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.
OP, I just gotta say, I really agree with you, and I find it really disgusting the amount of people in this thread trying to renormalize it or argue that it’s not problematic. This thread has been one of, if not the, most frustrating threads here over the past two years. Like I’m genuinely feeling gaslit by some of these comments. Do people not remember the voice people would use? Do people not remember the motions people would do? Those weren’t just a mild way to call someone stupid. It was always ableist and still is today. Maybe in five to ten years I’ll feel differently, like language really has moved on, but it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening. It feels like people just being more comfortable being edgy.
Does that mean if I’m autistic I get an R- word pass?
+1
Maybe y’all haven’t experienced it as a slur. I grew up around jerks that did, and it leaves a nasty taste. I’ve caught myself using it, and felt awful afterwards.
What would one call a person that is willfully uneducated, ignorant, bigoted, makes bad-faith arguments and acts foolishly, without using “ableist language”?
If my intention is to offend that person?
I just call 'em Maga.
The R word means non of what you said.
Dumbass, asshole, giant turd, negative iq, dumber than a turd, smooth brained, piece of shit, fuck face, etc.
Get creative, no need to insult innocent people by using slurs.
This is no different than calling someone the N word, and I’m sure that while some people use the N word as an insult, you probably don’t, right?
What’s wrong with “uneducated, ignorant, bigoted fool”?
Moron? Doesn’t hit the same tho. Fuckin moron?
“willfully uneducated, ignorant, bigoted, makes bad-faith arguments and acts foolishly” all seem like perfectly cromulent words there.
Lol you fucking spastic - can’t say that, its offensive
Are you retarded - can’t say that, its offensive
Damn bro, you mentally disabled?
This will continue onward, to think otherwise is retarded.
Quite the imaginary slippery slope you made up there.
I never really understood the difference between insults and slurs. Somebody said that slurs target groups of people and imply that just being in the group is bad. That explanation works for ethnic/racial slurs or the ones regarding gender/sexualities.
But to me “retarded” is not specifically tied to a group. It’s not mainly used for people who are disabled or neurodivergent for example. As far as I’m concerned it’s the same as calling someone a moron or incredibly stupid.
Not at all
My brother has a mental disability. Not his fault, doctors fucked up ab operation when he was a baby and he came out severely damaged. He has the intellectual level do about a 13 year old, but he mostly lives independently, he got his drivers license in a country where many people with full brain capacities cannot. Doctors told my mom after the operation to just dump him in some institution, because he’d never even talk. She told them to go fuck themselves.
I’m fucking proud of him (and my mom), because with severe limitations he really got himself ahead. I see him as a fucking genius.
Then there are retards like Elon musk who do have a full brain with full abilities but somehow fail to even surpass what my brother wasn’t supposed to be able to do, yet by brother does it, these people do
I call people removed when they are supposed to be better but just chose to be lazy or not caring or just behave removed.
Is an insult against people who are supposed to be smart but behave like they have a mental disability, and I stand by that.
If you feel offended, the that is on you.
I call people removed
Is lemmy.ca doing the same censorship billshit as .ml? SMH …
When you stop being offended by letters on a page and direct that hate towards the individuals that use the word as a slur or out of context on purpose, you’ll be a lot happier.
Do you also use the N word? Would you feel comfortable using that as an insult?
I’m not offended by “faggot” because of its shape, I’m offended by it because it takes me back to when Meathead John crushed my throat in the playground calling me it until I would ask him to beat up the boy i liked instead.
Words represent, communicate and are something. Humans have for the entirety of their use of language, understood that the signifier and the signified are interchangeable.
This is a good post with some interesting conversation and points that came up because of it. Good job.
Retarded is a word that is now used exclusively to talk about people who are not mentally ill acting like dumb fucking cunts. Like, its totally retarded to see people getting upset at Trump being called a retard… If you hear the word, and you think about actual disabled people. Thats a you thing. Cos I promise you, no one else is.
No one is looking at this, and thinking that anyone else, but Trump, is a fucking retard.
It’s like that South Park episode with the bikers.
77 million votes, and he’s the retard?
Yes, America has a retard problem. Theres at least 77 million of them…
Well, no, Trump was specifically mimicking a specific reporter with a congenital joint condition in that image. So I don’t really get why you don’t think that’s Trump not being disparaging. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34930042
I think you need to read what I wrote again, Chief. Cos I never made that claim.
Retarded is a word that is now used exclusively to talk about people who are not mentally ill acting like dumb fucking cunts. Like, its totally retarded to see people getting upset at Trump being called a retard… If you hear the word, and you think about actual disabled people. Thats a you thing. Cos I promise you, no one else is.
No one is looking at this, and thinking that anyone else, but Trump, is a fucking retard.
Trump didn’t call anyone ”stupid” when he did that. Nor did he even use that word you said he did. He was imitating someone with a disability.
Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said’
The reporter he’s talking about:
Again, you need to read what I wrote again. Because I didnt say what you are saying I said.
Again, Trump wasn’t even using the word this thread is about in that picture but he was mimicking someone with a disability so I don’t see what point you’re even trying to make.
I agree. Often there is a better insult to use against someone who is being idiotic that’s not also disparaging to an unrelated group.
context is important. when I call my friend steph a “stupid bitch”, we both know she’s not “stupid” nor a “bitch”.
when I call a political leader retarded, I mean it in a derogatory way. a slur. in all the negative meanings as possible.
when I call a neurotypical person retarded, I mean it in the same way.
however, important context, it is never acceptable to use the word to describe someone who is intellectually challenged. it’s not their fault, and they have zero control over their situation.
