196

"Cisgender" isn't an insult either, but that doesn't stop Elon Musk and his flunkies from treating it as such.

correct, it’s not (or shouldn’t be), but it’s being used as one, especially recently!

precontext: i said i could see both sides of some non-important debate. something about whether a community mod should be heavy or light with bans, and i was like, “well it depends on what the motivations and needs are.”

their response to that?

in this post i hope to call attention to the same destructive processes happening to “neurodiverse” as to all the other terms. particularly i want to call out the ableist motivations behind it.

Not YET!

I have an older family member who is severely mentally disabled and always has been. His medical records diagnosed him as r*tarded. The adults diagnosing him at the time didn't understand enough about mental conditions and their differences when he was a child. So kids like him were diagnosed with that. It did have more 'legitimate' uses than it does in our current context. Doesn't make it good or right, doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried to be more specific either. That legacy leads to now where we have the nuance and resources to do better. I am glad it's more and more relagated to the past as it's consistently been used to dehumanize people.

I mean I'd say the asterisk is overdoing it, and that this is mostly because retard isn't used as a medical diagnosis anymore. If it does ever really die expect special needs or another such word to take its place.

good thing i didn’t say they were all equal :)

actually GOATED INSIGHT my friend keep it up

as always, act everything considering the window of present you are in. “idiot” means a lot less offense today than it did back in the day.

okay wow TIL too! i was just pulling from memory and a few online examples but i never dove into the specific histories of that particular word!

i hope instead the cycle could be broken in some way. :/ other folks in the thread are pointing out that ND is a term created by its own community, which could add to its resilience. i hope they are right!

Anything is ableist if that's the intention is to be ableist. "Cognitive impairment" or "Brain damage" are clinical terms, but if one decides they can also be ableist insults.

“how can i have an identity without establishing and then demonizing an outgroup!?!”

Having an IQ of 60 isn't normal, it's life destroying. It's necessary to have some form of way of communicating that condition. Just because people can use that term to insult others doesn't change the fact that communication matters.