There’s a clear campaign against the mentally ill with the global rise of fascism. Lots of it shows up in anti homeless rhetoric, but you can see it in the MAHA and anti vaccination movements.
There’s no reason to use the word “r-tarded” to describe someone. As someone who’s worked with the intellectually challenged, it’s an insult to them to compare them with people who are willfully ignorant.
Here’s the thing, the word doesn’t matter… It’s the intent. For example if I said “well aren’t you a fucking genius” and meant it sarcastically that’s just as insulting. I could also say “you gobflecker” in a aggressive tone that also bad.
An example is the old show red dwarf. The replaced every curse word with smeg. Smeg doesn’t mean anything. But in the show when one character calls another a “smeghead”. You know it’s not nice and meant to be an insult even though they never said or explained that in the show.
Banning a word won’t do anything. Ban the attitude and change people’s opinions and you can change the world. For example women, not saying they are treated well by everyone but compared to 200 years ago? Or even further back? For example there was a “treatment” for women who dared consider working. They were basically forced to bed and forced to stay there only hand few broth for 6 months. They literally just had to lay there, no talking no reading no such thing as a video. Today they are treated much better, it wasn’t by banning the world girl or bitch or vagina or anything it was by changing people’s perception.
Absolutely recommend you try this out with some slurs on people of various races and see if saying “the word doesn’t matter” stops them from beating the shit out you lol
lol, retard isnt even close to the n-word and it’s annoying as fuck when people try to compare the two.
there’s a joke (john mullaney, i think?) that goes if you got two words…and one word you won’t even say…that word is the worse word
Yeah. We’ve been down this road before. Believe it or not but all those african american navy seals with gay brothers who also were active duty military? Yeah, they were just shitty white kids who wanted to say nr and ft a lot. Who’da thunk it?
No. It is about showing the absolute bare minimum of human decency to change your vocabulary and avoid using slurs that people have to constantly hear from people who AREN’T actually african american navy seals with gay brothers and all that.
And a huge chunk of that is to stop saying fucking slurs.
Homie… are you ACTUALLY playing the “You could be property so shut the fuck up if I want to say a slur” card?
Also, I strongly suggest anyone who thinks “history” was a no woman’s land or was all about racial purity to actually do some research. Shockingly, things were actually a LOT more “progressive” than they would expect with most bigotry and hatred being more oriented towards killing those Others across the channel. Most of the “We used to be a whole lot more racist and sexist” is, shockingly, from racist and sexist people who want to “make <insert country> great again”.
Nope, I am not saying you could be property so shut up. I’m saying the progress we made was not based on language.
Eh, maybe, but words communicate intent. By stigmatizing certain messaging - which can include both reserving certain words for only certain use cases and also shaming people who express bigotry regardless of what word they happen to choose - we communicate to third party observers that such views are not welcome in our society. Will it change the mind of the person using those words? Probably not, but avoiding hurtful words still has a great deal of positive social utility.
I don’t know, I don’t think the specific word is that meaningful. A new slur will likely be made for mentally disabled people, then it will get pushback and then another one will be made.
If I translated it to hindi or German or swahili it wouldn’t mean anything but if I walked up to you and yelled them at you you would probably be hurt. If I said them lovingly and softly you probably would be comforted.
The problem with having these conversations on the internet is there is no way to express that so… Maybe… I could see the point of banning potentially offensive words in text on the internet.
Well, yeah. There may not be a word in those languages with the same connotations, and yeah, obviously I wouldn’t understand them if there were. But all language is contextual. We’re currently talking about english - and I’m specifically talking about United States English because that is what I speak.
Censorship wouldn’t be my choice - and in any case I believe what’s being advocated for here by the OP is social disapproval - but yeah, in the context of the internet I would refrain from using words that could hurt people when it was not my intention to hurt them.
Around strangers, coworkers, or really anyone you don’t know well a similar policy would tend to apply. Even with friends, I wouldn’t want to encourage a culture of being callous with the words I use.
There are so many other ways to express whatever sentiment you’re trying to express, why would you reach for a word that implies that some people are less than others? I’m referring to it in its use as an insult or derogatory word, of course, since technical language has its place and institutions will generally choose whatever language fits their needs. I can’t assess their situation because I’m not involved.
I think we are arguing the same thing. Don’t be mean or an asshole. Don’t look down on people. People regardless of ability should be treated as people.
Of course you shouldnt use it as an insult or derogatory word. I was totally not arguing for that. I was just saying that if you wanted to be insulting or derogatory the word itself doesn’t matter. The change to r-word doesn’t change anything. The question “are you r-worded?” should be just as offensive.
We have down this many times. Stupid, invalid, ibecil all had similar meanings and then were made offensive and a new word was made up, then that became offensive.
The word itself is meaningless, it’s the context and intent.
One thing I just thought of that I would agree with is changing it from an identifier to attribute. What I mean is a person should not “be r-word-Ed” but should be do you “have r-word-ism?” it shouldn’t define a person, but a description of an aspect is different. Like you may have the flu but your not a “fluer” or you might have epilepsy but you may also be a mechanic or pianist or physicist it’s a part but should not define you.
I’m unaware of an existent group of people for whom the term “smeg” is or historically was thier actual designation?
It isn’t about not insulting someone, it’s about using language that refers to actual people who haven’t done anything wrong.
It’s like if suddenly everyone decided to call a pedophile a Vrek. You maybe wouldn’t love that suddenly people are invoking YOU to talk about pedophiles.
That’s the kind of collateral damage people are trying to avoid.
I’ve for sure said things are retarded. I’m no saint. I’ve got mixed feelings… but I think your take on the subject is poorly informed. I think you’ve missed the entire premise of the argument against using the word.
My point with smeg was that it was a made up word. But you could figure out the intent purely by context.
Again it comes to context, if you intend to hurt a person the word is meaningless.
So it seems like we are going to have to wait until impaired, challenged and disabled are turned into slurs by the overly-sensitive so removed can achieve the neutral status of idiot, dumb, stupid, moron and imbecile - words that removed used to be considered the politically correct alternative.
I think the argument is whizzing over your head too.
The logical breakdown here is pretty simple:
Argument #1 (OP): It’s probably not good to use disadvantaged groups as a slur.
Argument #2 (You and most others): Well if we do that then I don’t have words to degrade people.
These are completely orthogonal arguments, and I sincerely have sympathy for both. I genuinely do think there is communicative value in having words that illicit the intended response of calling someone’s argument “retarded”. I know what I mean. You know what I mean. It actually has nothing to do with people who are actually handicapped. It’s effective communication… it just has an unfortunate BYPRODUCT.
But not having slurs isn’t a counter-argument to the thesis that using disadvantaged groups as slurs is bad.
Strawmanning it as “PC gone mad” is just a convenient way to avoid actually addressing the concern head on.
Like, just be a fucking man: “Yeah, it probably isn’t good to use disadvantaged groups as slurs, but I’m at a loss for language that satisfies that while also effectively getting the content and TONE of my communication across, so I’m going to use it anyways. Not everythingi do is ideal.”
As soon as you abandon the ego-sheltering delusion that you don’t do things that are probably not great, you can actually think about things objectively without hitting a mental panic button the second you’re forced to evaluate a legitimate position in which your current behaviors would be evaluated as bad.
I don’t think anyone is saying that clinical language doesn’t have a use. If anything, it’s the use of these words as general-purpose insults that makes them unfit for clinical use, not the other way around.
That dude’s a fucking Vrek, goddamn.