I know so many people who adamantly stand by their use of it. I used to say it, too, but all it took was one person to point out to me that it was hurtful and I apologised and stopped no questions asked. I don't get why it's so hard to just have a little empathy.
i used to think it was okay for me to say as i'm disabled. what i noticed, though, is that my doing so 1) communicated to my abled peers that it's okay for them to say as well & 2) made me appear as a pick-me; i was perceived as "one of the good ones."
the r-slur has been causing a very visceral reaction in me for years & i will continue to report each & every instance of it.
That's the problem I have when people of that slur use it. And worse, they act like it's not a big deal. There's offensive words I can use because of my skin tone that would absolutely get any non-colored person choked out.
But you nailed it. If I brush it off like it doesnt offend/isn't a disgusting word, then I am giving permission to others that it's okay to say.
based and i adore people who are like you
it does tend to be a good litmus test for disempathy, sadly. obviously there are outliers, but if one can’t take a tiny correction to like 0.01% of their vocabulary, color me not surprised when that same person starts talking about the immigrant problem or women’s place in the home or something :(
Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.
I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.
I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.
Blahaj.zone admin here. Let me make this simple and clear. I don't care what specific word you use, if you are using intellectual disability or neurodivergence as an insult, you're going to get moderated.
Genuinely curious if this applies to moron and idiot, since they have basically the same origin story.
thank you ada 🩷🩷🩷 sorry about this post i didn’t know it was going to get so awful
If I call you "stupid," "moronic," or "intellectually bankrupt" you know what I'm saying. Getting offended by the specific wording of an ad hominem, while giving synonymous terms a pass, is truly some of the finest hair-splitting I have ever had the displeasure of seeing.
Imagine calling the difference between people who do stupid things and people who are born with diagnosed mental illnesses "splitting hairs".
It's very, very simple. In one case, you are attacking someone who is completely in control of their mental facilities. In the other, you are attacking people who are literally incapable of defending themselves, from birth. They are not synonymous. If you think that level of punching down is okay, then be as indignant and self-righteous about it as you want, but you deserve to be told.
Intellectually-disabled people were originally defined with words such as "morons" or "imbeciles", which then became commonly used insults.
I don't see anyone getting a ban anywhere for calling someone a "moron," for any other reason than making an ad hominem. The thought is almost laughable.
So, we're just going to pretend that language doesn't evolve because it justifies your bias?
People didn't put their foot down when the meaning of those words began to shift, and now they mean something entirely different. In our more socially and culturally aware culture, we as a people understand nuance and are generally educated enough to see what's happening. We have by and large decided that it's a bad thing to continue normalizing attacking the mentally disabled.
Fuck off with your pseudo-intellectual defense of toxic, dehumanizing culture. Words mean things. The things they mean can change. Those ones, in a less educated and accepting time, did. The ones we have now have not. Your attempt to dismiss that is genuinely hateful.
The push to get people to stop saying it Streisand Effected the word into a slur. There's no reason it shouldn't have just gone the way of "moron," except people turning it into a bigger problem than it ever had any right being.
The entirety of your final paragraph reads like a guilt by association fallacy.
Tell that to anyone in the aviation industry and you'll get a chuckle and a couple of "bless your heart"s.
entirely different word and we both know it
Try telling that to a text filter or a moderator on a power trip. They won't give a rat's ass about "to retard" meaning "to reduce or hold back." Even the linked article fails to make the semantic distinction when it calls for the elimination of the word.
If this comment disappears, it will have proven my point.
it’s giving 6th grade locker room 😂😂😂
“dude look i found a way to say it and dude it’s allowed because it’s about airplanes”
And a bitch is a female dog, I know. There's a factor of intention, a.k.a mens rea, a.k.a guilty mind that separates right from wrong based on why a person does something. It's this sort of inconvenient nuance that dealing with absolutes doesn't allow.
and there’s a matter of intention to me blocking you, too. literally no one disagrees with you, not even me. i am not calling for an “absolute” anything
your sophomorisms are literally just being posted to give you an excuse to type le edgy words. and worst crime of all you’re not doing it even in a funny or thoughtful way, you are just being mean about it. take care and i hope to me is the most unkind you will be to anyone all day.
The fact that this lame strawman argument has received so many upvotes is baffling. Who gives a fuck what the random moderator that you invented does?
It's quite obvious that it's very different to use it as a verb and as a noun to refer to someone.
It was offensive even way before that. I remember us not serving a customer at the fast food place where I worked because he used it around my co-worker whose brother had Downs Syndrome.
I've never really associated with people who use that word.
Lemmy seems to be pretty good about not using it, though. Reddit, on the other hand...
Edit: After reading this thread, I take it back. There are some straight up disgusting people in this community who really, really want to use the r-slur.
It's just lazy. If you want to hurt someone's feelings you need to do the work.
i miss old school r/murderedbywords
How am I supposed to just stop using this word?? How else is the plane supposed to tell me to put thrust at idle during landing? This is ridiculous.
no hate to you but i do hate that this is one of the default responses the internet has chosen when discussing this language (twice now in this thread)
i guess it’s like a growing pains thing, but it strikes me as very middle schooler, kind of like bringing up that one word that means unwilling to share with others.
one is a noun/adjective, the other is a verb. entirely different words that simply have the same Latin root. one is used in a professional context in an industry nearly none of us are familiar with, the other i come across as a derogatory on this site pretty much hourly. please let’s grow up a bit about this.
(again no hate to you specifically commenter, it was a funny joke and i just want to call out the broader trend)
It probably gets annoying as a bystander, but I don't have a lot of opportunities to bring aviation into the rest of my life. Especially in a way that's mildly funny.
This is a real convo I had with middle schoolers when I did a stint as a teacher.
"But teacher why I can't I say SHITAKE? it's a mushroom. And James is acting like a little SHITAKE head."
Just don't use it to refer to people and you're golden. There are many slurs that are also legitimate scientific terms, like how fag(g)ot is a bundle of sticks, or how in physics you have the Advanced and the Retarded Green's functions.
To be fair to Airbus,
They probably chose the language for that call-out way before 2009. Airplanes can live for thirty years, and type designs can keep going several decades longer
The designers were also likely to be French, but they selected English call-outs. This seems to me like a case where they picked a word that's technically in the OED l, but is actually much more common in French.
I asked a question about this after seeing it quite a bit here!
This is the argument I see to defend use of the word and I've never understood it. Where I am (west coast-ish of the US), the word is used very specifically to mean autistic. If you ask someone not to say retard, they say autistic instead. If you ask them not to say autistic, they say special education. If not that, slow. If not that, someone who takes the short bus. Unambiguously the people here use the r slur as a slur against autistic people. They use it as an insult towards allistic people to degrade them as lesser. Same as calling a straight person the f slur. Maybe it's different in other parts of the country, but the r slur is absolutely used as a slur against autistic people where I am.
I guess I'm getting too old. Is everyone these days offended by crumbs? And don't come in with your vocabulary evolves, works both ways. Were I live everyone uses a multitude of slurs and nobody is hurt in the process, but if they do. Then they open their mouth and we have a civilized discussion about it. We're nearing a point of a privacy invaded society by the people and not the governments at this rate, everyone is opinionated about everything and hurt in the feelings if someone doesn't adhere to their vision on reality.
this post is literally the definition of me opening my mouth and having a civilized discussion about it. pls respect that. :)
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