest, just to make your life easier. You would rather them live a lie and make things easier for you, instead of
embracing their truth and happiness, and moving forward as their authentic, best self. You like dishonesty, it seems, because
dishonesty allows you to maintain the illusion of what you would rather this person be. 10. I am not an ally, a friend, or someone you
can trust. Because I have criticized, rejected, and invalidated your identity, and refuse to acknowledge it as real, Ive proven I am not
someone you can talk to, not someone you can feel comfortable around, not someone who will listen and advocate for you. When I
choose to misgender you, I have decided my own interests are far more important than your safety, validation, and dignity. And
when I made that decision, I probably gave you the impression that I am not someone you can trust. Yikes. Thats a lot of nastiness,
isnt it? No, I imagine that this isnt really what you are trying to say. But the intent is different from the impact. While you may not
intend to say any of these things, that doesnt change how it impacts the person on the receiving end. When you misgender

someone, these are some of the take away messages that are received when you invalidate them.
When someone takes the brave step to come out to you, it is absolutely essential that you respect their journey, TRUST their lived
experience, listen intently, and celebrate their identity. Rather than replace their reality with your own assumptions, celebrate their
choice to move forward and live as their most authentic self. Someones gender identity is never for you to arbitrarily decide nor a
doctor or parents decision, either. Only YOU can know, and consequently name your gender identity. You may not understand their
identity gender is complicated, and the transgender spectrum might be a whole new concept for you. Its not important that you
understand everything perfectly. Theyve had years to arrive at this conclusion, and youve likely only had a few minutes, if that. Its
important that you listen, and trust that, with time, you will begin to understand how they came to know themselves. Transition can
be an exciting time. For me, I finally felt free to live as I was destined to be living, in the body I was intended to have. A supportive,
caring friend can make all the difference in the world. Its as simple as using he when he asks you to, she when she asks you to,
they when they ask you to, or even ze if ze asks you to. Using someones pronouns is just another way of saying, I trust and
respect you. Using the correct pronouns is a way of validating that we ALL have the right to live our truth, however that truth looks
or however that path twists or turns. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Misgenderering perpetuates structural violence

King 2016 (Jessica, York University, Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Graduate: Aisthesis Volume 7, 2016 The Violence
of Heteronormative Language Towards the Queer Community)
Misgendering

transgender people by calling a transgender person anything but their preferred

gender pronouns is violent in much the same ways that asexual and bisexual erasure is violent
misgendering invalidates their identity. The implication inherent in misgendering is that personal
identification as a certain gender is ultimately meaningless and gender is a truth that can be
discovered by discerning a persons biological sex at birth (Schilt and Westbrook 453). This limits a
transgender persons ability to decide independently how they would like to present to the world and
how they would like to identify. Such word choice reifies the idea that gender is fixed, immutable and
decided at birth, a biological fact rather than a social construction . The limiting of a persons ability to be
who they would like to be is a form of violence. The misgendering of transgender individuals in casual
conversations has effects beyond the possibility of hurt feelings of the individuals involved in the conversation.
The way society comes to a consensus about certain truths necessarily has an impact on the way the
judicial system addresses those truths. The misgendering of transgender individuals perpetuates the
myth that gender is a truth that one can suss out if given information about an individuals biology. This is a
violent way of thinking, as evidenced by the case of Karen Ulane (Cruz). Karen was an Eastern Airlines employee who openly
transitioned to female. After her transition, she was fired from her job. She attempted to sue Eastern Airlines for sex-based
discrimination, but she was found to have been fired not because she was female, but because she was transgender (206). Ulanes
story exemplifies how the court punishes those who do not conform to their assigned gender based on their sex at birth. By deciding
to allow Eastern Airlines to discriminate based on gender identity (in that Karens clearly did not match the one she was assigned
based on her biological sex at birth), the courts have ensured that transphobia is not only socially encouraged, but also institutionally
sanctioned. The distinction between cisgender female and transgender female is made clear through the courts decision, and by
saying that Karen Ulanes case was not one of sex-based discrimination, the courts have said trans women are not women.

L- RWORD
The R-Word is a hatfeul, dehumanizing, word that further excludes people from
debate spaces
Stephens Et. All [Joseph Franklin Stephens, Special Olympics Virginia athlete and Global
Messenger Advocates explain why the R-word is so hurtful when used in jokes or as part of
everyday speech, R-Word Spread the Word to End the Word, http://www.r-word.org/r-wordeffects-of-the-word.aspx LMcf ]
The R-word is EXCLUSIVE Whats wrong with "retard"? I can only tell you what it means to me
and people like me when we hear it. It means that the rest of you are excluding us from your
group. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to
be. We are something outside the "in" group. We are someone that is not your kind. I want you
to know that it hurts to be left out here, alone. Joseph Franklin Stephens, Special Olympics
Virginia athlete and Global Messenger. The R-word IGNORES INDIVIDUALITY. Words
matter. People don't need to scoff at others to make a point. Everyone has a gift and the world
would be better off if we recognized it. Tim Shriver, CEO of Special Olympics. The R-word
equates intellectual disability with being DUMB OR STUPID. When saying the R-word, What
we mean is that he is as stupid as someone who is mentally handicapped, and we mean that in
the most derogatory sense. The implication is that the only characteristic of mentally
handicapped individuals is their stupidity. Crystal, Stanford, CA. The R-word spreads HURT.
It is wrong to pain people with your language. Especially, when you have already been made
aware of your oral transgression's impact. Make no mistake about it: WORDS DO HURT! And
when you pepper your speak with "retard" and "retarded," you are spreading hurt. John C.
McGinley, actor and star of the hit TV show Scrubs. The R-word is OFFENSIVE. The word
retard is considered hate speech because it offends people with intellectual and developmental
disabilities as well as the people that care for and support them. It alienates and excludes them.
It also emphasizes the negative stereotypes surrounding people with intellectual and
developmental disabilities; the common belief that people with intellectual and developmental
disabilities should be segregated, hidden away from society, which, in my opinion, is really old
fashioned. Karleigh Jones, Special Olympics New Zealand athlete. The R-word is
INCORRECT When you say the "R" word it makes people feel bad and it hurts my feelings and
I don't want to hear you guys say it. Instead, you can call me a leader, a hero, or a human being,
but please don't call me the "R" word. Dony Knight, Special Olympics Oregon athlete The Rword is DEROGATORY Because the word has become a casual description of anything negative
or flawed, retarded is no longer considered an appropriate way to describe people with
intellectual disabilities. And any use of the word, even when used as slang and not intended to
be offensive, is hurtful - because it will always be associated with people who have disabilities.
Sara Mitton, Board Member, Treasure Valley Down Syndrome Association The R-word fosters
LONELINESS It hurts and scares me when I am the only person with intellectual disabilities on
the bus and young people start making retard jokes or references. Please put yourself on that
bus and fill the bus with people who are different from you. Imagine that they start making jokes
using a term that describes you. It hurts and it is scary. Joseph Franklin Stephens, Special
Olympics Virginia athlete and Global Messenger The R-word is HATE SPEECH I dont think
you understand how much you hurt others when you hate. And maybe you dont realize that you
hate. But thats what it is; your pre-emptive dismissal of them [people with intellectual
disabilities], your dehumanization of them, your mockery of them, its nothing but another form
of hate.

L-PSYCHOANALYSIS
The alt is ableist: rejection of goal setting takes out
anxiety coping mechanisms
Calm Clinic 15 (Calm Clinic is an informational blog designed to educate the public on anxiety
and assist those with anxiety. Calm Clinic: Common Anxiety Triggers for Anxiety and Panic
copyright 2009-2015. Accessed July 24th, 2015.
http://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/causes/triggers) TheFedora
Lack of Goal Setting The mind and body often need certain emotions to stay sane.
Accomplishment and the idea that you're working towards something are actually
a valuable tool for keeping your anxiety at bay. If you're not goal setting and letting each day pass without a
plan, you may find that you stop thinking about the future, and that can put you too much in the
present.

L-PSYCHO
Psycho means having mental disability
Brown 14 (Lydia Brown is an activist, public speaker, and writer focused on violence against
multiply-marginalized disabled people. She is diagnosed with autism. autistichoya.com:
Ableist Words and Phrases To Avoid updated October 11th, 2014. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
http://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html)TheFedora
Psycho Refers to people with mental or psychiatric disabilities. Psychopath(ic) Refers to people with mental or psychiatric
disabilities. Psycho(tic) Refers to people with mental or psychiatric disabilities.

L-SUICIDE REPS
Suicide reps within the aff can be a safety hazard to many individuals
Haller 97 (Beth Haller is Professor of Journalism/New Media and the Graduate Director of the
Communication Management masters program in the Department of Mass Communication &
Communication Studies at Towson University in Maryland.
Example: The volatile issue of assisted suicide. In January 1997, several hundred people with disabilities and their advocates stood
before the U.S. Supreme Court in protest of assisted suicide deaths of people with disabilities. This life-or-death issue for the
disability community was ripe for in-depth news media coverage. The event did draw coverage by USA Today, CNN, the Washington
Post, and "Nightline." The implications of this type of media attention need to be studied . The assisted

suicide issue and its media coverage illustrate the ramifications of news media images in the real
lives of people with disabilities. If news media images reinforce a notion that disability
is a fate worse than death, then assisted suicide might be shown in a positive light. A cursory
glance at news media coverage of this issue and a discussion with the leader of Not Dead Yet shows that the news media
rarely focused on the disability perspective or even included comments from activist organizations. An exploratory
look at major newspaper coverage of the issue, which went before the Supreme Court in 1997, showed that concerns of
disabled people were rarely discussed.
Associating suicide with mental disability is ableist
Stevens 7/24 (Danielle Stevens is co-founder and editor-in-chief of This Bridge Called Our
Health, an online healing space for women and femmes of color. For Harriet: We Must Change
the Ableist Language Surrounding Sandra Bland's Death published July 24th, 2015. Accessed
July 25th, 2015. http://www.forharriet.com/2015/07/we-must-change-ableistlanguage.html#axzz3gw69D8jc)TheFedora
I think some of the discourse emerging from these

L-SATIRE- ABLEISM
Satire employs heavy use of sarcasm and irony

Watson 11 (CATE WATSON: School of Education, University of Stirling, United Kingdom. SAGE Journals: Notes on
the Variety and Uses of Satire, Sarcasm and Irony in Social Research, with Some Observations on Vices and Follies in the Academy.
th
Published 2011. Accessed July 20 , 2015. http://pae.sagepub.com/content/3/2/139.full.pdf+html)TheFedora

Satire, whether considered as genre or mode of writing (that is, as a tone and an attitude [Real, 2005, p.
512]), frequently makes use of other rhetorical devices, such as sarcasm (which is distinguished by its bitter
and caustic nature [Gibbs, 2007]) and, especially, irony. While irony is a difficult term to define, with many variants
dramatic, verbal, situational, Socratic, etc. the most common definition , according to Colebrook
(2004, p. 1), is saying something contrary to what is meant . Though she regards this as simplistic
almost to the point of uselessness, it immediately throws up problems for the social scientist who is, generally speaking, discouraged
from doing this sort of thing. However, while satire (and sarcasm) may be considered narrative forms, means for

and of representation, irony, as a rhetorical trope which exerts its effects through juxtaposition and the
creation of incongruity, constitutes a potential analytical tool in social research, overturning
expectations and operating within a logic of discovery . Irony is a metaphor of opposites, a
seeing of something from the viewpoint of its antithesis (Brown, 1989, p. 174), and it is the ability to do this
which constitutes the art of social science. Indeed, Brown contends that the prime instrument of sociological
knowledge is an eye for paradox, contradiction and reversals that are latent beneath the
more obvious manifest content of action (p. 178); and he goes on, [T]he sociologist must estrange taken-for-granted
reality so that it appears in a new and previously unsuspected light; he must be the man who shouts Theatre! in the middle of a
crowded fire (p. 183).

Focus on sarcasm and irony is ableist, excluding those unable to

detect it: this removes from the debate space those who are
sociopathic, or who have Asperger syndrome, or other social
disabilities.

