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[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 104 points 3 weeks ago

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 At the same time, I have less and less tolerance for people who deliberately use outdated, insulting language.

[-] blandfordforever@lemm.ee 17 points 3 weeks ago

Spoken like a true neurodivergent.

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago
[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 10 points 2 weeks ago

Skibidy truth.

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[-] iii@mander.xyz 45 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

That was simply the euphemism du jour, on the eternal euphemism treadmill.

[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 21 points 3 weeks ago

The euphemism treadmill sure is differently abled

[-] lime@feddit.nu 11 points 3 weeks ago

can you really call it a euphemism when it just used to be a medical term back then?

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[-] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 34 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 27 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 2 weeks ago

It just gets shortened to disabled. I've seen it used countless times as an insult.

[-] Wahots@pawb.social 12 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

retarded doesn't have any more negative meaning than disabled. it's just about how we use it.

[-] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Ha. That's retarded.

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[-] Wahots@pawb.social 9 points 2 weeks ago

Culture evolves. I will say, some of the new terms drive me nuts because they technically mean the same thing, but are grammatically awkward or are otherwise clunky when conveying the same message.

Like sure, I technically have a disability, please don't try to frame it as a good thing or something to make it sound better. It just sounds condescending. I don't need pity, I'm living my life to the fullest now :P

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I mean, they are disabled! This whole "differently abled" is completely out of touch with reality.

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[-] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 31 points 3 weeks ago

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

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[-] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 13 points 3 weeks ago

yeah and part of it is they were used as insults but it was more co-opting than anything else. retarded is pretty legit as saying someone is retarded can be proper, but someone will call someone retarded who is not as an insult. then shortening is almost never correct. You might say someone is retarded and that is a correct thing about their condition but saying their a retard is not as its sorta a made up word based on the condition and further tard or tarded is a way to make it more derogatory. Its like homosexual. its a word that means something without being derogatory but to someone who thinks being a homosexual is bad will use it as an insult and using the word homo is almost always an insult (the rare exception is usage among friends to sorta deflate its meaning). When it comes down to it is that folks who spent decades with a word being legitamate will have trouble when it becomes a taboo thing for a decade or so.

[-] bizarroland@fedia.io 10 points 3 weeks ago

I have a special needs uncle and my whole life I grew up with him being called "retarded" and it not being a slur.

It was just a way to describe his mental functioning.

To me it doesn't have the same impact because I had never heard it used pejoratively until after it was a no-no word.

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[-] Allonzee@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago
[-] EchoCranium@lemmy.zip 24 points 2 weeks ago

gum ball machine Saw this at a consignment shop a couple months ago, from about that same time period.

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[-] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[-] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 19 points 3 weeks ago

In 1882, this event would have been called Swing For Imbeciles

[-] frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe 17 points 2 weeks ago

Wow the 80s were real different. You could advertise as a swinger and it's just chill.

[-] 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago

Ah the Euphemism Treadmill. Live long enough and words we use today for intellectual disability will become inappropriate too.

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[-] falk1856@midwest.social 16 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[-] Takumidesh@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] spujb@lemmy.cafe 6 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] Wahots@pawb.social 5 points 2 weeks ago

Under Rosa's law, these would be described respectively as profound, severe, and moderate levels of intellectual disability.

Unfortunately, I don't see the cycle breaking anytime soon. We got idiot and moron from the same medical textbooks as "retarded".

Gen B squeakers will start calling people "profoundly/severely disabled" in COD 2k35 and the cycle will be born anew.

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[-] spujb@lemmy.cafe 14 points 2 weeks ago

there’s something hauntingly poetic about the ebb and flows of human compassion coming together to form language that allows the marginalized to express their need for emancipation, only for the inevitable surge of encultured ableism to quell that spark and steal that language for its own purpose. over and over and over. what will break the cycle? will people with disabilities ever get to have a concrete hold on the words they use to describe themselves, or is this a permanent fixture in the world we are forcing onto the disabled?

[-] DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

In the latest Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM-5-TR), intellectual disability is the term that replaces mental retardation meaning mentally slow or delayed. Before mental retardation, it was mental deficiency implying there was something inferior. To me, there's no real difference between mental deficiency and intellectual disability. They are synonymous. Before the first DSM, a prominent doctor in the field of intelligence created a tiered system of intelligence that applied the labels moron, imbecile, and idiot (ordered higher to lower intelligence). Those words became derogatory too. The issue is not that scientists can't guess the correct term that wont become an insult.

The issue is that society defines values for people which allows terms to be insults. As long as oppression exists, the vulnerable will fall victim to it. The disabled, by definition, will always be part of the vulnerable group. Additionally, oppression is always justified by arguments on who deserves what, whether it be religion, race, sex, social class, work ethic, or intelligence. As long as we hold the value that inequitable distribution is not only acceptable but the ultimate goal of a just society, then regardless of the rules we establish, however noble or virtuous, the disabled will always be part of the oppressed, and thus, the terms for lower intelligence will continually evolve from neutral to derogatory.

[-] spujb@lemmy.cafe 8 points 2 weeks ago

As long as we hold the value that inequitable distribution is not only acceptable but the ultimate goal of a just society, then regardless of the rules we establish, however noble or virtuous, the disabled will always be part of the oppressed, and thus, the terms for lower intelligence will continually evolve from neutral to derogatory.

Preach! 🗣️🗣️🔥

[-] Zementid@feddit.nl 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The deaf seem to own it. They made up their own language and ableism can't do shit.

But that is the only exception I can think of. (And they are really independent).

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[-] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 weeks ago

Euphemism treadmill in action.

[-] lettruthout@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw a while ago...

"Join the one arm golfers and beat the world" (Accompanied with a depiction of an angry arm swinging a club at the ground.)

[-] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 weeks ago

I had a similar first thought.

We are swinging for their benefit, not at them.

[-] Steve@startrek.website 8 points 3 weeks ago

Only the preferred word has changed

[-] scala@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago

Where can I get one of these shirts..I love it..anyone own a printing press?

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[-] 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.com 7 points 3 weeks ago

"Committee member" is really the jewel on that shirt.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

The secret ninth rule of fight club

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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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