As I get older, I have more and more sympathy for people who can’t keep up with socially acceptable terminology. At the same time, I have less and less tolerance for people who deliberately use outdated, insulting language.
Spoken like a true neurodivergent.
No cap, fr fr!
Skibidy truth.
I have zero tolerance for people who think that their variety of a language is superior to all others, and that they get to impose it on others.
spoken like a true bigot mad about getting shamed
Spoken like a true linguistic supremacist.
Give it a few more years and then “mentally disabled” will be the new retarded. We’ll cringe at how people would say they’re “disabled”.
I work with the mentally disabled and have for a while now. I love my guys but it’s so annoying seeing how new terms will come and go throughout the years constantly.
The Euphemism Treadmill might stop when the term is so clinically dry as “mentally disabled”. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue of a schoolyard bully the way “retarded” does. I dunno, we’ll see.
I’m pretty sure that “mentally retarded” was the medical term for many decades, before it became cultural lingo. There was something similar for erectile dysfunction too, they used to call you impotent, not exactly a great thing to hear at the doctor’s office.
It just gets shortened to disabled. I’ve seen it used countless times as an insult.
retarded doesn’t have any more negative meaning than disabled. it’s just about how we use it.
Fun fact: word usage changes over time. For example, “idiot” used to be a technical medical term for extreme mental disability. We live in the Age of Information, and if somebody doesn’t want to learn about historical context that’s actually willful ignorance on their part.
Whenever medical science came up with a term to describe people with cognitive or intellectual impairments, it eventually became used as a derogatory insult. The R word was going out for a long time before Rosa’s Law put the mail in the coffin.
Why is retarded considered so offensive that people self censor but idiot isn’t? Is it just that retarded reached its peak in the internet era of policing speech or is there something special about the word that makes it much more offensive than idiot or imbecile?
They both have the same meanings, intentions, and ability to be used as an insult.
A) Time changes culture and language. I have no way to measure, but “idiot” could certainly have been on par with “retard” in its time.
B) The coopting of “retard” came at a time with a more mature disability rights movement. With the ADA passed in 1990, disabled individuals had a much greater capacity to speak out against the theft of their language than was possible in previous iterations of this pattern. You mention this a bit with your “peak internet era” comment, though a more charitable reading of that sentence might be that internet is allowing disabled people to get together and voice their experiences of being harrassed and abused in conjunction with the word, really speaking out for themselves rather than taking it lying down.
That was simply the euphemism du jour, on the eternal euphemism treadmill.
The euphemism treadmill sure is differently abled
can you really call it a euphemism when it just used to be a medical term back then?
Pro tip: It still is a medical term. Internet activists deciding they don’t like a word doesn’t actually change the word.
It’s not only the ‘SJW’ crowd who are asking people to stop using it, but also the medical field, patients, and their caregivers directly asking everyone to stop.
The results of both the parent and professional surveys support a move away from the use of the term mental retardation. The majority of parents indicated that they would be upset if a physician used the term mental retardation.
Right, the euphemism treadmill works on medical terminology same as common speech. The medical terms used to be ‘moron’, ‘idiot’, and ‘cripple’.
Goes medical term-> common language -> insult -> forbidden
I mean it’s not like the crown will cut your tongue out for saying the word. You can still say it, and people decide if it is taboo or not, and dis/approve accordingly.
But much like we don’t use “negroe” despite that having been the word in common use, we’ve recognized the pain it causes that group because of the way language gets weaponized to ‘other’ people.
Probably under pressure from the SJWs. Medical people are practically minded, not given to rewriting the nomenclature to suit the fashion of the hour (they still use Latin for God’s sake). Unless the money is threatened of course.
Tell me you’re a reactionary without telling me you’re a reactionary. Did you even read the link?
The results of both the parent and professional surveys support a move away from the use of the term mental retardation. The majority of parents indicated that they would be upset if a physician used the term mental retardation.
that’s not how that works. “idiot”, “lunatic” and “hysterical” were once medical terms. they are no longer used as such.
Here’s my random two cents about disability euphemisms.
I personally think “special”, which was pretty popular like 10 years ago, was/is pretty demeaning. Even the more recent “differently-abled” feels weird.
I think the plain language of “disability”, which seems to have been around quite a while now, is fine. It’s what is says on the tin, without judgement.
In 1882, this event would have been called Swing For Imbeciles
I am so glad you posted this. Sometimes I get into little arguments about word usage and younger folk truly don’t understand how not only commonplace word usage that is considered some sort of insult now but how officially they were used. Near me was a place that helped folks with all sorts of independent living including housing and job training and just counseling and it was called the NSAR and Im almost sure the R was retardation. Think it changed its name and I can’t find anything on it now but I did find like this https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/pdf/70s/70/70s-WWH-NARC.pdf
It’s hard to fully explain how the reception of words change to people who haven’t seen it first-hand.
Even some bad words, which might be incredibly rude to say today, didn’t have the same oomph in the past, so while the definition technically might not have changed, the intended severity of it has.
Saw this at a consignment shop a couple months ago, from about that same time period.How much was it? I’d buy that just to have a gumball machine.