Chin 14 (Richard Chin is a Twin Cities newspaper reporter. He was a Knight Journalism Fellow
at Stanford University. Smithsonian Magazine: The Science of Sarcasm? Yeah, Right
published November 14th, 2014. Accessed July 21st, 2015.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-sarcasm-yeah-right-25038/?
all)TheFedora
Actually, scientists are finding that the ability to detect sarcasm really is useful. For the past 20 years, researchers
from linguists to psychologists to neurologists have been studying our ability to perceive snarky remarks and gaining new insights
into how the mind works. Studies have shown that exposure to sarcasm enhances creative problem solving, for instance. Children
understand and use sarcasm by the time they get to kindergarten. An inability to understand sarcasm may be an

early warning sign of brain disease. Sarcasm detection is an essential skill if one is going to
function in a modern society dripping with irony. Our culture in particular is permeated
with sarcasm, says Katherine Rankin, a neuropsychologist at the University of California at San Francisco. People
who dont understand sarcasm are immediately noticed. Theyre not getting it. Theyre
not socially adept. Sarcasm so saturates 21st-century America that according to one study of a database of telephone
conversations, 23 percent of the time that the phrase yeah, right was used, it was uttered sarcastically. Entire phrases have almost
lost their literal meanings because they are so frequently said with a sneer. Big deal, for example. Whens the last time someone
said that to you and meant it sincerely? My heart bleeds for you almost always equals Tell it to someone who cares, and
Arent you special means you arent. Its practically the primary language in modern society,
says John Haiman, a linguist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of Talk is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation and
the Evolution of Language. Sarcasm seems to exercise the brain more than sincere statements do .
Scientists who have monitored the electrical activity of the brains of test subjects exposed to sarcastic statements have found that
brains have to work harder to understand sarcasm. That extra work may make our brains sharper, according to
another study. College students in Israel listened to complaints to a cellphone companys customer service line. The students were
better able to solve problems creatively when the complaints were sarcastic as opposed to just plain angry. Sarcasm appears to
stimulate complex thinking and to attenuate the otherwise negative effects of anger, according to the study authors. The mental

gymnastics needed to perceive sarcasm includes developing a theory of mind to see beyond the
literal meaning of the words and understand that the speaker may be thinking of
something entirely different. A theory of mind allows you to realize that when your brother says nice job when
you spill the milk, he means just the opposite, the jerk. Sarcastic statements are sort of a true lie. Youre saying something
you dont literally mean, and the communication works as intended only if your listener gets
that youre insincere. Sarcasm has a two-faced quality: its both funny and mean. This dual nature has led to contradictory
theories on why we use it.

Multiple disabilities limit capacity to accurately interpret sarcasm

Williams 8 (Diane L. Williams: a Department of Speech Language Pathology, Rangos School
of Health Sciences, Duquesne University; Gerald Goldstein: VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System
and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Nicole Kojkowski: University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine; and Nancy J. Minshewd, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine, Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Res
Autism Spectr Disord: Do individuals with high functioning autism have the IQ profile
associated with nonverbal learning disability? Published June, 2008. Accessed July 24 th, 2015.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4148695/) TheFedora
Individuals with high functioning autism (HFA), Asperger syndrome (ASP), and nonverbal
learning disability (NLD) are all described as having difficulties in making sense of and
navigating the social environment, resulting in interpersonal awkwardness (Frith, 2003 and Rourke, 1989; Volkmar &
Klin, 2000). In addition to problems with social functioning , all three disorders are characterized
by right hemisphere language impairments such as difficulty understanding
figurative language, sarcasm, and humor as well as abnormalities in prosody, facial expression, gaze,
gesture, and body language (Ellis, Ellis, Fraser, & Deb, 1994; Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999; Ozonoff & Miller, 1996; Rourke &
Tsatsanis, 2000; Sabbagh, 1999). The overlaps in the behavioral presentation of these three disorders create a challenge for
diagnosticians.

L- YOU GUYS
Changing language is a pre-requisite to shaping gender equalityphrases like you
guys reinforce patriarchal system.
Kleinman 7[Sherryl Kleinman, Professor in Department of Sociology at the University of
North Carolina, Why Sexist Language Matters. March 12, 2007.
http://www.alternet.org/story/48856/ ]
Gendered words and phrases like "you guys" may seem small compared to issues like violence against
women, but changing our language is an easy way to begin overcoming gender inequality. For years I've
been up inches of space in the newsletter of a rape crisis center? Because male-based generics are another
indicator -- and more importantly, a reinforcer -- of a system in which "man" in the abstract and men in
the flesh are privileged over women. Some say that language merely reflects reality and so we should
ignore our words and work on changing the unequal gender arrangements that are reflected in our
language. Well, yes, in part. Linknoun, pronoun

Masculine pronouns and nouns perpetuate male dominance in the

workplace.

RSCC 10

The RSCC, online Writing Lab. Avoiding Sexist Language. The January 28, 2010.

http://www.roanestate.edu/owl&writingcenter/owl/Sexism.html. MR.

When people use sexist language they are actually showing a bias, even if they are unaware of the bias or if
it is unintentional. Your usage is sexist if you refer in general to doctors, managers, lawyers, company
presidents, engineers, and other professionals as "he" or "him" while referring to nurses, secretaries, and
homemakers as "she" or "her." Our goal as communicators is to identify with our audience, not to
inadvertently insult them. Follow these guidelines to eliminate sexist expressions from your
communications: 1. Use neutral expressions: Use "chair," or "chairperson," rather than "chairman" Use
"businessperson" rather than "businessman" Use "supervisor" rather than "foreman" Use "police officer"
rather than "policeman" Use "letter carrier" rather than "postman" Use "homemaker" rather than
"housewife" 2. Use plural forms. Instead of using "The manager . . . he," use "The managers . . . they." 3.
When possible (as in direct address), use "you." For example, "You can begin to eliminate sexual bias by
becoming aware of the problem." But be careful to avoid using "you." If used too often, it can sound as if
you're ordering your reader around. 4. Drop endings such as -ess and -ette used to denote females (e.g.,
poetess, authoress, bachelorette, majorette). 5. Avoid overuse of pairings (him or her, she or he, his or
hers, he/she). Too many such pairings are awkward. 6. Avoid sexist salutations such as "Dear Sir", or
"Gentlemen." It is always preferable to use the person's name. If you do not know whether a woman is
married or not, use Ms. If you are unable to find out the gender of the person, use the position title on an
attention line (Attention: Quality Assurance Supervisor) instead of a salutation.

L-TRANSSEXUAL
Using the term transsexual sexualizes trans women in an objectifying way and
relinks to medicalization and the gender binary-turns the case
Sandeen 12(Autumn, she is a transgender activist and US Navy veteran. In 2013, she became
the first US service member to succeed in petitioning the Defense Department to publicly
change her gender identification on all her military records., 5-10-12, Trans sexualization; Trans
medicalization, LGBT Weekly, http://lgbtweekly.com/2012/05/10/trans-sexualization-transmedicalization/, FH)
Famed transsexual, Christine Jorgensen embraced the term transgender in an attempt to
distance herself from the sexualization of her life. From Oct. 16, 1979 issue of the Winnipeg Free
Press article Christine Recalls Life As Boy From The Bronx: If you understand trans-genders,
she says, (the word she prefers to transsexuals), then you understand that gender doesnt have
to do with bed partners, it has to do with identity. December 18, 1985, she went further by
telling the Regina Leader Post: I am a transgender because gender refers to who you are as a
human. There is a divide among the population of transsexual, transgender and gender
nonconforming people over what terminology should be used for trans people; and the divide
speaks to why trans civil rights are a much more difficult thing to achieve than one would think
it would be. We cant seem to unite behind a community label in a struggle for ordinary equality.
The word trans people united behind in the 1990s and early 2000s was transgender. Theres
even a Transgender Pride flag. The term transgender, in the diversity model of the 1990s and
2000s, was cast as an umbrella term. Those who fell under the umbrella included transsexual
people, crossdressers and genderqueer people. Many also included drag performers and intersex
people under the umbrella. However, the work for trans peoples civil rights has almost
exclusively been for the benefit of transsexuals those who live 24/7 as a member of the binary
sex that isnt usually associated with the genitalia they were born with. This is because visibly
trans people are most often the focus of antitrans discrimination. And, lawsuits over trans
employment discrimination in the past 20-years have all but once dealt with transsexual people
being discriminated against. The political decision of trans activists in the 1990s to unite behind
the umbrella term transgender was related to why Christine Jorgensen preferred the term
transgender: they perceived transgender as taking the sex out of transsexual an effort to
desexualize the sexualized perception of transsexual people. Sexualized perceptions of trans
women are persistent. Back in 2009, the Washington, D.C. Examiner reported: [C]ombined
traffic from the top 10 adult sites and top 10 dating sites catering exclusively to trans-loving
males has risen 350 percent. While some crossover invariably exists, heterosexual male visitors
to these 20 Web sites now top 188 million annually. And this figure doesnt include traffic
counts from the additional 300+ transsexual sites already in existence or from new ones being
created by mainstream giants like Hustler. There are a significant number of transsexual
women, as well as women who no longer consider themselves transsexual, identifying
themselves with terms such as women of transsexual history who dont want to be associated
with the term transgender. They see themselves as not being anything like crossdressers and
drag queens, and they see evil in how many genderqueer and transgender identified people want
to tear apart the gender binary. These transsexual women instead perceive themselves to be
women with a medical condition that requires medical treatment, and that the focus should be
on medically treating them. They embrace transsexual as a medicalizing term. Rejection of the
sexualization of transsexual people was what led in part to the embracing of the term
transgender by trans women of past years. A re-embracing of the term transsexual by a number
of trans women appears to be an embracing of the medicalization of trans people. Somehow, Id
like to see a noncontroversial trans-related term that rejects both sexualization and
medicalization of my peers and my life experience, and embraces my peers and me as whole

beings. Im not holding my breath.

L-THATS GAY
Using the term gay in incorrect usage is heteronormative violence
Young 13 [Will Youg, Using the word 'gay' to mean 'crap' is a form of bullying of gay people,
The Gaurdian, 11/24/13 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/24/usinggay-mean-crap-bullying-gap-people LMcf ]
I like to think I'm down with youth culture and its slang. Well, a bit anyway. I understand that the word "sick" can mean "cool", and
"bare" can mean "a lot". This is pretty much the limit of my knowledge. But I do like to think I can tell the difference between words
that have changed their meaning in a quirky but harmless way, and those that have a damaging knock-on effect. The evolution of the
word "gay" is a case in point. Once it meant carefree or merry. Over time it came to be used to describe a sexual orientation. Now
for many at least it has been appropriated to mean "rubbish" or "crap". So a word that started out meaning "happy" has ended up
being used to denigrate. Well, language changes, doesn't it? Many would see no problem with a shift driven by everyday speech. It is
a problem, however, for those of us a whole swath of society who are actually gay, and for whom the word forms an important
part of our identity and sense of self. It might not be obvious to those who aren't. But the casual, insulting use of the word, in schools
and elsewhere, hurts us. In fact, it seeps into the subconscious. It fuels people's perception of gay people as wrong or bad. If a young
person, growing up gay, constantly hears the word being used to refer to something that's disliked, useless or stupid, they are quite
naturally going to feel that reflects on them. They are going to feel disliked, useless and stupid. And young gay people have enough to
deal with already. Look at the statistics:23% of gay or bisexual young people have tried to take their own lives and 56% have selfharmed. This isn't inconsequential squabbling over the use of an adjective. No one is looking to fetter freedom of expression. This is
about stopping a new generation of gay people from growing up in a climate of persecution and ostracism. Gay charity Stonewall is
leading a campaign against homophobic language. I share its view that the young people using the word gay negatively are not
necessarily homophobic. There is a difference between labelling a statement or action homophobic and labelling someone a
homophobe. What is needed is better education of students and teachers alike. This isn't a question of punishment, but one of
enlightenment. Young gay people have told Stonewall that when they hear phrases such as "that is so

gay" they feel ashamed; like they are outsiders. Once again, this isn't oversensitivity, or nitpicking over language
that may have been used quite innocently. I believe that political correctness for the sake of it can be counterproductive. No, this
is a form of bullying intentional or not that has obvious consequences . But are we fighting a losing
battle? Can you really stand in the way of a linguistic change, or the way kids choose to behave in their own friendship groups or the
playground? I firmly believe that young people's attitudes can rapidly change once they've been educated about something I've
seen it with my own eyes. I have faith in them. Give them the information they need about the harm being done and they will stop
using language that hurts and upsets many of their peers. Most of the time, young people don't want to offend. They want to
understand things and, ultimately, behave well towards one another. The devil is in the detail when it comes to language that is used
to ostracise people. It is the detail that we have to get to grips with. People "tolerate" gays and lesbians; Joe Bloggs "admits" to being
gay. Double maths is "so gay". These seemingly minor examples can lead to damaging emotional responses. They subtly undermine
and erode confidence. The results are bad for society as a whole. Language is key. Language is everything. After all, what else do we
have?

