seananmcguire:

It’s not about being “politically correct,” which is usually another way of saying “trying to be considerate of other people”: it’s about not throwing rocks when I don’t have to.

So I am going to talk about a word that relates directly to me, and is thus a word that I can use without bringing about any lectures that I actually need to listen to.  (And sometimes those lectures are necessary!  When I don’t know that a word I’m using is hurtful, I genuinely want to be told!  Just…not necessarily on Tumblr, where one lecture turns into thirty, all public, some a little performative.  If it’s a first offense, I’m much happier receiving an email.)  The word is “crazy.”

I have OCD.  I was diagnosed when I was nine.  I am also, to put it charitably, weird as hell.  I grew up being called “crazy,” and also being called “OCD,” and one of them was diagnostic, and both of them were mine.  Fake as it might sound, I genuinely never considered, not even once, that “crazy” might be considered hurtful or ableist.

Now, I know that this is now one of those things that Everybody Knows, but I swear, and I have no reason to lie here, that I did not know.  People called me crazy; I thought of myself as crazy; I did not consider it to be connected to my actual neuroatypicality.  And it’s a fun word to say!  It has a “z” and a “y” and it feels good in my mouth, and so I said it a lot.  And when I wrote books, my characters used it a lot.  And because I wrote my first several books very fast, it wasn’t until Late Eclipses came out–the fourth Toby book, which means the first two Newsflesh books were also out–that anyone said to me “this word is hurtful.”

Again, I know that sounds fake, because of where the conversation has gone, and how much more most of us know now about ableist language.  But I have no reason to lie, and if you were to really deep-dive into my social media, you could probably find me, in 2011, being stunned and confused by this information.

Am I bothered by “crazy”?  No.  It’s my word.  But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if it bothers me.  I want to tell people unsafe stories.  I want to tell stories that will sometimes have teeth, that will bite and claw and tear.  And I want people to trust me while I’m doing it.  I want them to follow me into the woods and know that I’m going to get them out the other side.  That means that when I throw textual rocks, when I am aiming to cause pain, it should be intentional.

I am not a “safe space” in the sense of “everything here will have padded edges, it will comfort and not harm.”  But I am also not in the habit of throwing rocks wildly, acting like any pain means I have succeeded at my job.  Anyone can scream random words.  Choosing words and making them do what I want is much more effective.

As for whether my characters get to say words that I, personally, have reduced or removed from my vocabulary, that depends on the characters.  Like Shaun Mason, in the Newsflesh series, calls himself crazy.  There’s no other word he’d use; it fits his character.  But Toby Daye, who has clinical depression, doesn’t describe herself that way.  In her case, I can find other words that work just as well, and don’t become rocks when I don’t want to throw them.

There’s no censorship here.  The government is not forcing me to do anything.  There’s just me, doing my best to not be an asshole, and only to throw rocks when I actually mean it.