Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
I remember as a teen in the 90s in high school, doing a fake gay voice was considered funny and nobody thought twice about it. Even if the person wasn’t actually targeting anyone LGBTQ+ specifically, just doing the voice seemed to insinuate the somebody was less than masculine. Like, Oh, the water isn’t cold enough for you, let me repeat that request back in a gay voice to make fun of you.
I’m pretty sure if I even tried doing a fake gay voice at work now I would probably be shit-canned pretty quickly, which in a way goes to show how far society has come in not tolerating what would’ve just been crude humor in earlier times. I know the LGBTQ+ community has worked for decades to get to where they’re at today, but it still feels kind of crazy how quickly society changed.
Some children Songs I could never sing vor hear again, they make me cringe a lot (racism, sexism, …)
I used to play extreme music some 15 years ago and by God 80% of our humour was variations of calling each other f*gs. It’s quite sad cause we didn’t have an ounce of préjudice in us we were just wankers with dead end jobs and shit guitars. We met up with the boys a couple months ago and reminisced there was a lot of cringing…
Im almost 50 so a lot of the humor from my teens and earlier. I was pretty awful in how willing I was to target kids.
I no longer describe anything as ‘lame’ or ‘retarded’ or ‘spaz’ or their variants. It makes me sad ableism is so ingrained in even the most inclusive spaces even though the same argument has removed the use of ‘gay’ for the same reasons.
I also avoid dark or dry humour unless I’m confident the people I am talking to know it’s absurdist and not a serious opinion. I don’t always succeed at this.
The dry absurdist humour being taken seriously is real. Too many times lately I’ve been getting strange looks to what I thought were obviously absurd jokes/opinions. I’ve probably been spending too much time online
I think it’s partly a symptom of our world being super-connected. There are some loud people out there with some really poorly founded ideas, and opinions which most people would consider absurd. Previously that might be only one or two people in a community, but the internet has changed that for good.
I also try not to do it anymore to help people with disabilities which prevent them from readily picking up on sarcasm like autism. I don’t need to accidentally influence someone who has taken me at face value. It’s so hard not to revert back to old habits though.
I honestly don’t think it’s ableism. Languages evolve and retarded doesn’t mean a mental condition it literally means “dumb”. Most people don’t even know “lame” is related to a movement conditions and if you did a statistical analysis 99% of use cases are not related to the “original meaning”. People are just ignorant of how language works, especially since English is a global language.
Yeah, people made the same arguments about ‘gay’ and ‘fag’.
Retarded was the word of choice medically in the 60’s - 80’s for people with developmental disabilities. It derives from the Latin word Tardus which means slow or late.
Languages evolve, but the euphemistic treadmill is ongoing. The word ‘cretin’ derived from the word ‘Christian’, the person who coined it intended it to mean that people with cognitive impairments were still people worthy of respect. And now it’s just a straight up insult. Similar with ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’.
And these days you can look at wojaks which use physical differences like drooling or missing half a head or being physically unattractive in unconventional ways to indicate ignorance or stupidity.
Every word that people use to try to describe people with disabilities respectfully becomes a slur. That’s because of ableism. It’s just not talked about much.
More on this topic for anyone interested in the euphemism treadmill: https://humanparts.medium.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-mentally-retarded-e3b9eea23018
Would you then advocate that no one should ever use the words “idiot”, “moron”, or “cretin” ever again? What about “dumb”, or “stupid”?
(edit) - People are fun. They actually believe that no human should ever want to throw insults at another human ever again. Fascinating.
I try not to use any of those words, but it is hard as they are so prevalent in society, even in my progressive and inclusive circle.
I decided a while ago to substitute all those with the word “Turnip” - as in the vegetable. I doubt anyone could be genuinely offended by that and it sounds good when said - Don’t be a Turnip! try it out, its a fun word to use and people seem to be tickled by it.
I think they have more historical distance from their original intent, but I still try not to use them. I favour more targetted and creative insults, or at least more accurate descriptions of the problem.
What others do is not up to me. But I do encourage thinking about the context of the words we use and how our world view is shaped by the development of language. There are a lot of cultural eccentricities buried in etymology, and many of them are no complimentary.
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I mean it really comes down to context and just not being a dick to those around you, seems like a pretty easy ask to just be decent to people as best as you can idk
Is lame ableist? I knew about the other 2, and I think anyone else growing up in the 2000s used them at some point (myself included, don’t anymore though), but I’ve never heard of lame as being a slur.
You can pry “lame” and “spaz” outta my cold, dead tongue!
Technically yes but I’m disabled and it’s literally never seemed ableist to me. I’ve never heard anyone use it as anything other than “that’s a bummer” or “you’re ruining the vibe”
I think that specific word has been reformed
Lame is kind of an old word for someone or something with a bad leg or legs.