L-EXCESSIVE ALTS
Excessive impacts and a culture normalizing fear
triggers anxiety and excludes those with anxiety
disorders from the debate space
Calm Clinic 15 (Calm Clinic is an informational blog designed to educate the public on anxiety
and assist those with anxiety. Calm Clinic: Common Anxiety Triggers for Anxiety and Panic
copyright 2009-2015. Accessed July 24th, 2015.
http://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/causes/triggers) TheFedora
Health and News The media really has changed the culture of anxiety. They report often on young
deaths, dangers, and lawsuits that can all create a feeling of discomfort and fear that may trigger
an increase in anxiety levels. A great example was an article about the dangers of MRSA - a deadly infection that is
immune to most medications - where doctors wrote the biggest danger of MRSA wasn't the disease itself, but rather public fear over
the disease. Media can create fears and stress where they weren't before, and this may lead to

persistent anxiety. Loss of Coping Anxiety may also be triggered by a loss of coping ability, often due to replacement coping.
This is an incredibly common problem with those that abuse drugs or alcohol, but may affect those that party or do reckless
behaviors in order to cure stress. These behaviors are coping replacements, and unfortunately natural stress coping is a "use it or
lose it" type of ability. If you replace your coping ability with these types of negative behaviors, you risk losing you mental ability to
cope with stress and anxiety may be the result. Anxious Thoughts Certain anxious thoughts may also trigger greater amounts of
anxiety. Anxiety causes anxious thoughts in general, so often this affects those that have already been struggling with mild anxiety.
But in some cases, if the thought was particularly distressing, it may trigger an incredible increase in

anxiety that cascades out of control.

IMPACT

Ableism-Education
Continued ableist assumptions in the academic space destroys education
Hehir 07 (Thomas Hehir is Professor of Practice and Director of the School Leadership Program, Harvard Graduate School of
Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Educational Leadership: Confronting Ableism. Published in February, 2007.
th

Accessed July 20 , 2015. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb07/vol64/num05/ConfrontingAbleism.aspx)TheFedora

Negative cultural attitudes toward disability can undermine opportunities for all students to
participate fully in school and society. When Ricky was born deaf, his parents were determined to raise him to
function in the normal world. Ricky learned to read lips and was not taught American Sign Language. He felt comfortable within
the secure world of his family, but when he entered his neighborhood school, he grew less confident as he struggled to understand
what his classmates seemed to grasp so easily. Susan, a child with dyslexia, entered kindergarten with curiosity about the world
around her, a lively imagination, and a love of picture books. Although her school provided her with individual tutoring and other
special education services, it also expected her to read grade-level texts at the same speed as her nondisabled peers. Susan fell
further and further behind. By 6th grade, she hated school and avoided reading. These two examples illustrate how society's

pervasive negative attitude about disabilitywhich I term ableismoften makes the world
unwelcoming and inaccessible for people with disabilities. An ableist perspective asserts that it is
preferable for a child to read print rather than Braille, walk rather than use a wheelchair, spell
independently rather than use a spell-checker, read written text rather than listen to a book on
tape, and hang out with nondisabled kids rather than with other disabled kids. Certainly, given a
human-made world designed with the nondisabled in mind, children with disabilities gain an advantage if they can perform like
their nondisabled peers. A physically disabled child who receives the help he or she needs to walk can move more easily in a barrierfilled environment. A child with a mild hearing loss who has been given the amplification and speech therapy he or she needs may
function well in a regular classroom. But ableist assumptions become dysfunctional when the education

and development services provided to disabled children focus on their disability to the exclusion
of all else. From an early age, many people with disabilities encounter the view that disability is
negative and tragic and that overcoming disability is the only valued result (Ferguson & Asch, 1989;
Rousso, 1984). In education, considerable evidence shows that unquestioned ableist assumptions are harming
disabled students and contributing to unequal outcomes (see Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1989; Lyon et al.,
2001). School time devoted to activities that focus on changing disability may take away
from the time needed to learn academic material. In addition, academic deficits may be
exacerbated by the ingrained prejudice against performing activities in different ways that
might be more efficient for disabled peoplesuch as reading Braille, using sign language, or
using text-to-speech software to read. The Purpose of Special Education What should the purpose of special education
be? In struggling with this issue, we can find guidance in the rich and varied narratives of people with disabilities and their families.
Noteworthy among these narratives is the work of Adrienne Asch, a professor of bioethics at Yeshiva University in New York who is
blind. In her analysis of stories that adults with disabilities told about their childhood experiences (Ferguson & Asch, 1989), Asch
identified common themes in their parents' and educators' responses to their disability . Some of the
adults

responded with excessive concern and sheltering. Others conveyed to children, through
silence or denial, that nothing was wrong. For example, one young woman with significant vision loss related that
she was given no alternative but to use her limited vision even though this restriction caused her significant academic problems.
Another common reaction was to make ill-conceived attempts to fix the disability. For example,
Harilyn Rousso, an accomplished psychotherapist with cerebral palsy, recounts, My mother was quite concerned with the
awkwardness of my walk. Not only did it periodically cause me to fall but it made me stand out, appear conspicuously different
which she feared would subject me to endless teasing and rejection. To some extent it did. She made numerous attempts over the
years of my childhood to have me go to physical therapy and to practice walking normally at home. I vehemently refused her
efforts. She could not understand why I would not walk straight. (1984, p. 9) In recalling her own upbringing and education, Asch
describes a more positive response to disability: I give my parents high marks. They did not deny that I was blind, and did not ask
me to pretend that everything about my life was fine. They rarely sheltered. They worked to help me behave and look the way others
did without giving me a sense that to be blinddifferentwas shameful. They fought for me to ensure that I lived as full and rich a
life as I could. For them, and consequently for me, my blindness was a fact, not a tragedy. It affected them but did not dominate their
lives. Nor did it dominate mine. (Ferguson & Asch, 1989, p. 118) Asch's narrative and others (Biklen, 1992) suggest that we can

best frame the purpose of special education as minimizing the impact of disability and
maximizing the opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in schooling and the
community. This framework assumes that most students with disabilities will be integrated into
general education and educated within their natural community. It is consistent with the 1997 and 2004
reauthorizations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which requires that individualized education program
(IEP) teams address how the student will gain access to the curriculum and how the school will meet the unique needs that arise out

of the student's disability. Finally, this

framework embraces the diverse needs of students with various

disabilities as well as the individual diversity found among students within each disability group.
Falling Short of the Goal Minimizing the impact of disability does not mean making misguided
attempts to cure disability but rather giving students the supports, skills, and opportunities
needed to live as full a life as possible with their disability. Maximizing access requires that school practices
recognize the right of students with disabilities to participate fully in the school community not
only in academic programs, but also in sports teams, choruses, clubs, and field trips. A look at common problems
encountered by students with low-incidence disabilities, specific learning disabilities, and
emotional disturbances illustrates that schools still have a long way to go in fulfilling the
purpose of special education. Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities In Adrienne Asch's case, minimizing the impact of
her blindness meant learning Braille, developing orientation and mobility skills, and having appropriate accommodations available
that gave her access to education. Asch also points out that because of New Jersey's enlightened policies at the time, she could live at
home and attend her local school, so she and her family were not required to disrupt their lives to receive the specialized services she
needed. Unfortunately, many students today with low-incidence disabilities like blindness and deafness are not afforded the
opportunities that Asch had in the early 1950s. Parents sometimes face the choice of sending their children to a local school that is ill
equipped to meet their needs or to a residential school with specialized services, thus disrupting normal family life. Parents should
not be forced to make this Hobson's choice. Services can be brought to blind and deaf students in typical community settings, and
most students can thrive in that environment (Wagner, Black-orby, Cameto, & Newman, 1993; Wagner & Cameto, 2004). It is up to
policymakers to ensure that such services are available. Students with Specific Learning Disabilities Because students

identified as having learning disabilities are such a large and growing portion of the school
population, we might expect that these students would be less likely to be subjected to ableist
practices. The available evidence, however, contradicts this assumption. Many students with
dyslexia and other specific learning disabilities receive inappropriate instruction that
exacerbates their disabilities. For example, instead of making taped books available to these
students, many schools require those taught in regular classrooms to handle grade-level or
higher text. Other schools do not allow students to use computers when taking exams, thus
greatly diminishing some students' ability to produce acceptable written work. The late disabilities
advocate Ed Roberts had polio as a child, which left him dependent on an iron lung. He attended school from home in the 1960s
with the assistance of a telephone link. When it was time for graduation, however, the school board planned to deny him a diploma
because he had failed to meet the physical education requirement. His parents protested, and Ed eventually graduated (Shapiro,
1994). We can hardly imagine this scenario happening today, given disability law and improved

societal attitudes. Yet similar ableist assumptions are at work when schools routinely require
students with learning disabilities to read print at grade level to gain access to the curriculum or
to meet proficiency levels on high-stakes assessments . Assuming that there is only one right
way to learnor to walk, talk, paint, read, and writeis the root of fundamental inequities.
Seriously Emotionally Disturbed Students Perhaps no group suffers from negative attitudes more than students who have
been identified as having serious emotional disturbance (SED)and no other subpopulation experiences
poorer outcomes. Students with SED drop out of school at more than double the rate of
nondisabled students. Only 15 percent pursue higher education, and approximately 50 percent
are taught in segregated settings (U.S. Department of Education, 2003; Wagner & Cameto, 2004). For large numbers of
students with serious emotional disturbance, their IEPs are more likely to include inappropriate responses to control the most
common symptom of their disabilityacting-out behaviorthan to provide the accommodations and support the students need to
be successful in education. Only 50 percent of students with SED receive mental health services, only 30 percent receive social work
services, and only 50 percent have behavior management appropriately addressed in their IEPs (Wagner & Cameto, 2004). What do
these students typically receive through special education? They are commonly placed in a special classroom

or school with other students with similar disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2003)often with an
uncertified teacher. Placing such students in separate classes without specific behavioral
supports, counseling, or an expert teacher is unlikely to work. Substantial evidence, indicates,
however, that providing these students with appropriate supports and mental health services can significantly
reduce disruptive behavior and improve their learning (Sugai, Sprague, Horner, & Walker, 2000). Such
supports are most effective when provided within the context of effective schoolwide discipline
approaches, such as the U.S. Department of Education's Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program
(www.pbis.org). Schoolwide approaches also produce safer and better-run schools for all
students. Guidelines for Special Education Decision Making The goal of minimizing the impact of disability
and maximizing opportunities to participate suggests several guidelines for serving students

with disabilities.

Characterizing disabled bodies as intellectually inferior

shapes educational spaces that disregard vast amounts
of participants
Omum 14 (Omum22 is the pen name of a writer for the organization Small But Kinda Mighty,
a website devoted to information related to ableism and ableist concepts. Small But Kinda
Mighty: Five things to consider before using ableist language Published August 19 th, 2014.
Accessed July 25th, 2015. http://smallbutkindamighty.com/2014/08/19/five-things-considerusing-ableist-language/)TheFedora
Our modern fetishization of intellectual superiority One person who engaged with me on twitter took the view
that in describing Rob Ford as an idiot and as stupid, he was merely being factually descriptive. I see this an
awful lot and in my view its one of the most insidious forms of ableism . We see it everywhere, this idea
that people who are smart are somehow better, more superior than others. Dont get me wrong, Im
a huge fan of education and completely deplore ignorance. Im talking about how certain
people assume that others who do not share their views are therefore intellectually
inferior. The Fords play on this to rally people to their cause when they talk about downtown elites and lefties the dogwhistle they are blowing is to tell their supporters, hey, these people think they are better and smarter than you. It builds
resentment and its something that we inflame and reinforce every time we accuse the Fords and their supporters of stupidity.
Many parents of autistic people and even autistic people themselves, also display ableism in this regard when

they, consciously or otherwise, emphasize that they or their children are high functioning, have a diagnosis
of Aspergers not autism, are not severely autistic and so on . I see it in books, statements and memes that
talk about the genius of autism and that retroactively diagnose people like Newton and Einstein as autistic. In fact, all autistic
people have value and they dont need to be a savant to demonstrate that. Individuals with an
intellectual or cognitive disability, whether due to autism, Fragile X, Down Syndrome or something
else are all inherently valuable and all have both gifts to offer and rights that need to be respected.