I think it’s actually offensive to even compare intellectually challenged people to the word even.
I believe the word has purpose in the lexicon still, and that is describe the willfully ignorant in a visceral way that they are forced to take offense to it.
words can have more than one meaning. if it’s not directed at you or used to discriminate against you, it should be perfectly acceptable to use words to describe.
this zero tolerance and censorship of words never ended well in history only because it’s a constant battle of drawing lines in sand.
I know I’ll probably get banned for this comment, but I still think I deserve to speak my opinion on this. you don’t have to agree or disagree, I just want people to think for themselves and not fall into a dark pattern of censorship.
I’ve been called that all my life. I hate it. No one should be made to feel like they’re inferior.
Policing the hell out of language, while well intentioned, creates a backlash effect that I think actually hurts us more these days. Look at how they originally attacked “political correctness” in the 90s - because we were trying to code some improvements into language. Now people openly laugh at us for not having a solution to homelessness besides renaming them “unhoused.”
Be far easier to just let the R word become the word it has become, which doesn’t describe mental illness or disability anymore, much like “idiot” and “moron” and “imbecile” were once used as medical terms, and now they have none of that meaning.
You aren’t being “policed.” The point is the problem is the dehumanization of people with intellectual delays, who are a group currently being target by the fascist government of the US, and probably other fascist governments at the moment. Disability rights are fucking invisible, and language like that goes with that problem.
It’s not about being “offended,” it’s pointing out that words mean things. Some people are hurt by your language. Why isn’t that enough to consider what you are saying and why.
You’re comparing apples to oranges. Attempting to change “homeless” to “un-housed” is different from just not using a slur — you’re assuming that non-derogatory terms don’t exist for neurodiverse people; there are no “improvements” to be made, just exercising some discretion. You shouldn’t be using slurs just because it’ll turn acceptable soon or because everyone else is using it; if there are people that feel hurt by it and have a history of being marginalized by such usage, you don’t have the right to use it; that is if you are a morally sound person that doesn’t care about BS buzzwords like “political correctness”.
I get what you are saying but if idiotic and imbecile are still available as insults and are further from medical definition than retard then why not just use them instead? The point being is that retard still has the bite of comparing the person to the mentally disabled and the others don’t.
Ah yes, let all those white kids say “the rapper word” (as it was known in my time), slavery is over, segregation is over, those who still discriminate are just jerks, and being black is a nice filter to know who your real friends are. /s
Languages evolve. It’s a very common thing for descriptors of negative things to become slang for insults. Not to say we should be encouraging this behavior, but rather that policing it is ineffective at best.
Effective solutions address the underlying issues
(Destigmatization of ailments is a good thing, but doing so by stigmatizing the words themselves often has a Streisand effect)
No dude, the PC mob in the 90s were pricks trying to police language. The result came in the 2010s when the UK enacted Section 5 of public order act. Which say a kid arrested and actually in fucking court for calling a horse “gay”. And other for saying “woof” to a fucking dog!
The problem is that all those people who wanted that shit, were just thin skinned little bitches. And now that virtue signalling is all the rage, everything is offensive now. “Sticks and stones and may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”. Yet here we are, and everyone is clutching their pearls over anything that will get them a worthless up arrow.
Part of free speech is about being allowed to offend people. You are totally free to criticise the person, and whatever he or she might be saying and who they are saying it too. But the fundamental right to offend is something that should be protected by all of us. Or one day, you might just find yourself in trouble with the law, because someone claims to be offended at using the word “fascist” because what you called fascist, didnt rise to horrors of history attributed to that.
And now we have the online safety act in the UK, which is spreading to other countries where you have to show ID to use social media among other things, when it was only ever supposed to be used for porn sites.
But dont take my word for it. Mr Bean said it much better than I ever could:
Now people openly laugh at us for not having a solution to homelessness besides renaming them “unhoused.”
As long as one ignores all the solutions that capitalists dont like, sure. We also cant figure out why people starve while we’re at it.
If you’re serious about helping the homeless, don’t spent scant attention antagonizing potential supporters over vocabulary.
These stupid wars on words IMHO is the reason why “liberals” were regarded as a joke prior to trump election
Like banning “master” in github as well as dumb, regex based words filters in chats. Oh you want to mention the “beta version”? Too bad, a social justice warrior decided that “beta” is now offensive, you have to change your language so that you wont affect the hypothetic easily offendable persons
Like banning “master” in github as well as dumb
Master wasn’t banned. The default name was changed from master to main. Literally nothing is stopping you from choosing to use master.
While this is technically correct, when you say “we’re switching the default branch name from master to main to be less culturally insensitive”, you kind of imply that people who continue using master are culturally insensitive. And nobody likes being called that (generally), so it still feels like a ban to people.
While they are incorrect about the specific term, their main point is correct. “Slave” was removed from the terminology. Same with Blacklist and Whitelist. They are no longer the preferred terms.
Wait, you’re not supposed to say blacklist and whitelist anymore? Shit.
deleted by creator
Nope. Blocklist and Allowlist I believe. Because despite having no racist origins, “black” being the “bad” list and “white” being the “good” list made some people uncomfortable. It’s the perfect example of meaningless surface level changes imo
I used to have a word for how ridiculous this is but the op said I shouldn’t use it anymore
Now it’s CaucasianList and AfricanAmericanList.
Also man in the middle changing to “on path”
“Morally banning”. But you got my point
That’s a retarded opinion.
Changing words doesn’t change the emotions the person is feeling. They’ll just find a new word to put those emotions into and the cycle starts again. It’s the Euphemism Treadmill. You need to change people/society. Acting like removing a word solves the whole problem is well, retarded.
