I am retarded and I agree. The word has never left my vocabulary. People have been calling me retarded as long as I can remember. I’ve got the pass and I give all of you the pass. It’s just word. People have called me far worse and many of my closest friends and family who would take a bullet for me call me retarded all the time. Just like I call all of them retarded whenever they do or say something retarded.
In the wise words of the Black Eyed Peas: “let’s get retarded in here.”
TBH kinda with you here, is it just the relatively recent proximity of the use of the word to refer those with intellectual disabilities?
…
I actually looked this up and found a timeline, which shows the use is much more recent in medical contexts than I thought, Rosa’s Law 2010 is where it’s use was superceded in federal usage.
I honestly thought it was a kinda 50s to 70s kinda deal, not 70s - 2010; this does change my perspective and opinion a little bit, and I do feel a bit more sympathy as of how it’s still very much within living memory for some.
At the same time, I wonder whether those who take issue with it being used casually (not in reference to intellectual disability), take the same issue with the use of idiot, moron or imbecile, as retarded was used because those terms became common place and slang, not exclusively medical words.
I think that once the cat is out of the bag, (and the fact that both the medical society, and general society has moved past a single catch all term for intellectual disability) you can’t really keep a word from developing it’s own life.
I will note, my opinion doesn’t hold any real weight here, as I’m the UK we never had AFAIK a diagnosis of “Mental retardation”
The biggest retards of all, people call me and they say “can you believe how many big retards we have?” And I say “no,” I mean it folks, you are the biggest retards of all, believe me. My uncle was nuclear it’s all computer"
I don’t know where we got this idea that “retarded” was as vile and pernicious as The Hard R, to the point people don’t want to repeat it. Nobody with intellectual disabilities I’ve heard from has such a visceral reaction to it, anecdotal as that is. The outrage seems completely invented and it gained a momentum of its own.
“Idiot” was also a medical term for cognitive disability, should that go away too?
99% of the time I hear it used, it’s interchangeable with “stupid” or “idiot” and not derogatory towards literal disability.
I have autism and the word is deeply offensive to me. For all of my young life, it was used as a cudgel to single me out and beat me into social submission. It was used to remind me of my place in the social hierarchy (lower than non-retards, obviously) and as a reason for excluding me or treating me differently from everyone else. It’s just as anecdotal as anything else, but I have many neurodivergent friends and family members with similar histories with the word.
Not seeing the problem with something does not mean there isn’t a problem. In this case, it just means that the problem is not particularly relevant to your own life.
And I don’t know why “idiot” doesn’t have the same sting or modern context around it, but despite its historical use, it simply doesn’t hit the same. I guess it could be that it’s not used so explicitly to identify neurodivegence, so much as it is a way of saying someone didn’t/doesn’t think things through, whereas using “retard” is more like insulting someone’s genetic pull. One label can be unlearned, while the other is a life-sentence. Once retarded; forever a retard.
If the n-word was used to describe people acting stupid would you feel comfortable with that? What if no black people complained about it? Would that make it okay? The degree of severity is clearly different because of the historical context, but it is basically the same thing for a different community. A community that, oftentimes, has far less ability to advocate for themselves and far less ability to mobilize en masse. It’s a word that inherently punches down, and using it does shape the perception of our community as well as just hurt our feelings because we are people that can feel and understand when we are being treated differently.
My b for that rant. It’s just fucked up that people act like getting punched in the kidney doesn’t hurt just because they’ve never been punched in the kidney before. That’s not how it works, and if there was a specific word for denigrating you (“you” as in whoever is reading this tbc) I’m sure many people like you would not like being reminded of what negative bullshit the world at large assumes about them based on something they had no control over. Shit fucking sucks, fullstop.
I mean, using it as an uninformed general insult is absolutely bigotry, but 99% of the time when I hear it used as a pejorative against specific behavior, it’s always used for behavior that is… well… kinda’ autistic by definition. Like the behavior would be cited by a psych as evidence for being autistic.
Does that make it OK to use for every concerning behavior? Certainly not. Though in my experience it’s used more as a direct clue that someone is behaving very abnormally and may want to introspect.
… Though that said, I don’t hang out with teenagers or immature twats, so maybe they’re slinging it around like 2000’s teenagers slung around “gay” as an insult…
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I am retarded and I agree. The word has never left my vocabulary. People have been calling me retarded as long as I can remember. I’ve got the pass and I give all of you the pass. It’s just word. People have called me far worse and many of my closest friends and family who would take a bullet for me call me retarded all the time. Just like I call all of them retarded whenever they do or say something retarded.