Ableism- Debate space exclusion

The impact is the silencing of disabled voices and
violence against disabled persons
Zelinger 7/7 (Julie Zeilinger: a freelance author from the Barnard College class of 2015.
Mic.com: 6 Forms of Ableism We Need to Retire Immediately published July 7th, 2015.
Accessed July 24th, 2015. http://mic.com/articles/121653/6-forms-of-ableism-we-need-toretire-immediately)TheFedora
6. Assuming disability is always visible Source: Getty Though their experiences are undoubtedly
distinct from individuals with physical disabilities, people with non-apparent disabilities
certainly face ableism as well. There is pervasive stigma surrounding mental illness, for
example, and it can and often does lead to inequitable treatment, such as forced
institutionalization and medication and a lack of agency in treating one's mental health,
Cannington told Mic. But beyond being denied the autonomy of making personal choices, this form of
ableism may even cause individuals physical harm especially when compounded with race and
class. "People with psychiatric disabilities are disproportionately victims of police
brutality because of ableism," Cannington said. "It's a huge form of ableism not often named as
ableism." And mental illness is hardly the only non-apparent disability. Individuals who
experience learning disabilities, developmental intellectual disabilities and even chronic illness
may identify as disabled, for example, but because they are not predominately recognized as
such may be denied the help and resources they need. "As human beings we need to check our
privileges in regards to our abilities," Cannington concluded. "In order to harness the power and
diversity and innovation of our society, we have to realize that our minds and bodies experience
the world in very different ways. If we are able to create access and be more intentional about
how we create access, then we are doing everyone good."

Ableism in the debate space excludes those with

disabilities from participation. Only challenging ableist
practices solves.
Zelinger 7/7 (Julie Zeilinger: a freelance author from the Barnard College class of 2015.
Mic.com: 6 Forms of Ableism We Need to Retire Immediately published July 7th, 2015.
Accessed July 24th, 2015. http://mic.com/articles/121653/6-forms-of-ableism-we-need-toretire-immediately)TheFedora
Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States has a disability, according to a 2012 Census Bureau report. Yet
many forms of discrimination against the disability community not only persist, but are actually
largely normalized and even integrated into our culture's very understanding (or, more
accurately, disregard) of disabled people's experiences. Ableism refers to "discrimination in favor of able-bodied
people," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But the reality of ableism extends beyond literal
discriminatory acts (intentional or not) to the way our culture views disabled people as a
concept. Ableism is also the belief that people with disabilities "need to be fixed or cannot
function as full members of society" and that having a disability is "a defect rather than a
dimension of difference," according to the authors of one 2008 Journal of Counseling & Development article on the topic,
as reported by Feminists with Disabilities. This interpretation of difference as defect is the true root of
ableist acts that cause far too many to feel marginalized, discriminated against and
ultimately devalued in this society. Here are just six forms of this behavior that, though largely normalized, need
to be retired immediately. 1. Failing to provide accessibility beyond wheelchair ramps Source: Getty Perhaps the most obvious form
of discrimination people with disabilities face is the inability to access places and services open to their able-bodied counterparts
even with laws in place to prevent such inequality. As Tumblr user The (Chronically) Illest noted, while most people think

"just [putting] wheelchair ramps everywhere" is sufficient, true accessibility accommodates all

types of disabilities not just physical disabilities that specifically bind people to wheelchairs. Accommodations can also
include "braille, seeing-eye dogs/assistant dogs, ergonomic workspaces, easy to grip tools, closed captions ... class note-takers,
recording devices for lectures" and other services and alterations. Though accessibility is certainly a matter of

convenience and equity, a lack of accessible resources can impact the very wellbeing of people
with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities have reported not being able to receive health care
because their providers' facilities weren't accessible, and one study found that women with
disabilities particularly face increased difficulty accessing reproductive health care, just to name
two examples. 2. Using ableist language Source: Getty Ableism has become undeniably naturalized in the English language.
Many people not only use words like "crazy," "insane" or "retarded" without a second thought, but many adamantly defend their use
of these terms, decrying anybody who questions their right to do so as too "politically correct" or "sensitive." But this personal
defense fails to recognize that ableist language is not about the words themselves so much as what their usage suggests the speaker
feels about the individuals they represent. "When a critique of language that makes reference to disability is not welcome, it is nearly
inevitable that, as a disabled person, I am not welcome either," Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg wrote in a 2013 Disability and
Representation article. But beyond individual feelings, ableist language can contribute to a foundation of more systemic oppression
of people with disabilities as a group. "If a culture's language is full of pejorative metaphors about a group of people," CohenRottenberg continued, that culture is more likely to view those individuals as less entitled to rights like "housing, employment,
medical care, education, access, and inclusion as people in a more favored group." 3. Able-bodied people failing to check their
privilege Source: Getty It may not seem like a big deal in the moment, but able-bodied individuals fail to

recognize the privilege of having access to every and any space accessible . As Erin Tatum
points out at Everyday Feminism, plenty of people may not directly discriminate against people
with disabilities but effectively do so by using resources allocated for them . For
example, many able-bodied people use handicapped bathroom stalls or take up space in crowded elevators, rather than taking the
stairs and leave room for people with disabilities who don't have other options, without a second thought. While these actions

may not be the product of ill will, they are evidence of the way able-bodied privilege manifests in
our society. There's a general cultural notion that "disability is something inherently negative ,"
Allie Cannington, a board member of the American Association of People with Disabilities, told Mic. " There's a level of
silencing that happens, and erasing of the disabled experience as an important
experience because able-bodied experiences are the privileged experiences in our
society."

Perpetuating ableist stigmas excludes disabled bodies

Stevens 7/24 (Danielle Stevens is co-founder and editor-in-chief of This Bridge Called Our
Health, an online healing space for women and femmes of color. For Harriet: We Must Change
the Ableist Language Surrounding Sandra Bland's Death published July 24th, 2015. Accessed
July 25th, 2015. http://www.forharriet.com/2015/07/we-must-change-ableistlanguage.html#axzz3gw69D8jc)TheFedora
The impact of stigma Ive written before about this issue but just a few highlights for you to consider: Disabled
people are worse off than their non-disabled peers in terms of finding employment and housing .
Just a couple of examples: one study found that in 2010 in the U.S., disabled people were half as likely
to have a job as their counterparts without disabilities and in 2009, the number of young autistic adults who had
a job was nearly half that of their peers with other disabilities. Ontarians with communication disabilities arent even
properly covered by legislation mandating basic rights like accessibility. Ive quoted this before but its
worth quoting again. Data proves that: Stigma leads others to avoid living, socializing, or working
with, renting to, or employing people with mental disorders especially severe disorders, such
as schizophrenia. It leads to low self-esteem, isolation, and hopelessness. It deters the public from
seeking and wanting to pay for care. Responding to stigma, people with mental health problems
internalize public attitudes and become so embarrassed or ashamed that they often conceal
symptoms and fail to seek treatment

There is some anti-ableism in the squo, but not enough.

Without further movements society will be inherently
exclusionary
Robinson 94 (Mary Robinson: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Disability Awareness in Action: Are Disabled People Included?: An Exposure Document on the
Violation of Disabled People's Human Rights and the Solutions Recommended Within the UN
Standard Rules published in 1994. Accessed July 24th, 2015.)TheFedora
Human Rights and Disabled Persons The United Nations General Assembly, in 1981, adopted as the theme of the
Year of Disabled Persons the slogan "Full Participation and Equality"; this meant recognition at the highest possible
political level of the right to full participation of disabled people in the societies to which they
belong. This has since become widely accepted as the overall goal of all development efforts in the disability field. During the UN
Decade of Disabled Persons, 1983-1992, when the policies and programmes outlined in the World Programme of Action were to be
implemented, some significant developments were achieved but there was too little progress . So

the international disability community requested that the United Nations should assume a
strong leadership role and find more concrete guidelines for development. As a result the Standard
Rules were elaborated and unanimously adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 48/96 of 20 December 1993. UN Special
Rapporteur Lindqvist stated that: "The ideas and concepts of equality and full participation for persons

with disabilities have been developed very far on paper, but not in reality. In all our countries,
in all types of living conditions, the consequences of disability interfere in the lives of disabled persons to
a degree which is not at all acceptable .... When a person is excluded from employment because
he is disabled, he is being discriminated against as a human being. If a general education
system is developed .... and disabled children are excluded, their rights are being
violated". Even though it is difficult to have precise figures, it is estimated that more than 10 per cent of the world's total
population have some type of disabling physical or mental impairment. This translates into the fact that approximately 25 per cent
of the entire population are directly affected by disability . These figures are testimony to the enormous size of

the problem and highlight the impact of disability on every society. Quantification alone is not a
sufficient basis for evaluating the actual gravity of the problem; disabled persons frequently
live in deplorable conditions, owing to the presence of physical and social barriers
which prevent their integration and full participation in the community . Millions of
children and adults worldwide are segregated and deprived of their rights and are, in effect, living on the margins.
This is unacceptable. This year of commemoration by the international community of the 50th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, provides an opportunity to examine what has been achieved and to reflect what needs to be
accomplished in the future. The motto of the anniversary 'All Human Rights for All' expresses what we must commit ourselves to
securing in the years ahead. The provisions of the Declaration call for the respect of the rights of all human beings - recognition of
the dignity of all humans, with or without disabilities. We must all be aware that no society can enjoy full

development without proper consideration of all members and that there is no acceptable future
for a society where individuals are excluded and deprived of their rights and dignity.

!- HETERONORMATIVITY
Discrimination against queer leads to violent exclusion. This logic spreads to other
forms of difference and further perpetuates heteronormative supremacy.

GMEZ 5, POLITICAL THEORIST ON HATE CRIMES,

Mara Mercedes, On Prejudice, Violence, and Democracy, la-buena-vida.info, ongoing project
from 2005 until 2008, pp. 2-3, JAR)
The logic of discrimination seeks to maintain the other as inferior while the logic of
exclusion seeks to liquidate or erase the other from the social world.7 These logics
materialize in two uses of violence, which I call hierarchical and exclusionary. In the
hierarchical use of violence, perpetrators maintain and enjoy difference as a mark of
inferiority. In contrast, the exclusionary use of violence attempts to eliminate
differences because they are understood to be incompatible with the perpetrator(s)
world-view. In a compulsory heterosexual system of domination, non-heterosexual
practices and identifications are a threat to the system. Keeping them as inferior is,
in some cases, instrumental to heterosexual supremacy. But non-heterosexual identities
are overall targets for exclusion although such exclusion takes place in different degrees for
individuals perceived or defined as gay, lesbian, and transgender.

!-PATRIACHY
Patriarchy leads to war, prolif, environmental
destruction, and eventually extinction
Warren and Cady 94Warren is the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Macalester College and Cady is Professor
of Philosophy at Hamline University (Karen and Duane, Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections, p. 16, JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3810167.pdf)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the
unmanageability, (d), which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every

three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment,
spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practiced,
sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining,
factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained
and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to "rape the
earth," that it is "man's God-given right" to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth ,
that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for "progress."And the
presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in
hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of

the current" unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies , (d), is then viewed
as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that
reflect historically male-gender identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included
among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation,
war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women , which many feminists
see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional

behaviors-the symptoms of dysfunctionality that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them.
When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this "unmanageability" can be seen for what it is-as a predictable and thus
logical consequence of patriarchy.'1 The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and
logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989, 2). Ecofeminist
Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that "militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal

society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system .

Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and
preserving life on Earth" (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system,
the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning : Patriarchal conceptual frameworks

legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment)
which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if
not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various
woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.

ROOT CASE- ABLEISM TO PATRIACHY/RACISM

Ableism is the root cause patriarchy and racism
Wolbring 8 [Gregor Wolbring, Associate Professor Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies,
Past President of Canadian Disability Studies Association and member of the board of the Society for
Disability Studies (USA, ) http://secure.gvsu.edu/cms3/assets/3B8FF455-E590-0E6C3ED0F895A6FBB287/the_politics_of_ableism.pdf ;

Sexism is partly driven by a form of ableism that favours certain abilities, and the labelling of
women as not having those certain necessary abilities is used to justify sexism and the
dominance of males over females. Similarly, racism and ethnicism are partly driven by forms of
ableism, which have two components. One favours one race or ethnic group and discriminates
against another. The book The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) judged human beings
on their cognitive abilities (their IQ). It promoted racismby claiming that certain ethnic groups
are less cognitively able than others. The ableist judgement related to cognitive abilities
continues justifying racist arguments. Casteism, like racism, is based on the notion that socially
defined groups of people have inherent, natural qualities or essencesthat assign them to social
positions, make them fit for specific duties and occupations (Omvedt,2001).The natural
inherent qualities are abilities that make them fit for specific duties and occupations.
to foster a more accessible debate space.

