A recent New York Magazine Vulture feature by Hershal Pandya, “Comedy’s Safest Slur” (August 22, 2025), got me thinking—again—about why we say some words and why we refuse to say others, and who pays the price when a joke is made at someone else’s expense, even unwittingly. It’s striking how easily disabled people—especially people with intellectual disabilities—get written out of the conversation while their dignity is reduced to somebody else’s punchline. The article didn’t invent that pattern; it spotlighted what too many have treated as business as usual.

 

Here’s why.

 

Words aren’t just pictures and sounds; they’re blueprints for meaning. They signal who belongs, what behavior is acceptable, and where the lines are drawn. When we choose clarity—disabled, disability—we connect people to community, culture, history, and belonging. When we settle for euphemisms, we create distance that lets real responsibilities slip. Distance doesn’t ramp a curb, caption a film, or hire a disabled cinematographer. Distance delays progress; clarity propels it.

 

The Vulture piece sent me back to something personal: in February 2016, NPR covered DISABLED. #SayTheWord, a campaign I sparked after watching “disability” get danced around, euphemized, or erased altogether. Nearly a decade later, revisiting that moment is clarifying. 

 

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last decade: Once upon a time, disability was thought of solely as a diagnosis—a medical problem to fix, manage, or hide. Thankfully, in the last few decades, the concept has evolved to embrace much more: community, identity, constituency, history, and culture. If you’re not using all these definitions you’re probably getting it wrong. 

 

Put simply, in 2025 anyone who thinks of disability solely as a medical issue is behind the times—by a few decades. Language that reflects that reality doesn’t just sound better; it also changes the stories we tell and who gets to tell them.

 

Reclaiming disability is essential for reframing disability. That’s not a passive process. To work, it must be deliberate, intentional, and sustained. And must always push us beyond where we were to where we want to be. Rejecting someone else’s shame is required. Where we go next is up to us.

 

And yes, words that don’t evolve are rejected and retired because they cause harm. That’s the point about the R-word. It isn’t “edgy,” it’s easy. It doesn’t interrogate power; it reinforces an unfair status quo. It takes a group already pushed to the margins and shoves ‘em of the cliff. If the only way your bit gets a laugh is by attempting to someone else smaller, your art shrinks too.

 

Let’s be plain about the bottom line: if people with intellectual disabilities tell you the R-word is harmful or offensive to them, the rest of us should pay heed—and stop. PERIOD. Plain and simple. Ignoring that isn’t clever. It isn’t bold. It’s reductive. Lazy. A failure of craft and imagination. If you can’t think of a better word, get yourself a thesaurus and learn how to use it. 

 

Revisiting DISABLED. #SayTheWord also reminds me why naming matters. Using the words disabled and disability link lineage, legacy, and hard-fought legal protections. Acknowledging this means defending the protections that protect us in politically dangerous times. That’s not an elective; it’s essential. Whether you prefer person-first, identity-first, or community-first language, what matters most is that disabled and disability appear at all. They connect us to one another and to the frameworks that actually change real world thinking and conditions. Euphemisms don’t expand access; they prop up a fantasy world that doesn’t yet exist. Presenting the illusion of progress without putting in the work to make it real. 

 

Similarly, comedy at its best has never settled for the quick, cruel laugh. The greats became great by punching up—at hypocrisy, at power, at pretense. Punching down is content with being counterfeit clever. It cosplays transgression while coddling the status quo. It keeps the audience safe from discomfort by taking aim at someone who can’t easily fight back. That may pass for provocation, but it just gives other lazy people passive permission to smirk in solidarity while pretending no harm was done.

 

At ReelAbilities, we see the difference every day. When a film names disability directly—without pity, platitudes, or euphemism—it opens space for audience members to recognize themselves, not as stereotypes or inspiration, but as directors of their own lives. It invites conversation instead of defensiveness. It asks artists and institutions to level up: to bake access into budgets and practices from day one; to hire disabled people in roles with real authority; to treat audio description and captions as creative choices, not afterthoughts.

 

So, what do we do?

 

• Say the word. If “disabled” makes you flinch, ask who benefits from your discomfort—then use the word twice.

 

• Retire the shortcuts. The R-word isn’t wit. Euphemisms aren’t kindness. Neither deepens understanding or delivers fairness. If you’re stuck, push yourself to go a bit further, use a thesaurus and find better language.

 

• Punch up. Aim your art at power, pretense, and passivity—not at people already targeted.

 

• Make access the architecture. Budget it, schedule it, staff it—from the first meeting to the final cut.

 

• Measure what matters. Who’s on set, in the writers’ room, in the C-suite? Who can say yes? Who gets credited and compensated?

 

Great art raises the bar; cheap shots lower it. If you can’t clear the bar, don’t jump and then blame the bar for your failure. Miss the bar? Edit—don’t excuse. Edit like you mean it. When words evolve, society does too. Some words we say because they build the world we need. Some we refuse because they keep the old one intact. If the people most harmed tell you a word offends them, listen. Then change course. Tell a better joke. Find a fresher metaphor. Do the work that defines bravery as turning away from bullying and embracing a higher truth. Reclaim the word, reject someone else’s shame, and help move the culture forward. 

Not because of censorship, but because we hold ourselves, and each other, to a higher standard.