You see, the problem with that word is that people who want to keep it around really make me wanna use it.
Retarded is what you call your friends when they’re being retarded
Michael Scott
Joe Rogan identifies as a South Park character: offensive and two-dimensional
Of course retards like Rogan and Trump like that word.
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Glad someone went there.
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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"
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which shows the use is much more recent in medical contexts than I thought, Rosa’s Law 2010 is where it’s use was superceded in federal usage.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”
You can’t say retard anymore. You have to say autistic. Somehow that’s okay now.
Autistic isn’t really a general purpose slur tho. It’s not even really an slur. That shit is specialized use only.
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.
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.”
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.
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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.
no one has ever been offended by the word removed, unless they are getting offended on someone else’s behalf to virtue signal
“Everything I don’t like is
wokevirtue signaling”do you think virtue signaling isn’t a real thing, or that it never happens?
I didn’t say that. Do you think people who get offended at racial slurs are just virtue signaling?
No. Maybe sometimes they are. But generally, racial slurs are used explicitly to be racist or offensive.
The only way I’d be ok with Rogan using that term is if he publicly discloses the results of an IQ test and he got sub 70…
And even then, it would only be ok if he was self identifying as that label, not calling anyone he can’t understand that.
This man is nearly sixty years old
Outside of having people over with some interesting topics Rogey is a below average comedian.
Those interesting topic people would have been better off in another setting.
Also Rogan is a right wing propagandist hack, nevermind his lack of comedy skills.
I agree with you. Do you think he knows he’s a right wing propagandist, or does he think he’s espousing libertarian values?
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How could this word even be removed. Unlike the N word it actually has legitimate uses. I didn’t even know it was “bad” to say.
Yes agreed, I advanced or retard timing on an injector pump.
Wilfully ignorant.
By not calling people that?
is this where i say that we should cal him “Whee Rogan The Little” ?
using WRTL as an abbreviation is permitted and encouraged.
Is that pronounced “wertle”? Is so I love it.
I’m not a Rogan fan, and don’t agree with him on almost anything.
However, I’m a few years younger than him, and grew up with the word as an insult, the same as him. This was back when the absolute worst insults you could call a dude was the “F” bomb, and a girl the “C” bomb. The “R” bomb was fairly tame. It was a mild insult between friends, like “idiot,” “dumbass,” or “asshole.”
So, I really don’t have a problem with it, EXCEPT when it’s used to hatefully mock an actual retarded person, THEN it’s a different story. A furious different story. I had an older uncle who was severely retarded, and a girlfriend whose sister who was, also.
And yes, I know times change, and yes, “If it was about somebody you cared about…” I get it. It still doesn’t bother me unless it’s to harm someone actually that way. And yes, I realize he’s stated what he stated to get attention. Fuck him.
I also have no real dog in the fight, I grew up with the word being slung around with casual ease, and honestly it still is in most places, despite a lot of what the sensitive younger generation might be seeing in their own spaces, the culture between “average people” would seem highly problematic to most activist-minded individuals.
I have curbed my use, but I’m not going to attack people who say it to criticize power or insult someone who truly deserves it. This is one of those lefty “purity tests” that I can’t connect with fully, so I know average moderates will be wildly pushed away from this kind of mindless scolding, so I also don’t make it an issue. I literally do not care.
Now all that said, I think we need to collectively LAY WASTE to Rogan and all he stands for. His delight in being able to say a slur again is the most crass, stupid, R-word statement that he’s made yet, and he deserves to suffer as much as the people with intellectual disabilities who are going to be bullied and harmed because of his cavalier and inept attitude towards language and logic.
Guys, it’s okay to not be totally consistent. It’s okay to condemn Rogan for saying this and you aren’t going to be judged. Seriously, get on that soap box and knock this ape down a peg.
I grew up in the same culture acceptance of these terms, but I’ve grown to think of it like this. If I wouldn’t say it to the group of people it’s describing, using it to describe other people carries the same meaning.
You can’t separate the term from the group of people it’s offending. So using it as an insult reinforces it’s meaning and acknowledging why it’s offensive. So it’s equally wrong.
It’s the same reason I don’t say the n-word or why I wouldn’t use the derogatory terms used for trans people even in a joke.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t say it anymore, and I don’t use the “N” bomb, or the “F” bomb. I despise those people. I go out of my way to treat everyone with kindness and respect, until they prove they don’t deserve it. I’m just sarcastic sometimes. I’m just saying I’ve been hardened to that language, but I don’t like it, and I don’t use it, and I don’t associate with people who do.
My father was a rabid, irrational, to the point of mental illness racist, homophobe, misogynist, you name it. Everything that went wrong in his life was someone else’s fault. The man couldn’t have a 5 minute conversation without saying the “N” word. It wouldn’t surprise me if I learned he was in the Klan, but he’s been dead 13 years. This is because he was a malignant narcissist, who couldn’t admit fault. A person that I hated most of my life, so I fortunately wasn’t indoctrinated into the Cult of Hate.