ALTERNATIVE

Generic- Ableism
The alternative is to recognize and challenge ableist assumptions in the
educational space of debate by rejecting the other team
Hehir 07 (Thomas Hehir is Professor of Practice and Director of the School Leadership Program, Harvard Graduate School of
Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Educational Leadership: Confronting Ableism. Published in February, 2007.
th

Accessed July 20 , 2015. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb07/vol64/num05/ConfrontingAbleism.aspx)TheFedora

The U.S. education system has made major strides in improving education opportunities for students with disabilities. More

of

these students are finishing high school than ever, and record numbers are moving on to
employment and higher education (Wagner & Cameto, 2004). Much of this improvement has taken place
because of the work of school leaders throughout the United States.
To continue and expand this progress, however, educators must recognize and
challenge the ableist assumptions that still permeate the culture and guide much special
education practice. Students with disabilities need carefully constructed, individual instructional
programs that recognize the effects of their disability while creating opportunities for them to
learn and fully participate in school and society.

LOSE THE ROUND

Lose the Debate Round

PEDAGOGY- HETERONORMATIVITY BAD

View this round through a transpedagogical lens: Transpedagogy is the best
method with which to challenge heteronormative structures and analyze violence
towards trans* bodies

Galarte 2014 (Francisco, assistant professor of gender and womens studies at the University of Arizona, TSQ:
Transgender Studies Quarterly Volume 1, Numbers 12, May 2014 Pedagogy)

Pedagogy, narrowly construed, is the study of teaching and learning; more generally, it pertains to the social
construction of knowledge, values, and experiences. The common assumption that the classroom is the
exclusive site where pedagogy transpires is challenged by educational theorists such as Henry A. Giroux (2004),
Antonia Darder (2002), and bell hooks (1994), whose definitions of pedagogy extend it beyond the classroom
and who, like Paolo Freire, advance a conception of pedagogy as a practice of freedom (Freire 2000: 80).
Freire similarly redefines educator to mean more than a mere classroom instructor; for him, being an
educator should encompass the multiple perspectives of border intellectual, social activist, critical researcher,
moral agent, radical philosopher, and political revolutionary (Darder 2002: 249). Pedagogy, broadly defined
in this way, engages questions of teaching and learning with questions of culture and power, of democracy and
citizenship. It points to the multiplicity of sites (corporeal, spatial, temporal, psychic) in which education takes
place and where, most importantly, knowledge is produced. Transgender studies, as a framework or lens
through which to theorize the myriad ways in which people understand, name, experience, and claim gender in
relationship to such other processes as racialization, class, nationalism, and globalization, needs to incorporate
a critical pedagogical perspective. In the 2008 Womens Studies Quarterly special Trans- issue, Vic Munoz
and Ednie Kaeh Garrison coined the term transpedagogies (291), seeking a word to capture the dialogic
relationship between trans subjects and pedagogical practices. They envisioned the term as a coalitional
concept that encompassed transsexual, transgender, and gender/queer perspectives, through which an
analysis of the production of knowledge could be linked conceptually to varying experiences of gender
socialization or gender identity in diverse contexts. What might such a transpedagogy encompass? A
pedagogical perspective on transgender studies should, at a minimum, note that teaching and learning about
transgender phenomena take place across a spectrum of social practices and locations and that transpedagogies
are part of a broader public politics not solely limited to what goes on in schools. But more expansively,a
pedagogical perspective on transgender phenomena can also help unsettle historically and contextually specific
knowledge(s) that shape understandings of normative gender. Transpedagogies should offer students the tools
they need to participate in the political and economic power structures that shape the boundaries of gender
categories, with the goal of changing those structures in ways that create greater freedom. In a transpedagogical
approach, processes of learning become political mechanisms through which identities can be shaped and
desires mobilized and through which the experience of bodily materiality and everyday life can take form and
acquire meaning. Transpedagogies supply a discursive mode of critique for challenging the production of social
hierarchies, identities, and ideologies across local and national boundaries. They represent both a mode of
cultural production and a type of cultural criticism for questioning the conditions under which knowledge of
gendered embodiment is produced. They provide a space for affective engagement, for the affirmation or
rejection of values, and for the inhabitation, negotiation, or refusal of culturally prescribed gendered subject
positions. Understanding pedagogy as a mode of cultural production in this way underscores its performative
nature. It is how theory becomes practice. The proliferation of culture via new communication technologies and
social media further shifts the production, reception, and consumption of knowledge about gender diversity.
It allows for new and alternative modes of access to knowledge and for fresh ways of knowing that purposefully
resist normative bodily comportment and that confound the boundaries of gender. Such technologies of the self
create a space for what Chela Sandoval has called differential maneuvering, where the transcultural,
transgendered, transsexual, transnational leaps necessary to the play of effective stratagems of oppositional
praxis can begin articulating themselves (2000: 63). Stratagems of oppositional praxis are precisely what
critical transpedagogical practices should aim to produce: they must shift the framework available for
understanding, describing, and addressing the multiple and varying vulnerabilities to violence faced by
transgender subjects. As Dean Spade notes, there is an uneven distribution of vulnerability and violence across
trans populations, and such harms are not fully described or addressed by the single vector of
transphobia (2010: 447).Paying attention to the highly variable and sometimes contradictory narratives that
transgender subjects actually use to describe and explain their experiences of classist, racist, sexist, and ableist
exploitation is a necessary pedagogical practice. It situates knowledge production in specific or local acts of
knowing. Centering the transgender body as a site of knowledge production is a crucial transpedagogy. It
creates new opportunities for teaching and learning by working to understand how transfolk critically

understand their places in the world and tactically maneuver through it (i.e., how they negotiate relations of
power, privilege, and subordination) as well as how they actively participate in the transformation of their
world(s). This type of transpedagogy is radical to the extent that it critiques, and can potentially transform, how
power and authority construct and organize knowledgeincluding knowledge of gendered desires, values, and
identities (Giroux 2004: 69). Transpedagogies are indeed practices of freedom that can link teaching and
learning to social change. Transpedagogies must keep up with the continually shifting terms and conditions
through which gender is named, imagined, and theorized as well as with the ongoing neoliberal depoliticization
of public life and the impoverishment of public discourse. Transpedagogical perspectives and approaches need
to ask how knowledge of transgender phenomena is constructed through this absence as well as through its
presence and circulation in the public sphere. Proliferating trans-knowledges in the public sphere is only the
first step of a radical educational agenda. The heart of effective transpedagogy, buttressed by rigorous
intellectual work and political courage, is to link theory and praxis to create new modes of resistance and
collective struggle.

CONTENT WARNINGS
We as a debate community must find a way to approach discussions of violence
without isolating inviduals or policing language, inorder to create a space where
everyone can discuss strategies to combat colonialism, capitalism, white
supremacy, abeilism, and heteropatriarchy without cooption.
Smith 14 [Andrae, Beyond the Pros and Cons of Trigger Warnings: Collectivizing Healing,
July 13, 2014, https://andrea366.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/beyond-the-pros-and-cons-oftrigger-warnings-collectivizing-healing/ LMcf]
When I used to work as an anti-violence crisis counselor full-time, a counselor in another agency confided in me that she was
currently being battered by her partner. She did not want anyone to know, however, because she feared losing her job. People wont
think I have my act together enough to be in this movement if they know what I am going through, as she explained why she did not
think she could tell anyone. She was part of an anti-violence movement that she did not feel would support her. She had to address
this violence on her own. I was part of a larger collective that organized human rights/legal training for Native boarding school
survivors. Frequently, survivors would drive literally hundreds of miles to attend at considerable expense because they really wanted
this information. But when they arrived at the training, flashbacks from their years of boarding school abuse literally prevented them
from walking through the door. A healing movement for boarding school survivors was being created that did not actually create
space for survivors. I was teaching a class on gender/racial violence when I noticed that one student repeatedly look disengaged and
distant during the class. I presumed they were not interested in the material until one day they confided that one of authors we had
read had abused them. They had tried to keep this information to themselves because they wanted to be a good student, but they
were finding it too difficult to stay engaged in the class. I had created a learning space on racial/gender violence where a survivor of
violence could not participate. There is a continuing debate about the politics and efficacy of trigger

warnings within activist, social media and academic spaces. There are merits to the various
arguments on all sides of this discussion. However, sometimes what is missed is the larger
context from which trigger warnings emerged. In particular, this intervention emerged from the
recognition by many of us in the anti-violence movement that we were building a movement
that continued to structurally marginalize survivors by privatizing healing. We had built
movements that were supposed to be led by bad-ass organizers who were healed and thus had
their acts together. If we in fact did not have our act together, this was an indication that we had
not healed sufficiently to be part of the movement. W e built movements around an idealized image of who were
supposed to be rather than the people we actually were. The result was that we created a gendered and
capitalist split in how we organized. Healing was relegated to the private sphere and became
unacknowledged labor that we had to do on our own with a therapist or a few friends. Once we
were healed, then we were allowed to enter the public sphere of organizing. Of course, since we
continued to have problems, we continued to destroy our own organizing efforts internally with
no space to even talk about what was going on. Indigenous organizer Heather Milton-Lightening once
prophetically declared at an Indigenous Womens Network gathering many years ago that our movements were shunning people
who might have issues, such as substance abuse. She called on us all to embrace whoever wants to be part of our movements as they
are rather than as who we think they should be. The challenge for us, she noted, is to build movement

structures that take into account the reality of how personal and collective trauma has impacted
all of us. Thus, trigger warnings cannot be viewed in isolation. Rather, they are part of a larger
complex of practices designed to de-privatize and collective healing . They came out of the
recognition that we are not unaffected by the political and intellectual work that we do. These
practices also recognized that the labor of healing has to be shared by all. Trigger warnings are
one of many practices that insist that one does not have to be silent about ones healing journey
that ones healing can occupy public and collective spaces. And healing can only truly happen
when we take collective responsibility for creating structures and practices that enable healing . Of
course, all organizing strategies and practices can be co-opted. As Dian Million so brilliantly details in Therapeutic Nations, the
colonial state has attempted to co-opt indigenous healing movements by framing Indigenous nations as dysfunctional people
requiring therapeutic healing provided by the state rather than as nations requiring decolonization. And yet, as she also details, the
fact of this co-optation cannot make us lose sight of the interventions made by indigenous healing movements, particularly those
made by indigenous feminists. In particular, these movements have demonstrated that historical trauma impacts us on the
individual and collective level and that we cannot decolonize without centering the impact of trauma in our organizing. And as
Million further argues, rather than privatize our traumas, how can we rearticulate trauma as a place from which to develop what she
calls felt theorya place from which to understand our social and political conditions? Thus, in the case of trigger warnings in
particular, it is certainly the case that this intervention can be and is misused. I have seen white students say they are triggered by
having to hear about racism. The intervention of trigger warnings also often shifts from asserting a public space to organize around

trauma to creating a safe space from it. But just as Christina Hanhardt shows us that there is no such thing as a safe space,

Roxane Gay shows us that there are no such things as safe words. Trigger warnings as well as
ANY organizing practice we develop will be co-opted in order individualize and domesticate its
potential impact on movement-building. But this reality should not make us lose sight of our
larger vision of building holistic movements for liberation. In the end , the question is not
really about the pros and cons of trigger words . The questions are around, what are the
organizing practices and strategies for building movements that recognize that settler
colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy have not left us unscathed? How
do we create spaces to experiment with different strategies, as well as spaces to openly assess
and change these strategies as they inevitably become co-opted? How do we create movements
that make us collectively accountable for healing from individual and collective trauma? How do we
create critical intellectual spaces that recognize that intellectual work is not disembodied and without material effects? How do we
collectively reduce harm in our intellectual and political spaces? And finally, how can we build healing movements for liberation that
can include us as we actually are rather than as the peoples we are supposed to be?
\

CONTENT WARNINGS- GOOD

Content Warnings are Good
Bailey Loverin 14 [Bailey, Co-author and sponser of UCSB resolution on trigger warnings,
Trigger Warnings Encourage Free Thought and Debate, 5/19/2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/05/19/restraint-of-expression-on-collegecampuses/trigger-warnings-encourage-free-thought-and-debate LMcf]
"Trigger warnings" are a way of identifying what may cause someone who recently experienced
trauma or has post-traumatic stress disorder to relive their trauma. They are the equivalent of
content warnings on CDs, video games, movies or the nightly news, and are especially useful in
classes where traumatic content is unexpected. Campus discussions about trigger warnings have lead to healthy
and informative debates on P.T.S.D., mental health and classroom content. Supporters contend that they allow
survivors the chance to prepare to face the material, adding new perspectives. Without a trigger
warning, a survivor might black out, become hysterical or feel forced to leave the room. This
effectively stops their learning process. However, with the trigger warning they would be prepared to face
uncomfortable material and could better contribute to the discussions or opt to avoid them.
These warnings are less about protection and more about preparation, but the recent spread of
university and college students requesting trigger warnings has caused an unnecessary panic
over free speech. A Rutgers student encouraged trigger warnings for literary works. While criticism has focused on books used
as examples, the difficulties of implementing such an effort and the possibility of tainting readers' experiences, two facts have been
untouched: the student condemned censorship, and his idea never left the school papers opinion page. A task force of
administrators, faculty and students at Oberlin suggested professors use trigger warnings. While critics were right to address the
number of warnings and to encourage professors to avoid using triggering content altogether, they neglected to mention that
students and teachers were already tackling these concerns and have tabled the policy. The University of California, Santa Barbara's
student senate passed a resolution urging professors to use trigger warnings on syllabi. Critics have compared this resolution to
efforts at Rutgers and Oberlin, but this is entirely misleading. The U.C.S.B. resolution only applies to in-class content like screenings
or planned lectures and doesnt ban the content or excuse students from learning it. Furthermore, the resolution will not lead to a
policy change without approval from the academic senate. Campus discussions about trigger warnings have lead

to widespread discussion and debate on P.T.S.D., mental health and classroom content . So far,
there is no official policy, no punishment for teachers and no censorship. Dont lose sleep over fear mongering and slippery slope
arguments.

