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.
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 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.
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.
That dude’s a fucking Vrek, goddamn.