Right. I made a reference to educational development being retarded due to COVID restrictions and the very people you'd expect to be offended were of course offended.
I think it's important to remember the real meaning of words. If you know language better, you can understand a lot more information, and you can express yourself better. Knowing the meaning and origin of words give you great insights into things.
Just because some childish people are misusing the word for some time, we shouldn't just ditch it like that. Words go back a long time.
We should just remove the negative use of it. And we do that by growing up, not by banning words.
My own experience is the exact opposite. Out of all the times in my life I can recall ever having heard the word "retarded" used, I cannot think of any reason to suspect that any of them were meant as anything other than a synonym for "idiotic".
Which, of course, also referred to clinical mental disability at some point in history. As did "moronic", "imbecilic" and others. But nowadays they're really all just strong forms of "stupid".
Even in contexts where generic insults directed at people are not tolerated, it should be acceptable to recognize stupid ideas as such.
I think you've misunderstood, then. The GP's comment was using it in the technical sense (slowed/delayed, not the common "that's so dumb" form you've observed).
>Right. I made a reference to educational development being retarded due to COVID restrictions and the very people you'd expect to be offended were of course offended.
I misread that, and interpreted "retarded" as being a subjective judgment applied to the restrictions.
That said, the reading "[the process of] educational development has a mental disability" is utterly incoherent, so I still see no reasonable justification for taking offense.
Sure. I have a 50 year old friend who takes care of her retarded brother. When describing him and what she does, she simply calls him retarded, because he is, and people know what that word means.
One of the kindest women I know, but she doesn't bead around the bush or have time for euphemisms.
Idiot, retard, mentally handicapped, ect. It is all doomed to be a euphemistic treadmill because they can and are used as an insult. The insulting part isn't the word used, but the comparison drawn. Give it 10 years or so and whatever the current word is will also be out of favor as a pejorative.
That's the thing. They aren't taking offense to mean-spiritedness directed at the person being referred to that way, except in cases where that person actually does have such an intellectual disability. And such language is normally directed at people of ordinary intelligence, to call them out for failing to think things through when they're perfectly capable of it.
There are, and should be, contexts where insulting people is socially acceptable and where such insults should not be censored. And no matter what words you use (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill), it's fundamentally impossible to get rid of the idea that a lack of (demonstrated) intelligence is inherently negative.
(It's noteworthy to me that the same activists don't seem to be able to identify any terms denoting lack of physical strength that are inherently offensive - except insofar as they invoke gender stereotypes. Why should it be any less objectionable to call someone a "weakling", for example?)
The criticism of the target’s intelligence or competence isn’t the mean-spiritedness I’m referring to. I’m referring to the deliberate and inherent mean-spiritedness towards people with intellectual disabilities that the slur is explicitly invoking.
>I’m referring to the deliberate and inherent mean-spiritedness towards people with intellectual disabilities that the slur is explicitly invoking.
I disagree that any such thing is invoked. It seems that you believe that when the word "retard" is used in these contexts, that it's meant to describe a person with an intellectual disability. I think it's merely intended to describe someone of low intelligence, which neither necessarily qualifies as nor is necessarily caused by a disability.
Nor do I agree that it's mean-spirited in a way that, say, the word "stupid" isn't. It's just more intense.
I don't think insult should be socially accepted, it shouldn't, it's not a nice thing. Rudeness, impoliteness, offense, why would we socially accept them?
Freedom and cencorship is another thing. You have the freedom to be rude and impolite, and it shouldn't be censored. But yeah you shouldn't expect people to like you or listen to you.
>Rudeness, impoliteness, offense, why would we socially accept them?
Because multiple kinds of social space exist, and some people enjoy being able to interact with each other that way and are happy to accept being the butt of the joke their fair share of the time.
Ah yeah, you are right, there are people that have been exposed to it so much that they think it is normal, and a necessary part of life.
Well you know, things can change. In the past it was a family outing to go watch a beheading. That was normal for them and good entertainment. And they would have used the same arguments as you to somebody critical about it.
And you're right, it is a valid choice, and if you really enjoy being humiliated, by all means, you have the freedom to.
I do think eventually when the rest of the people have grown up and moved on to much more intelligent endeavors, that you might start to think differently too. But maybe not, everyone has their own interests.
They're not suggesting that they don't take issue, and so they don't need to take offense seriously.
They're suggesting that the people who conceivably might take issue generally don't and are instead being patronized by and condescended to by privileged, unaffiliated outsiders who assume -- without consent -- to speak on their behalf. And they don't take those people seriously.
It's totally reasonable to disagree with that view, but it's the not the same view your reply tries to engage with.
The thing is, you wouldn't use the slur except to invoke the mean-spiritedness that the people who find the slur offensive associate with the word. If you're using it because you think like-minded people will find it funny that you're using a term other people find offensive, that's still precisely the same mean-spiritedness.
No, you’re expressing a different, more lucid point of view (“the people who conceivably might take issue generally don’t”), which can be engaged with. For example, I would argue that it’s reasonable to take offense on behalf of people who can’t be part of the conversation at hand. (Otherwise it would be fine for whites to spew racist slurs in a group of only white people. If we disagree on that, we’re having the wrong conversation.) I would also point out that taking offense on behalf of others is a time-honored practice (“nobody says that about my little brother and gets away with it!”) But the GP (GGP?) did not say “the people who conceivably might take issue generally don’t.” They didn’t say “no one has standing to be offended by this term.” They just said “it’s not offensive” about a term that is offensive enough that we’re having an entire argument about it. That’s schoolyard-level discourse.
An alternative is to use “on the spectrum”. For example, your s.o. or someone else you’re arguing with is getting on your nerves so you say: “Hey! are you on the spectrum today or what?”
Offense is all about context. It is objectively quite offensive when used as a term for a person. (“Objectively” works here because a word being offensive is determined by how people view it. The views are subjective but the prevalence of those view is not.)