DISCOURSE SHAPE REALITY

Discourse Shapes Reality
Spender 80 [Dale Spender, Australian feminist scholar, teacher, writer and consultant Man
Made Language pg. 19]
Words help to structure the world we live in, and the words we have help to structure a sexist world in
which women are --assigned a subordinate position (Chapter Five). As Schulz has stated: words which are
highly charged with emotion, taboo, or distaste, (as so many words for women are) not only reflect the culture which uses them. They teach
and perpetuate the aftitudes Which created them' (1975a: 73). Obviously the meaning of these words must be changed.
We cannot trust to luck that women will be able to formulate positive definitions of themselves (an objective in the
women's movement) while they are confined to the present semantic sources. But just as previously initially- positive usages enjoyed only a short life-span and
became devalue because the object to which they referred was devalued, so will present positive coinages be pejorated (the women's libber?) unless womenTie valued. Society must change if positive meanings which are

being caned are to be sustained. The process is a

dialectical one. As more meanings are changed so will society change and the sexist semantic rule be weakened;
as society and the areThinriciule changes so will more meanings change -even without deliberate intervention. To concentrate on either word
meanings or social organizations - to the exclusion of theC1e r is to invite failure. Sadly, researchers into sexism in language have not always come to appreciate the
dimensions of this issue and too freq-ue-ntly,wfiere it is felt 'proper' to make suggestions for possible strategies, the propo&als are in terms of Whither there
should/should not be intervention in the language or whether the focus should/should_ not be. on changing society. Ettorihas been expended on the futile
debate on which comes first, the chicken or the egg.The absence of an analysis of the patriarchal order is glaringly obvious in this research area.

Language is a cultural artifact which has been invented by human beings; because males have primarily been
responsible for the production of Cultural forms and images then language would be no exception. But this
line of inquiry - this thesis of English as a man's language - has not been pursued. Few researchers have asked who

Gendered discourse shapes reality, rejecting key to fight it

Shepherd 10[Laura Shepard, Lecturer in International Relations and International Law, Women, armed conflict and language
Gender, violence and discourse, March 2010, http://journals.cambridge.or ]

This theoretical agenda starts from the premise that no thing has a material reality prior to
language. There is no universal and unproblematic initional lexicon to which we as scholars or
practitioners can refer. All concepts come to have meaning through the context of their
articulation. This may seem counter-intuitive. Surely a woman is a woman is a woman,
regardless of her context? This is not in fact the case, for as we can learn through engagement
with poststructural gender theory,11 we can never fix the identity of woman independent of
context. It may be strategically useful to speak of women, or directly necessary to speak with
women. In some cases it might even be politically justifiable to speak for women, but we can
never assume that we know who we are including and excluding in the category of women.
Further, we cannot assume that those to whom we speak have the same understanding of
women as we do, that their boundaries of inclusion and exclusion map on to our own. Finally,
even if we were to agree with all concerned that we know what the category of women is that
it includes, for example, post-operative male-to-female transsexuals and self-identified butches
and bois12 but excludes, for example, drag queens, female-to-male transsexuals and selfidentified sissies13 we could not, as the examples given demonstrate, say with any certainty
that we know what woman means.

RACISM IN THE DEBATE SPACE

Black debaters face racial prejudice and are often forced to embody the ghetto kid
gone good narrative
Reid-Brinkley, 12 ["ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY.TR "Argumentation and Advocacy 49
(2012): 77-99.]

I remember one particular incident that most clearly highlighted my sense of discomfort. I was
still in college and maintaining my "poster child" relationship with the UDL. Melissa Wade, my
college debate director at Emory University, was contacted by a production company that
wanted to put together a human-interest segment to be broadcast by a number of local news
stations along the east coast. In addition to interviewing Wade the producers also requested an
interview with the two African American students on the Emory team who had been former
members of the university's outreach program, and I was one of those students. I put on a nice
suit (one my mom picked out and paid what was, at the time, a lot of money for her and my dad
to spend) and went to the interview, conducted in the middle of the central two-block
quadrangle on the university's campus. Emory's architecture is quite beautiful. The quad '-vas
almost two blocks of open green space where students played Frisbee, studied while sunbathing,
or attended class on a beautiful spring day. The quad is bound on all sides by clean, light-marble
buildings. Everything is incredibly bright and fresh, gleaming in the Georgia sunshine. The
interview went well, the reporter asking about my debate career and the UDL program. The
interviewer thanked me for my time and I went on my way. A few weeks later, my debate coach
called me into her office for a chat. It seemed that the producers would like to interview me
again, this time while touring the inner-city community where I had grown up and the high
school I had attended. I wanted to know why they had made that request before I made a
decision. The producer agreed to call me within a few days. With that time to think about the
request, I began to visualize what the edited version of the piece would look like. They would
show my interview on campus and contrast the image of the university's economic privilege with
the "darker" image of my inner-city community It was the "ghetto kid gone good" narrative that
had already begun to make me uncomfortable. The producer finally called and I expressed my
concern about their need to contrast my economic (and racial) background to that of my college
environment as a means of sensationalizing my story. I simply wondered why my achievements,
which were the focus of the interview, could not stand on merit alone. The producer was
completely clueless and after going in circles with her for 20 minutes, I realized we were not
going to get anywhere. At the end of our conversation, she stated "But, I don't understand, I
mean you did go to school there." I told her that I would not be granting them a second
interview and terminated the conversation. The representation of successful UDL students is of
human-interest appeal. It contrasts with the dominant narrative that constructs inner-city
children of color as deviant and intellectually inferior. Yet, the representation of success is
extremely restrictive, requiring the embodiment and enactment of the "ghetto" at-risk youth
narrative to produce the transformative discourse of exceptionalism read tokenism. The
repetition of the dangerous urban youth of color character as the most used representation of
UDL students suggests an inability of news media to tell the success stories of inner-city
students of color outside this frame. The texture ami complexity of the lives of UDL students is
lost within the constraints of a pre-determined frame that restricts these students to the scripts
made available to them in a society bound by the ontological standard of whiteness at the
intersection ofthe material privileges associated with economic wealth. As a 20-year-old, I
lacked the vocabulary to fully articulate my discomfort with the scripts made available to me.
What I intuitively understood to be happening was ignored by the news producer and by every
other media representative I encountered. I am an "outsider within," to use Patricia Hill
Collins's (1998) term, one "who no longer belong[s] to any one group" (p. 5). I occupy a
borderland space between various communities, including the academy, the UDL, college

debate, and the black community in which I was raised, where all or part of my subjectivity can
be rejected or vilified at any moment. It is within this liminal space that I engage in an
oppositional reading of the discourses surrounding UDL students in news media representation.
Such an oppositional reading recognizes and engages the dominant, or suggested, reading
offered within a field of signification (Hall, 1997). Rather than offering an alternative or more
positive reading in opposition to the suggested read, I seek to highlight the modalities by which
racialized representation reproduces itself.
The narratives of UDL black debaters are scripted. The medias portrayal of black
debaters is inherently racist and a depiction of white privilege.
Reid-Brinkley, 12 ["ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY.TR "Argumentation and Advocacy 49
(2012): 77-99.]

As Jackson points out, scripting is not a static, monolithic process of one-size fits all meaningmaking; rather, it is possible that subversive scripts can be generated for and by audiences.
Dominant media frames suggest scripts for the audience to use in interpreting narratives about
the ubiquity of inner-city decay, black violence, and nihilism. Such representations prime
audiences to adopt the redemptive scripts deployed to describe triumphal UDL participants. Yet,
as I have demonstrated, in order to embrace the redemptive script, the audience must also
accept associated scripts that mark inner-city black youths as deviant, violent, and culturally
dysfunctional. There is always the potential that the audience will read against the normative
ltames news media offer to them; however, that does not belie the fact that there is likely a
suggested reading of the frame (During, 2003). In other words, this article can make no
determination of how audiences actually read the news representation of UDLs, but it does
suggest that the news framing practices suggest particular readings based on prior
representations of deviance and criminality in inner-city communities of color. Is it not possible
to construct a human-interest story about the UDLs that simply focuses on the achievement of
smart students? Why is it necessary to paint the students as potentially destructive in order to
demonstiate the significance of their story? Journalists could frame UDL students through the
drama of competition, the highs and lows of winning and losing, intellectual grudge matches,
the stress on the coaches as they respond to their debaters' successes and failures, the hard work
and frustration as students grapple with foreign concepts, or the amazing depth of discussion
about the significant political issues of our time. Stories could even mention the hardships when
one lacks the economic advantages and resources that increase the likelihood of competitive
success, but it is not necessary to demonize black families, black youths, and black culture to do
so. At the very least, a diversity of representations of black mothers/fathers and urban minority
communities would disrupt the normative frame of poverty, race, and deviance. Not all UDL
students come from broken homes, with absentee dads (most likely in prison) and drugaddicted mothers. The scripts offered may not be deterministic, but the strength of the poverty
and urban decay frames greatly limits the scripts made available to black youths.
The narrative is written for us, affirming the medias racial bias, but that doesnt
mean we except those conditions.
Reid-Brinkley, 12 ["ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY.TR "Argumentation and Advocacy 49
(2012): 77-99.]

Earlier in this essay, I drew on Karen Houppert's (2007) article, "Finding Their Voices," in the
Washington Post to discuss the framing of familial dysfunction. Houppert, profiling Baltimore
Urban Debate League student Ignacio "Iggie" Evans, asks personal questions about Evans's
family background. Houppert notes that while Evans was initially reticent about sharing his
story, she persisted and eventually convinced her interview subject to reveal sensitive
information about his personal background. Three years after the original interview in August
2007, Houppert (2010) published a follow up article entitied "Whatever Happened To .. . the
Baltimore high school debater?" Evans, at the time of the article's publication, was in his junior

year of college at Towson University and along with his debate partner was well on his way to
being a formidable competitor on the national college policy debate circuit. Houppert's (2010)
second article begins with a summary of what believes to be the relevant information from the
first article. Still misspelling his name, she reported: Iggy was a kid who had a lot of strikes
against him. He never knew his biological dad. His mom struggled with drug addiction, and he
landed in foster care. He attended Baltimore's Frederick Douglass High School, one of four
failing Baltimore schools slated for takeover under the No Child Left Behind Act. His odds of
success were poor. Here we have a reproduction of the familial dysfunction and failing
community/school frames, which is followed by the narrative of exceptionalism that identifies
debate as Evans's savior: But Iggy, an argumentative kid, found a way to channel his
contrariness through the wildly popular Baltimore Urban Debate League, a program chat
teaches the fundamentals of democracy-as well as critical thinking, basic literacy and research
skills-to underprivileged students. {Houppert, 2010, para. 3) The repetition of the narrative
frames associated with black youths, in this example, demonstrates the difficulty these students
will have in any attempt to escape this narrative's social intelligibility. The narrative frame may
be quite difficult to overcome because of its intelligibility to audiences trained to process the
classed and racialized redemptive narrative. Yet, the final paragraph of the Houppert (2010)
follow up article on Evans may offer a glimpse at potential tactics students and supporters might
use to respond to the context of the frame when engaging with media representatives:
Meanwhile, he continues to question what it means to be a black man in America today,
personally and politically. Though Towscn is only a half-mile north of the Baltimore city limits,
Iggy's sense of displacement is profound. "My biggest challenge is being able to authentically
perform who I am in these spaces," Iggy says. "At the very least, debate has taught me to
relentlessly defend my position as a black man and to understand my community's needs." |
para. 8) Evans does not speak to the obstacles he faced as a young man; it is Houppert who
summarizes that part of the initial story. Evans focuses the discussion away from the racialized
poverty frame that positions blackness and urban communities as spaces from which to escape,
to his community as a place to direct the resources made available to him through debate
training and a college education. Rather than demonize his community, Evans indicates both a
love and support for the very community that Houppert has characterized as nothing but
deviant with dilapidated school systems and failing students. The Houppert/ Evans example,
while demonstrating the strength of the frame, simultaneously indicates that students can
engage the frame, attempting to create alternative scripts to those that are normally intelligible.
Given the audience for this journal, I think the readership might be more interested in a
discussion of the potential responses available for UDL students and supporters to this
normative media frame, rather than a focus on what the media might do to resolve this problem.
I attempt to offer some possible tactics and strategies for engaging the news media given the
prevalence of the frame. First, UDL students should be trained to interact with journalists.
Anyone who has worked with UDL students knows that they are often incredibly intelligent and
quite sensitive to and reflexive about issues of representation. Thus, investing time in training
UDL advocates, teachers, and coaches in media tactics, in order to educate the students, may be
a significant tool in supporting student agency in the shaping of their representation. Students
can learn to pivot the dominant frame. Knowing that the exists and how it functions may offer
students the opportunity to interact with the frame, engaging in oppositional discourse designed
to disrupt the normative scripts made available within the racialized poverty frame. Second,
UDL administrators and teachers might consider broaching the subject of the normative frames
used in a majority of news representation of the UDL with journalists interested in featuring the
program's students. Those journalists who are unwilling to reject or, at the very least,
interrogate the racialized poverty frame should potentially be denied access to the students. All
interactions between journalists and students could be recorded by a UDL representative, likely
a good common practice as a means of protecting the interests of the students given their ages.

