• kitnaht@lemmy.worldBanned
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      5 months ago

      Nobody’s “associating” anything. Nobody who’s calling someone retarded has any thoughts in their head about people with the mental disorder. If you called them a downie, then you would probably have a point; as it’s specifically worded to relate to downs syndrome.

      But “retard” has come to be an amplification of the word “idiot”. It’s like the words big, bigger, biggest.

      It’s the “biggest” of “idiot”.

      So if I’m gonna call someone an idiot, my levels of idiot are: Idiot, Dumb-ass, and Retard. I’m just calling them the word that corresponds to being a gargantuan idiot. You can’t use “gargantuan” because they don’t even know what the words mean; so you use retard.

      • AJ1@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        hey I have a question: how does everyone feel about “fucktard”? is that acceptable? it’s not a direct insult to persons with developmental disabilities, but it does have a fairly specific connotation that could be useful in certain situations, plus it throws out an F-bomb to emphasize your anger.

        but if that’s too offensive for some folks I guess I can just keep using “fuckmouth”, if that’s easier on the ears.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned
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          5 months ago

          but if that’s too offensive for some folks I guess I can just keep using “fuckmouth”, if that’s easier on the ears.

          fuck mouth might be too insensitive for those of us who have or don’t have sex, so basically all of humanity actually.

        • kitnaht@lemmy.worldBanned
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          5 months ago

          “Retarded” isn’t a medical definition under IDC-11, so they aren’t retarded, as the medical definitions have changed.

          Also Retarded has another standard definition – Being held back or stunted of which applies here.

            • kitnaht@lemmy.worldBanned
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              5 months ago

              They stopped using that word because it wasn’t descriptive. The same reason they stopped diagnosing women as “hysterical”. That’s the cool thing about the sciences; they evolve and change over time to be more descriptive, not less.

              And now, we use the word hysterical to describe certain things…kinda cool how that works, right? When I call something hysterical (extremely funny) - people don’t get offended and say I’m using a slur.

              Or when someone is losing their shit, you say they’re acting hysterical. It’s become a descriptor.

                • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Gradually?? I don’t think the r word has been directly related to mental disability the entire time I’ve been alive, and I’m not exactly young… You’re just choosing to take offense, which is white-knighting for the disabled when they’re not even being insulted… Kinda’ … extremely lame of you…

                  Oh wait, being lame used to be a health disorder! Guess I’m offending you again…

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned
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      5 months ago

      if someone is stupid, and making objectively stupid decisions, it would be fair to call them “developmentally challenged” especially if that person is donald trump, and the stupid decision is tariffs.

      Would it also be fair to call him a retard? Yes.

      should you? Probably not, would it be justified, yes.

      It’s only really fucked up if you’re using it belittle and demean someone, though there are also situations where this is deserved. Morals and ethics aren’t really a solid ground to stand on, more so a floating mass of garbage in the ocean, that just sort of, showed up one day.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned
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          5 months ago

          yeah, probably shouldn’t doesn’t mean you can’t though.

          Just because you probably shouldn’t yell at people, or swear at them, doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t.

          Not everything in this world is a binary, sometimes it’s situationally appropriate, sometimes it’s not, sometimes it’s in between.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned
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              5 months ago

              i don’t even necessarily disagree with that argument. I just don’t think it’s really all that relevant. I’m not even sure most people would disagree with it.

              Obviously you should be nice to people, you probably shouldn’t be an asshole, and you should help them as much as possible, but like, how many of us actually do that?

              It’s sort of like telling someone who smokes, that it’s bad for them, they know, you don’t need to remind them.