Like how a horse is lame if its leg is broken.
Huh TIL. Tbh lame seems more disconnected than the other two. Looking at the etymology on Google it seems it was last used in that way commonly in the late 1800s, so maybe that is why.
We still use it in English for the original purpose. If I told a native UK/AU/NZ English speaker the horse was shot after a race because it was lame, people wouldn’t assume it was because the horse was uncool.
I think lame might get more of a pass because it’s very rarely used to describe people any more, so there is a bigger disconnect.
You’re right that I have more frequently been described as crippled rather than lame, but I have still experienced some ‘fun’ double entendre with lame.
That sucks, I’m sorry. Not sure why I’m surprised that people would use the more archaic definition just for cruelty’s sake
Im really trying hard to stop calling shit retarded. im 40 dammit its just what we always said :(
Same, even now I’ve been making an effort not to for years, it still sometimes pops up in my internal monologue. Over-writing preprogrammed habits is hard, I am right there with you.
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I have managed to stop calling things gay. managed that one a long time ago so yeah ill give myself that. But retard slips out so much still.
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Gay is one of the most useful words. There isn’t and never was a replacement for that word. It just fits a certain description of a certain something that no other word quite fits.
Gay used to mean happy, then it meant homosexual, then it meant some annoying, uncomfortable, awkward thing. We have words for the first two definitions but we don’t have an alternative to the third. It just made sense in some many different contexts nothing could replace it.
Gay (the three letter word) for the third definition was a thing of beauty and I wish it would come back. Let’s just go back to calls gays homosexuals and we can use gay for a better untapped market.
Cringe seem to have become popular to describe all kinds of annoying, uncomfortable, or awkward things lately. Maybe use that instead since the other two uses of gay were pretty well established when people started using it as the third definition.
Cringe?
Seems pretty simple to replace spaz with spez now…
Yep, an ADHD diagnosis made me realize how ableist society is, stuff that looks easy for some is insurmountable for others.
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You can do as you wish, but I prefer not to join. I don’t think it’s fair to people with spasticity symptoms, an often very painful condition, to be associated with someone who is just a greedy selfish arrogant waste of skin. They suffer enough without being insulted too.
Crap, it never occurred to me that “lame” was even related to disability. I mean, obviously it is - though in my mind that aspect of the word was almost exclusively related to animals. Is lame rude now too?
I was raised in a fundamental christian extremest environment and stuck with it for 30 years. I’m now a card carrying atheist.
If you’re carrying a card you’re still in a cult.
Church of Satan
TIL my local library is a cult
The cult of the shhhs
I always call those people anti-theists, as opposed to atheists. The ones who almost have their lack of religion as a religion in itself and criticise (and let’s be honest, demean) anyone with a faith.
By all means, criticise the church, and the structures, which harm people. Criticise the willfully misinterpreted doctrine. The religions themselves, people’s beliefs? Leave them alone.
Criticise the willfully misinterpreted doctrine
Do you think there is something inherently good or harmless in religion and that harmful practice is always the result of misinterpretation?
Most of the time yes. A really simple example is the Bible line “thou shall not lie with men as women”, the original text says boys not men. The Jewish peoples saw the Greeks fucking kids and said “hey, uh no, let’s make that a law, that you shouldn’t do that”. Boy became men, and that’s been used to claim the Bible forbids homosexuality.
I don’t think there’s anything ultimately wrong with religion as such. People always try to find meaning and purpose in life. If religion gives them a way of doing that, then excellent; if religion plays no part, then also excellent. The goal is to be a good person, regardless of why you do it. Is a Christian who follows the tenent “love thy neighbour” worse than someone who loves their neighbour? A Jew who helps Muslims despite the tensions between their faiths, and they help because YHWH says to? Are they worse than an atheist who chooses to not help? Religion isn’t the problem. People are, people are always the problem.
FYI, people’s beliefs can be wrong. If someone’s religion says the Earth is 6000 years old, then that religion is harmful and we should not tolerate that belief.
Obviously there is nuance here. It’s not ok to be prejudiced against religious people, but we shouldn’t let people get away with nonsense by calling it religion.
Oh absolutely, criticise the beliefs that don’t make sense, and are tolerated. But pretty much everyone of most major faiths believe in science. There’s the fundamentalists, who are extremely loud in their ignorance, but the majority of people aren’t that.
Those people’s beliefs destroy society. It’s the #1 citation for abortion legislation. Literal wars have been fought over “beliefs” about who is the best magic sky fairy. Ever heard of Sharia law? Believe it or not, based on these “beliefs”.
So no. Fuck no. I will not leave them alone.