In addition, those recordings could be used to further engage media outlets in conversations
about what narratives journalists have chosen to focus their attention upon versus what may
have been said in the actual interview. Lastly, administrators and teachers might turn to
minority and alternative news press outlets as options for more complex representations of the
UDL and its students. Future research into UDL representation should evaluate the framing and
scripting techniques of these alternative presses. The suggestions I offer, however, must be
considered within the context of a dominant narrative that will be difficult, if not impossible, to
replace through individual and even institutional acts of agency. The issue here is one of the
intelligibility of representations and the scripting of racialized narratives on the corporeal bodies
of those coded as black in the social imagination.
Black debaters have become vocal, but backlash still occurs. Discussion is key to a free debate
space. Kraft 14 [Independent journalist covering health, culture, sustainability and
tech from San Francisco Hacking traditional College Debates White Privilege
Problem, The Atlantic, TR,April 16th, 2014]

It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students youd
see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In
matching navy blazers, theyd recite academic arguments for and against various
government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring. No more. These
days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate
competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating
personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These alternative-style
debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate
tournaments over the past few years. But this transformation has also sparked a
difficult, often painful controversy for a community that prides itself on handling
volatile topics. On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association
(CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students,
Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a
national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S.
presidents war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight
on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its
premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war
with poor black communities. In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off
against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly
accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over
four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like nigga
authenticity and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed
format. At one point during Lees rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the
floor. Fuck the time! he yelled. His partner Campbell, who won the top speaker award
at the National Debate Tournament two weeks later, had been unfairly targeted by the
police at the debate venue just days before, and cited this experience as evidence for his
case against the governments treatment of poor African-Americans. This year wasn't
the first time this had happened. In the 2013 championship, two men from Emporia
State University, Ryan Walsh and Elijah Smith, employed a similar style and became the
first African-Americans to win two national debate tournaments. Many of their
arguments, based on personal memoir and rap music, completely ignored the stated
resolution, and instead asserted that the framework of collegiate debate has historically
privileged straight, white, middle-class students. Tournament participants from all

backgrounds say they have found some of these debate strategies offensive. Even so, the
new style has received mainstream acceptance, sympathy, and awards. Joe Leeson
Schatz, Director of Speech and Debate at Binghamton University, is encouraged by the
changes in debate style and community. Finally, theres a recognition in the academic
space that the way argument has taken place in the past privileges certain types of
people over others, he said. Arguments dont necessarily have to be backed up by
professors or written papers. They can come from lived experience. But other teams
who have prepared for a traditional policy debate are frustrated when they encounter a
meta-debate, or an alternative stylistic approach in competition. These teams say that
the pedagogical goals of policy debate are not being metand are even being
undermined. Aaron Hardy, who coaches debate at Northwestern University, is
concerned about where the field is headed. We end up with a large percentage of
debates being devoted to arguing about the rules, rather than anything substantive, he
wrote on a CEDA message board last fall. Critics of the new approach allege that
students dont necessarily have to develop high-level research skills or marshal evidence
from published scholarship. They also might not need to have the intellectual acuity
required for arguing both sides of a resolution. These skillstogether with a nonconfrontational presentation styleare considered crucial for success in fields like law
and business. Hardy and others are also disappointed with what they perceive as a lack
of civility and decorum at recent competitions, and believe that the alternative-style
debaters have contributed to this environment. Judges have been very angry, coaches
have screamed and yelled. People have given profanity-laced tirades, thrown furniture,
and both sides of the ideological divide have used racial slurs, he said. To counter this
trend, Hardy and his allies want to create a policy only space in which traditional
standards for debate will be enforced. However, this is nearly impossible to do within
the two major debate associations, CEDA and the National Debate Tournament (NDT),
as they are governed by participants and have few conduct enforcement mechanisms.
For instance, while CEDA and NDTs institutional anti-harassment policy would
normally prohibit the term nigga as it was used at the recent Indiana University
tournament finals, none of the judges penalized the competitors that used it . In fact,
those debaters took home prizes. 14 schools expressed interest in sending debaters to
Hardys proposed alternative tournament, scheduled to occur last month. But after word
got out that a group of mostly white teams from elite universities were trying to form
their own league, Hardy and his supporters were widely attacked on Facebook and other
online forums. Ultimately the competition didnt happen, purportedly because of
logistical issues with the hotel venue. Nonetheless, Hardy wrote in an email that a toxic
climate has precluded even strong supporters of policy debate from publicly
attach[ing] their name to anything that might get them called racist or worse. "The
debate community is broken, but there is nothing wrong with that." Korey Johnson, the
reigning CEDA champion from Towson University, was one of the students who took
offense the alternative tournament. Segregating debate is a bad move, she said.* With
the increase in minority participation came a range of different types of argument and
perspectives, not just from the people who are in debate, but the kind of scholarship we
bring in. Her debate partner Ameena Ruffin agreed: For them to tell us that we cant
bring our personal experience, it would literally be impossible. Not just for black people
it is true of everyone. We are always biased by who we are in any argument. Liberal
law professors have been making this point for decades. Various procedures

regardless of whether we're talking about debate formats or lawhave the ability to hide
the subjective experiences that shape these seemingly objective and rational rules,
said UC Hastings Law School professor Osagie Obasogie, who teaches critical race
theory. This is the power of racial subordination: making the viewpoint of the
dominant group seem like the only true reality. Hardy disagrees. Having minimal
rules is not something that reflects a middle-class white bias, he said. I think it is
wildly reductionist to say that black people cant understand debate unless there is rap
in itit sells short their potential. He said he is committed to increasing economic and
racial diversity in debate and has set up a nonprofit organization to fundraise for
minority scholarships. According to Joe Leeson Schatz, one of the unstated reasons for
trying to set up policy-only debates is that once-dominant debate teams from colleges
like Harvard and Northwestern are no longer winning the national competitions. It is
now much easier for smaller programs to be successful, he said. You dont have to be
from a high budget program; all you need to win is just a couple of smart students.
Schatz believes that the changes in college debate are widening the playing field and
attracting more students from all backgrounds. Paul Mabrey, a communications lecturer
at James Madison University and CEDA vice president, is organizing a conference for
this coming June that will address the college debate diversity problem. The debate
community is broken, he declared, but there is nothing wrong with that. We talk about
a post-racial America, but we shouldnt elide our real differences, we should talk about
how to work across and work with these differences. One thing is clear: In a community
accustomed to hashing out every possible argument, this particular debate will continue.
The uncontested benefit of the debate format is that everyone receives equal time to
speak, something that drew many minority students to debate in the first place, said
Korey Johnson. No matter how people feel about my argument, they have to listen to
me for all of my speeches, everything I have to say, they cant make me stop speaking,
she said.
Even when black debaters succeed they are met with hostility and acts that
resemble the civil rights movement. Black people speaking up in white spaces
are key to a collaborative community. Cooper, 14 [Brittney Cooper is a
contributing writer at Salon, and teaches Women's and Gender Studies and
Africana Studies at Rutgers TR, I was hurt: How white elite racism invaded a
college debate championship June 3rd, 2014]

In March of this year, Korey Johnson and Ameena Ruffin, college students at Towson
University, became the first African-American women to win the Cross-Examination
Debate Association college championship. Cross-examination debate, also known as
policy debate, is a notoriously elite, white academic sport. Unfortunately, Johnsons and
Ruffins auspicious victory has been marred by right-wing trolls in the debate
community and well-meaning white liberals, too, who have mischaracterized and
minimized their victory, attributing their win to white liberal guilt, rather than
meritorious performance. The Council of Conservative Citizens, a contemporary
iteration of the racist White Citizens Councils of eras past, penned an article called
Black female debate team wins national tournament to make up for white privilege.

The Council of Conservative Citizens appears on the Southern Poverty Law Centers list
of racist hate groups. The Daily Caller accused the far left judges who voted for these
women of destroying college debate clubs via false accusations of racism. I shared news
of Ameenas and Koreys championship in my social networks with special pride because
this coming fall will mark my 20th anniversary as part of the policy debate community. I
made the debate team as a precocious 13 year-old high school student, and have
remained a part of that community in one form or another as debater, coach, debate
camp instructor and tournament judge, for the last two decades. Other than the
influence of my fourth grade teacher, I give no other academic experience more credit
for informing how I think, write, research and communicate. But when I debated in high
school in Louisiana in the 1990s, my debate partner and I were the only all-Black girl
debate team that I ever encountered, and one of only a handful of all-Black teams we
ever encountered at either the state or national level. The rise of the Urban Debate
League movement in the late 1980s helped to diversify debate at both the high school
and college level by providing debate instruction and attendance at camps and
tournaments for free or for significantly reduced costs. I have worked with three such
leagues in Baltimore, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Korey and Ameena learned to
debate in the Baltimore Urban Debate League, many years after my tenure as a
volunteer there. The increasing racial diversity of college debate is directly attributable
to the work of these leagues, but of course the presence of more Black folks in any space
also fundamentally challenges the ground upon which business proceeds. Black students
have not only excelled at traditional debate, but they have invented new modes of
competitive forensics, including a more performative style of debate that incorporates
rap music, poetry and personal anecdotes. Pioneered in college debate programs like
that at the University of Louisville, this more performative style of debate has
productively disrupted the traditionalist forms of debate centered on spouting, at the
highest rates of speed, copious amounts of academic literature in order to prove a point.
When I spoke with Korey by phone about this piece, she was hesitant to characterize her
and Ameenas style in a singular way, since they tend to incorporate both traditional
elements like the reading of arguments published in academic journals and books with
newer elements like poetry. Korey told me, The word traditional, the word
performative, the word k-debater (which refers to critique or kritik debaters, who
argue more philosophical rather than policy positions) will never actually capture what
we are trying to do here. That resistance to labels, and ambivalence about the violence
labels perform, are hallmarks of the speech of young thinkers, searching to find their
way in the world. However, as my own scholarly research about Black female public

intellectuals in the 19th and 20th centuries indicates, we live in a world that still struggles
to see Black women as serious thinkers and intellectuals who have something to
contribute to our national grappling with social problems. Frequently for young Black
women thinkers, particularly those who invoke a clear Black feminist perspective, there
is a resistance to donning a stance of detached objectivity. Korey asked me rhetorically,
How can we talk about policy if we dont know [the] social location of the people?
When I watch Ameenas and Koreys final round (video here), in which they are debating
against two young Black men from the University of Oklahoma, I am struck by the
courage of their propositions. This years topic, as are the topics for every year, is
situated right at the heart of both national and global political conversations. It reads:
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase
statutory and/or judicial restrictions on the war powers authority of the President of the
United States in one or more of the following areas: targeted killing, indefinite
detention, offensive cyber operations, or introducing United States Armed Forces into
hostilities. In the final round, the Oklahoma team, who took the affirmative side, offered
a performative argument that war powers should not be waged against niggas. Using
the colloquial form of the n-word, they sought to disrupt the very assumptions of the
resolution, by placing the relationship between race and U.S. militarism front and
center. The intrinsic moxie and audacity of this kind of argument exposes the flaws in
traditional forms of debate performativity. In part, they demonstrate that an investment
in cool, detached, dispassionate forms of speech about political matters of such import
could in their own way be considered pathological and imperialist. Using a range of
academic work, Johnson and Ruffin offered a counter argument that we should not
present scenes of suffering within the academy because the academic machine will
become a spectator that merely feeds its libido by consuming pain narrations.
Furthermore, Johnson writes, we said that when we tell narrations of pain and
suffering to black youth as a means of survival, this inhibits their political imagination
because they can only envision similar violences happen[ing] to them. So heres the
thing: I am not litigating here whether Ameena and Korey are right, although I do find
their arguments compelling. Pushing for alternative ways for Black people to exist and
thrive in hyper-militarist regimes is important political work, work that both final round
teams are engaged in. Still, this is a conversation about how it is the case that in the face
of such clearly sophisticated argumentation from two second-year college students,
those on the right could then conclude that they won the debate out of white liberal
guilt. To mischaracterize and diminish their accomplishment is the height of white
elitist racism, and it is deeply rooted in an anxiety about the ways that Black people and

