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Comment by Dylan16807 | Hacker News Reader

>when one is actually expressing an opinion that the person or thing is not worthy of merit, and history is rife with abuses that result from trivializing a group of people by distilling that group to a pejorative.

What I don't quite understand is why it trivializes people to use a disability as a pejorative, but it apparently doesn't trivialize people to use a disease as a pejorative.

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Since you don't seem to be arguing, I would like to understand what you mean? Did I use such a pejorative? I'd sincerely like to know - if, that is, your query is sincere as well.

I'm just musing, and hoping someone might have an explanation. Language is complicated, and emotionally-loaded words are especially so.

Let me put it this way. If I call someone cancerous, I'm not trivializing the group of people that have cancer and distilling them to a pejorative. In general, if I use a disease as an insult it's fine, but if I use a disability as an insult it's usually offensive. They're both afflictions, but they're treated differently in uncountable ways.

I could list some reasons, but none of them really feel like they get at the root cause of the difference. Do you have any insight?

Perhaps it's related to self-identification? People don't self-identify as cancerous, the cancer (or disease?) is an external actor invading the body. Whereas a disability is a feature or aspect of one's body.

(I don't have first hand experience with either, so I'm just musing too..)

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