And the 99% of people who don’t loudly practice extreme beliefs which have been coopted for nefarious purposes?
In 2016, nearly 80% of Ireland identified as Catholic, and that was a low point for the country. Yet in 2015, we voted for same sex marriage; in 2018, we voted to legalise abortion; in 1995, we voted to legalise divorce; in 2018, we voted to stop treating blasphemy as an offence; in 1973, we voted to recognise other religions and stop putting Catholicism on a pedestal.
There’s plenty to criticise mass religion, and especially institutions for, but don’t conflate the powerful, and the extremists, who choose bigotry and hate over love and compassion, with the everyday person who just wants something to provide them with peace.
Not even close. Try again
I was raised Baptist, with all the shitty bells and whistles. I’m now an agnostic theist. Part of me is still fond of Christianity, but definitely not the more eyebrow-raising stuff nor the church.
I am proud of my new theistic beliefs now, as they remain rational and embrace how little we really can know. And now I validate atheism as rational and normal too. At least in principle— some atheists can be as cultish and angry as some Christians or some vegans or any other community that focuses on world-scale beliefs and issues. But I digress.
Congrats on getting away from extremists and forming your own beliefs, fam.
The same as OP
Same. So glad I grew out of that edgy phase.
Putting people down and using ableism as the punchline in a joke/retort/comment
I automatically reject any arguments based on the “human nature”. We know jack shit about our nature.
I will argue that it is human nature to lie. Dismissing that would be folly.
Anybody that simply dismiss’s an argument with valid standing is not worth talking to.
Anybody that simply asserts their statement to be true, is not worth talking to.
Historically, there have been countless statements about the human nature proved wrong. Some of them were even used to support the most harmful idealogies like sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc.
It’s never about correctness, science knows better than simply referring to human nature.
So you are dismissing it is human nature to lie?
And ideally, we have enough self-control enough to rise above the bad aspects of human nature
Accepting the ability of self-indentification is one of the few exceptions I would be willing to make.
I cannot support it logically, but I truly want to believe in it.
I reject any argument based on something supposedly being natural. Who draws the line? And nature is a bitch anyway.
I agree! Too much justified with “human nature” when in reality it’s a local cultural discourse and practice. However, I do think we can say some things about humans. Check out The Ethical Primate by Mary Midgley
Definitely adding it to my Todo list, thanks for the suggestion!!
Grew up in the 80s and 90s. As progressive and openminded as I thought I was then…holy shit there are a lot of words and phrases I won’t touch any more because they sound archaic, racist, mysoginistic, or hateful today. Back then they were perfectly acceptable everyday things no one would bat an eye at. It does make me happy that at least in this small arena we seem to have made progress as a society.
(Should add that this is from a US perspective)
I was rewatching some Buffy the vampire Slayer and Buffy asks herself if she’s “mentally challenged” in the second episode.
It’s kind of crazy to me how I didn’t bat an eye at that just 10 years ago when I was watching the show in high school.
Society and language evolve at a truly spectacular rate
If we could just stop regressives from taking us back every time we think we’ve moved forward.
And I assure you the more conservative minded at the time complained that she did not use the term “retarded”
Wtf no one complained about that.
They absolutely did. Not everyone who watched Buffy was liberal or even had basic decency.
Nah you’re full of shit lol maybe you saw one loser complain on the Buffy forum or something, but I can assure you as a conservative myself no one gave a fuck about that lmao
Or I had crowds of conservatives complaining she was being politically correct by not using the term retarded which was 100% acceptable at that time.
I was a huge Taylor Swift fan until she knowingly started dating a racist, sexist dirtbag. Dating someone with such views means you excuse those views. I was and am not willing to financially support someone with those views.
I also used to fly a whole lot. Probably once or twice a month on average. I developed a bad conscious about it and just stopped. I allow myself to fly if I absolutely have to (has happened twice so far), but otherwise I only travel by train or bus. My vacation destinations have changed quite a bit, to say the least.
In the 90s, anything bad was “retarded” or “gay”. Those don’t really fly anymore.
I used to be a full on incel, it’s an easy hole to fall into if you hate yourself. I had to take a good look at myself and realize that I was the problem, and now I’m a far happier person
For starters I don’t listen to the band The Mentors anymore. Also I quit watching gory videos long ago and recently quit watching anything that gets me emotionally charged. So much on the internet serves no constructive purpose, it just riles up emotions. We’ve all heard “you are what you eat”, the same goes for what you put in your eyes and ears
Can’t think of too many, quite honestly. I don’t buy into most of the bullshit these days. Moving the goalpost all the time doesn’t change the underlying issues and yet that is all most people want to do - make a meaningless gesture to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside even though nothing has changed.