Black forms of knowledge production fundamentally shift the terms of political

discussion. In addition to hyperemotional rants from middle-aged white men and
dishonest journalistic coverage from right-wing sites, some white members of the debate
community have even gone so far as to try to start a new, segregated policy-only
debate league. Jessica Carew Kraft notes in a piece at The Atlantic that one of the effects
of these new forms of debate is that traditionally dominant teams from elite universities
like Harvard and Northwestern are now routinely unseated by teams from smaller
colleges, with smaller budgets. After a strident backlash within the debate community,
this attempt at race and class-based segregation thankfully failed. Korey noted that the
initial move sounded like something straight out of the Civil Rights Movement. And
she is right. The move to segregate debate, not on the explicit basis of race, but on the
basis of supposedly race-neutral ideas about style and substance is part and parcel of a
larger more insidious national backlash against integrated education. Not only has the
Supreme Court suggested implicitly through its gutting of affirmative action that the
success of these programs means federal oversight is no longer mandated and vigilance
about ameliorating racial inequality is no longer required, but Nikole Hannah-Jones
also lays out quite profoundly the ways that the white middle class have responded to
decades of federally mandated integration by pulling their children out of successful
public schools and enrolling them in elite private schools. The thinking seems to be that
when programs to reduce racially disparate impacts actually work, then its time to kill
them. Ameena and Korey are being targeted because they mastered the rules of the
debate world and then broke the rules masterfully. In a world where many of their
college counterparts believe the myth of meritocracy, it is incredibly important to point
to incidents like this to demonstrate that even when African-American college students
are meritorious, their qualifications are challenged, and accomplishments maligned.
Frequently, Black success is met with white temper tantrums and passive aggressive
attempts to resituate power through calls for a return to tradition. It is not
coincidental that this backlash has reached a crescendo over the last two years when
African-American debaters won the championship both times and when, in the case of
the 2014 tournament, both the semifinal and final rounds featured all-Black debate
teams, using both traditional and performative methods of debate. Rather than seeing
these recent successes as evidence of successful integration of a traditionally
exclusionary sport, sponsors of elite programs now advocate for a return to exclusionary
practices. Although Korey and Ameena won their championship by challenging their
opponents not to engage in copious narrations of Black suffering, it bears noting that
racism hurts. When I asked Korey how she felt about all the negative attention she

received, in classic strong Black woman fashion she told me, Haters gon hate. That is
of course true. But then, as she grappled with the material reality of anti-Blackness,
another truth set in. I was hurt, she told me, because I had that little bit of bad faith,
by which she meant, a little bit of awareness that there were going to be people not
happy about her victory. We did so much to be here, she said and then recounted the
two months she spent preparing an argument by reading doctoral dissertations and
academic journals, to find the perfect set of arguments to wage in response to one team,
her final round opponents from Oklahoma. Incivility now dominates U.S. public culture.
But the critiques that these Black debaters make about the falsity of civil discourse,
about the ways that calls to civility mask fundamental relations of power and acts of
violence, is deeply in the center of our national conversations in this moment about how
we engage in every space from politics to social media. Though the styles and arguments
these debaters bring to the table absolutely disturb the peace, the reality is that Black
people who speak up in white spaces are an intrinsic disruption to the status quo. We
should recognize and applaud the courage of these young thinkers who boldly step into
inhospitable spaces and speak truth to power. Our nation certainly needs more people
like them.
White supremacy functions on an unstable structure of injustice. Only through
critically analyzing these ideas can we competently engage the state.
Martinot and Sexton, 2003 [Steve and Jared, "The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy",
Social Identities, Volume 9, Number 2, TR, 2003 ]

The foundations of US white supremacy are far from stable. Owing to the instability of
white supremacy, the social structures of whiteness must ever be re-secured in an
obsessive fashion. The process of re-inventing whiteness and white supremacy has
always involved the state, and the state has always involved the utmost paranoia. Vast
political cataclysms such as the civil rights movements that sought to shatter this
invention have confronted the state as harbingers of sanity. Yet the states absorption
and co-optation of that opposition for the reconstruction of the white social order has
been reoccurring before our very eyes. The cold, gray institutions of this society
courts, schools, prisons, police, army, law, religion, the two-party systembecome the
arenas of this brutality, its excess and spectacle, which they then normalize throughout
the social field. It is not simply by understanding the forms of state violence that the
structures of hyper-injustice and their excess of hegemony will be addressed. If they
foster policing as their paradigmincluding imprisonment, police occupations,
commodified governmental operations, a renewed Jim Crow, and a re-criminalization of
race as their version of social orderthen to merely catalogue these institutional forms
marks the moment at which understanding stops. To pretend to understand at that
point would be to affirm what denies understanding. Instead, we have to understand the
state and its order as a mode of anti-production that seeks precisely to cancel
understanding through its own common sense. For common sense, the opposite of

injustice is justice; however, the opposite of hyper-injustice is not justice. The existence
of hyper-injustice implies that neither a consciousness of injustice nor the possibility of
justice any longer applies. Justice as such is incommensurable with and wholly exterior
to the relation between ordinary social existence and the ethic of impunity including the
modes of gratuitous violence that it fosters. The pervasiveness of state-sanctioned
terror, police brutality, mass incarceration, and the endless ambushes of white populism
is where we must begin our theorizing. Though state practices create and reproduce the
subjects, discourses, and places that are inseparable from them, we can no longer
presuppose the subjects and subject positions nor the ideologies and empiricisms of
political and class forces. Rather, the analysis of a contingent yet comprehensive state
terror becomes primary. This is not to debate the traditional concerns of radical leftist
politics that presuppose (and close off) the question of structure, its tenacity, its
systematic and inexplicable gratuitousness. The problem here is how to dwell on the
structures of pervasiveness, terror, and gratuitousness themselves rather than simply
the state as an apparatus. It is to ask how the state exists as a formation or confluence of
processes with de-centered agency, how the subjects of state authorityits agents,
citizens, and captivesare produced in the crucible of its ritualistic violence. What is at
stake is how to mark the outlines of white supremacist excess within its banality, to map
out the dimensions of its landscape as pervasive and ordinary. The following essays are
offered as only preliminary articulations in this lethal milieu. In order to engage this
problematic, we construct a collective enunciation, a theoretical assemblage of diverse
investigations. The four arenas addressed herethe militarization of police, the
proliferating prison-industrial complex, New World slavery, and the history of antimiscegenationdo not subsume the situation in which we find ourselves. This project
strives toward neither completeness, nor a definitive articulation. What unites these
essays is an attention to the shadows and living legacies of racial despotism, the direct
relations of force that are often occluded in analyses of hegemony and its quotidian
institutions. We seek to displace without dispensing with the institutional
rationalizations of US white supremacy in order to see its own vigorous reconstitution.
This will ultimately mean addressing every social motif (a task we only begin here) as
entailing a paradoxical or even incomprehensible scandal, something beyond the rules
of society yet pawned off on us as proper and legitimate.

The inequalities Black debaters face are continually ignored.

Resistance Debate, 12
(Rashad, Lawyer/Winner of CEDA/Coach at Bx Law, Shanara Rose, Professor of African
American Studies at U of Pit, Jillian Marty, Former Towson Coach,/Former Debater, Amber
Kelsie, Former Member of the IMPACT Coalition, works along Dr. Brinkley at U of Pit, An
Open Letter to Sarah Spring, TR, http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/anopen-letter-to-sarah-spring/)

Lack of community discussion is neither random nor power-neutral. We have tried to

have discussions. These discussions have been regularly derailedin wrong forum
arguments, in the demand for evidence, in the unfair burdens placed on the aggrieved
as a pre-requisite for engagement. Read the last ten years of these discussions on

edebate archives: Ede Warner on edebate and move forward to Rashad Evans diversity
discussion from 2010 to Deven Cooper to Amber Kelsies discussion on CEDA Forums
and the NDT CEDA Traditions page. We have been talking for over a decade, we have
been reaching out for years, we have been listening to the liberal, moderate refrain of
we agree with your goals but not with your method. We will no longer wait for the
community to respond, to relinquish privilege, to engage in authentic discussion, since
largely the community seems incapable of producing a consensus for responding to
what we all agree is blatant structural inequity. It seems that metadebates/discussions about debate are generally met with denial, hostility andmore
oftensilence. This silence is in fact a focused silence. It is not people in the Resistance
Facebook group that comprise these silent figuresit is (as has been described) the old
boys club. We have been quite vocaland we believe that it is this very vocalness (and
the development of a diversity of tactics in response to status quo stalling tactics) that
has provoked response when response was given.
Discussion is key to create a positive community- Resistance debate proves.
Resistance Debate, 12
(Rashad, Lawyer/Winner of CEDA/Coach at Bx Law, Shanara Rose, Professor of African
American Studies at U of Pit, Jillian Marty, Former Towson Coach,/Former Debater, Amber
Kelsie, Former Member of the IMPACT Coalition, works along Dr. Brinkley at U of Pit, An
Open Letter to Sarah Spring, TR, http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/anopen-letter-to-sarah-spring/)
Often it is a rare place where the K v K or Performance v Performance debate can be considered
in its practical and ethical implications. It is precisely the kind of place for open discussion

that Sarah Spring calls forthe kind of place where discussion that needs to take place
often does. But those discussions also do not stop there. Discussions that begin in the
group are often taken to wider groups within the debate community to broaden the
discussion and yet they are often derailed and then we must retreat and regroup, review
our strategies, discuss potential options, and seek advice. Note that the example of the
active and lively debate about the hotel architecture at the Clay mentioned in Sarahs
post, was hashed out for months on the resistance page before many of us began to
speak publicly about the issue. It was through that vibrant debate in the Resistance
Facebook group that produced the very conditions for the open discussion you
mention. The Resistance Facebook page is a response to the increasing ghettoization of
some bodies and some discursive forms in debatenot the other way around. The fact
that the existence of the group was what was critiqued rather than the necessity of the
group is deeply troubling to us. It is unclear what the bright line is between group
discussions or backchannels or facebook groups and a discussion group (articulated as
closed backroom discussion which is by the way, homophobic) which produces
disenfranchized discussion As far as we can tell, Sarah Spring is upset that she has not
been able to see what mischief the slaves are hatching in the slave quarters on the
plantation. The Resistance Facebook group has a wide range of members. It includes

current debaters, former debaters, coaches, judges, high school students, academics
(with no relationship to debate), radical community activists. All members of the group are
granted administrative access once they are admitted, so people request admission through the
relationships they have cultivated with already existing members. If someone has not been invited to the
group, it is because they lack authentic relationships with any of the membersperhaps the perceived
secrecy of the group could be better understood as a symptom of the lack of social relations you have with
a wide group of differently situated people. The argument here is likened to the question, why are all the
black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?an argument meant to imply that it is the burden of the
black students to make friends with the whites, and that the whites cannot be faulted for choosing to
maintain distance. There are a number of issues that marginalized members of the community simply do
not know about. For example, many of us did not discover the existence of Sarahs post until the last
round of the evening, although we have since learned that people have been talking about it (not to us)
throughout the day. If you are excluding yourself from usvia MPJ, on the quad, in the hallway, at the
hotelthen you should hold yourself accountable, not us. We are not secret. We are not hiding. We are
just invisible to you.