In the wise words of the Black Eyed Peas: “let’s get retarded in here.”
TBH kinda with you here, is it just the relatively recent proximity of the use of the word to refer those with intellectual disabilities?
…
I actually looked this up and found a timeline, which shows the use is much more recent in medical contexts than I thought, Rosa’s Law 2010 is where it’s use was superceded in federal usage.
I honestly thought it was a kinda 50s to 70s kinda deal, not 70s - 2010; this does change my perspective and opinion a little bit, and I do feel a bit more sympathy as of how it’s still very much within living memory for some.
At the same time, I wonder whether those who take issue with it being used casually (not in reference to intellectual disability), take the same issue with the use of idiot, moron or imbecile, as retarded was used because those terms became common place and slang, not exclusively medical words.
I think that once the cat is out of the bag, (and the fact that both the medical society, and general society has moved past a single catch all term for intellectual disability) you can’t really keep a word from developing it’s own life.
I will note, my opinion doesn’t hold any real weight here, as I’m the UK we never had AFAIK a diagnosis of “Mental retardation”
And MAGA as a whole are retarded.
The biggest retards of all
Very bigly.
The biggest retards of all, people call me and they say “can you believe how many big retards we have?” And I say “no,” I mean it folks, you are the biggest retards of all, believe me. My uncle was nuclear it’s all computer"
I don’t know where we got this idea that “retarded” was as vile and pernicious as The Hard R, to the point people don’t want to repeat it. Nobody with intellectual disabilities I’ve heard from has such a visceral reaction to it, anecdotal as that is. The outrage seems completely invented and it gained a momentum of its own.
“Idiot” was also a medical term for cognitive disability, should that go away too?
99% of the time I hear it used, it’s interchangeable with “stupid” or “idiot” and not derogatory towards literal disability.
I have autism and the word is deeply offensive to me. For all of my young life, it was used as a cudgel to single me out and beat me into social submission. It was used to remind me of my place in the social hierarchy (lower than non-retards, obviously) and as a reason for excluding me or treating me differently from everyone else. It’s just as anecdotal as anything else, but I have many neurodivergent friends and family members with similar histories with the word.
Not seeing the problem with something does not mean there isn’t a problem. In this case, it just means that the problem is not particularly relevant to your own life.
And I don’t know why “idiot” doesn’t have the same sting or modern context around it, but despite its historical use, it simply doesn’t hit the same. I guess it could be that it’s not used so explicitly to identify neurodivegence, so much as it is a way of saying someone didn’t/doesn’t think things through, whereas using “retard” is more like insulting someone’s genetic pull. One label can be unlearned, while the other is a life-sentence. Once retarded; forever a retard.
If the n-word was used to describe people acting stupid would you feel comfortable with that? What if no black people complained about it? Would that make it okay? The degree of severity is clearly different because of the historical context, but it is basically the same thing for a different community. A community that, oftentimes, has far less ability to advocate for themselves and far less ability to mobilize en masse. It’s a word that inherently punches down, and using it does shape the perception of our community as well as just hurt our feelings because we are people that can feel and understand when we are being treated differently.
My b for that rant. It’s just fucked up that people act like getting punched in the kidney doesn’t hurt just because they’ve never been punched in the kidney before. That’s not how it works, and if there was a specific word for denigrating you (“you” as in whoever is reading this tbc) I’m sure many people like you would not like being reminded of what negative bullshit the world at large assumes about them based on something they had no control over. Shit fucking sucks, fullstop.
The r word is definitely not used exclusively to identify neurodivergent or disabled people.
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You can’t say retard anymore. You have to say autistic. Somehow that’s okay now.
Using autistic as an insult, the same way Joe Rogan wants to use the aforementioned slur, is absolutely not okay.
I mean, using it as an uninformed general insult is absolutely bigotry, but 99% of the time when I hear it used as a pejorative against specific behavior, it’s always used for behavior that is… well… kinda’ autistic by definition. Like the behavior would be cited by a psych as evidence for being autistic.
Does that make it OK to use for every concerning behavior? Certainly not. Though in my experience it’s used more as a direct clue that someone is behaving very abnormally and may want to introspect.
… Though that said, I don’t hang out with teenagers or immature twats, so maybe they’re slinging it around like 2000’s teenagers slung around “gay” as an insult…
I see the humor and the word being used as such on videos all over with the comments being positive. It’s not what I do, it’s what I see.
Autistic isn’t really a general purpose slur tho. It’s not even really an slur. That shit is specialized use only.