"The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There is no innocence. Either way, you're accountable." — Arundhati Roy

Or in our case, once you hear it, you cannot unhear it. Words tossed around so casually, slipping off the tongue as though we have been saying them our entire lives.

They come in subtle remarks. Crazy. Insane. Lame. Psycho. Dumb. Retarded. Mental. Stupid.

We are unaware of our language. Our unconscious discriminatory remarks cut deeper than we allow ourselves to realize. We were born and raised in an ableist society, and it is us that continue to propel this discrimination.

Ableism, the discrimination in favor of those who are considered able-bodied.

The Normal.

The Standard.

Those who do not fit the ideal are, therefore, not able-bodied; they are not normal, and they are below the standard. But who are we to say that there is a standard that must be met in order to be considered human? There is something so undeniably wrong with discriminating someone based on something that they have no control over, defining those individuals by their disabilities and nothing more.

And yet, we do it every single day.

We throw these words around, day in and day out, unable to recognize just how much impact we have on those who are disabled. Whether we speak them with intention or not, they are harmful. Even if we have taken a vow to never use these terms, we cannot go far without hearing them spoken by someone else. And if we choose to not correct them? We are no better than they are for speaking these words.

This is about being politically correct. This is about us being decent human beings. This is about us having respect for those who have done no wrong, for those who only want to be what is seen as normal. In a world striving for equality for all, we cannot continue to use that language that transforms us into hypocrites. Our ableist tendencies have become almost second nature, and until we are able to lose these derogatory terms from our vocabularies, we will continue to ostracize people.

Be aware of the word choices you make, and think before you speak. You never know who is listening.