this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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"These fucking retards you and I respectively lead want to stab each other again but we can't do shit about societal momentum. Soz bro."
For future reference, 'retard' is not kosher anymore. I grew up in the era when we were all using it too, so I get the habit, but please avoid the term in this community in the future.
What word should I use?
Because I guarantee you that'll be a slur in five years. No one wants to be "dumber than most everyone else" but those people exist. And if you're "mentally retarded," that's probably "you."
Thanks for the comment, though. I can block this community before I'm banned!
'Retard' has had a rather unique journey as a clinical term through periods of great prejudice against the mentally disabled, before ending up as an insult, and once an insult, was widely used against the genuinely mentally disabled as a means of demeaning them, giving it a particularly bad history.
Don't be a fucking moron.
Well didn't moron use to be a medical term too? So you're doing the same thing here, hows moron different from retard?
Was it used to demean people to the same extent?
Yes, if you were rated below a certain iq, you were classified as a moron or an imbecile, both medical terms of the time which became derogatory words. It does not really make a difference if you use moron, imbecile, retard or psycho. You insult somebody by implying some kind of disability, which is now widely regarded as offensive. So i think it is really kind of funny when somebody gets chastised by doing the very same thing in the same post. Some self-reflection might be in order.
Yes
Do I have to explain to you how language works? Terms develop connotations over time. Usage makes some into slurs. This isn't complex. This is how every fucking slur comes about. Jesus H. Christ.
Moron is a slur against precisely the same people retard is.
Retard was literally the word that replaced moron in medical language and has all the same connotations.
You have proven his point to perfection.
Wow. What an amazing point he has, that... [checks notes] connotations change with time?
His point that whatever term retard is replaced with in the lexicon will simply go on the treadmill of slurs just like moron did.
You are literally participating in the problem you tried to call out.
Okay?
Like, I really don't know what the two of you aim to prove here by repeatedly drawing attention to the fact that connotations of words change with time. Yes, both in the past and the future. This is my shocked face.
The use of 'Retard' and its acceptability has changed due to the dual connotations it acquired (those connotations being, specifically, a derogatory insult, and the assertion of actual medical mental disability). It's no longer acceptable. That doesn't mean that every word which clinicians used or which schoolyard bullies used is now the equivalent of calling someone a 'retard'. 'Retard' has a very acute combination of connotations, which anyone who grew up around the term understands as different from terms like 'fool', 'idiot', or 'moron'.
Like, fuck's sake. How are you not grasping this?
... the problem of... not using a term widely agreed upon to be offensive in the modern day?
Exactly, and how is moron not a slur?
It's FAR from unique.
Idiot, Imbecile, and (especially ironically) Moron all ran the same path.
The euphemism treadmill is neverending.
I agree that 'retard' crossed the line when it started being used as an insult against legitimately disabled people
I remember using it here and there when I was younger, with no malice behind the words. I stopped using it after I learned that it had started to be used in a derogatory sense (or maybe there never was a time when it wasn't)
Thing is, the term 'retardation' just means to be slowing down, in a literal sense. In medicine, the term used is 'mental retardation' when somebody's mental thought process is reducing, which is what people think they're saying when they just say 'retarded'
I would even go so far as to say, if you allow one use of the word, that these people who paraphrase medical terms in derogatory ways are 'retarded'
If you're going to be offensive, at least be creative. When you use these words, among some other like the n word, you're just telling me you're an asshole with zero mental aptitude
For example, I think the original commenter has the thought capacity of a chicken