Ableist and Sexist Terms to stop putting in contracts

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Haben speaking. Hello! I want to talk about contracts today, specifically sexist and ableist contract terms that keep coming up in contracts. In the past week, I received two, T-W-O, two contracts that had the term "professional and workman-like manner." I hope it's obvious to a lot of people why having a contract asking you to behave in a "workman-like" manner might be disrespectful and sexist. So I very politely, professionally asked them to remove that term from the contract. And that was totally fine.

Lawyers, contract writers: stop putting those trends into contracts. Professional is enough on its own. You don't need to say professional and workman-like manner. Another contract term that comes up that's ableist is this. It asks speakers, performers, artists not to appear intoxicated.

And "appear" is a very judgemental, subjective term. There are a lot of people with disabilities who in an ableist society may be mistakenly viewed as appearing intoxicated. My eyes move involuntarily. I call them dancing eyes and some people have said they appear intoxicated or people who have involuntary movements because of their disability, they've also faced lots of ableist comments about appearing intoxicated. It's one thing to ask speakers and artists not to be intoxicated. And it's another thing to ask them, not to appear intoxicated, which brings up all of the these ableist comments.

So those are two things I hope contract writers and lawyers can stop putting into contracts so we can help make our world more inclusive and accessible.