I think the reasoning has long been that any user can avoid (and now “mute”) the Pit, so rules can be laxer there (though there are still rules, of course).
I grew up with a guy who had Down Syndrome a couple of houses from me. His name was David. He was a nice guy, he was obsessed with the Rocky movies and has posters of Rocky all over his room, liked to wear boxing gloves and spar for fun.
When I was young I stood out from kids my age. I hadn’t yet developed the skills to speak like a “normal” person. I read a lot of books and my speech was flavored by things I read. I didn’t learn until later how to change my speech patterns to sound like my peers. I was ostracized and picked on constantly. By 6th grade I basically had no friends at school.
Except one person, named Gordon. Gordon had developmental issues, though despite being in Special Education classes, talking with slurred speech, and wearing hearing aids, he was pretty bright and very relatable. Like me, he was ostracized, just for different reasons. We had no classes together but every day at recess we would chat and play. He was my only real friend at school.
Another thing that was great was that despite being on very different tracks at school, we were both going to be transferred to the same Junior High School. So I would still be able to see my friend next year.
That summer, Gordon passed away from health complications. I never got to see him at my new school. Instead, starting at a new school I adapted, intentionally imitating my peers to try to fit in. I became a social butterfly and got to know lots of people. I built on those skills through life, later going into retail, and sales, and now I’m an IT guy who most of my coworkers can comfortably talk to, I can relate very technical things in simple language. I tend to befriend everybody because it makes my job easier. I’m the opposite of that kid in elementary school who didn’t know how to make friends or communicate comfortably.
But when I hear people use a word like “retard” as a pejorative, it makes people like David and Gordon seem like trash. Real people, good people. When you say something very wrong or ill-advised is “retarded”, when you say a person who is willfully ignorant is a retard, you are taking a dump on my friend Gordon’s grave.
Anyone defending that language should be completely ashamed of themselves. This community should be better than that. It at least has pretensions of being better. Show that you’re above that kind of bigotry.
Thing about that is any word that denigrates one’s mental capabilities can be argued to be equally problematic. Moron, stupid, imbecilic, idiotic, retarded all mean basically the same thing. Retard just sounds worse but the underlying meaning about there being something negative about below average intelligence, which is an immutable characteristic, is still the same.
And where did I say either of these things? Please quote me.
Outing someone as what? A jerk? Because we have a board rule that covers that.
I’m fine with using it as a tool for outing someone as a jerk, and then sanctioning them for that.
Really? That’s what happened? Ya sure it wasn’t a celebration of the removal of a stupid rule that was almost never supported or, more importantly, enforced with any vigor?
Snuggly Puppy!
The meaning of words does not derive from theoretical a priori reasoning. It derives from usage. It is an empirical fact of common usage that if I call you an idiot I am doing no more than comment on how I feel about your cognitive capacity as an individual. Whereas if I call you “retard”, it carries the connotation that I am attempting to demean you by placing you in a class of people, and I am implicitly disrespecting the human dignity of that entire class of people. The fact that this usage might not be totally logically consistent is irrelevant. There is also no a priori reason why the n-word should be a worse slur than many others, but it is nevertheless objectively much worse.
This may change. Part of the reason for the “treadmill” of language here is that as certain words become taboo in civilized discourse, nasty people co-opt different words for the same nasty purpose. It may be that in 10 years time some other word carries the same connotation as “retard” does today. And we cross that bridge when we come to it. But don’t mistake the evolution of language for a “slippery slope”.
For no apparent reason, my ears are burning 
Great post. Sincerely.
But that’s just not true. In common usage, “retarded” does not simply mean that a person is of below average intelligence. It applies to people who have specific developmental disabilities. It has even been used to describe such people clinically until recently.
Other terms might have once applied to the same demographic, but it was so long ago that the usage is no longer applicable.
“Retard” is a loaded, highly offensive word that is no longer used casually in polite society, for good reason. It shouldn’t be used on this board, even in impolite discussions (such as the Pit).
LOL, funny coincidence there!
And thank you. I want to explain why this is so personal to me. This isn’t a hypothetical argument I make dispassionately. I think any slur has that potential impact on anyone who posts here, or might post here. That’s why I reject the argument that it’s okay to denigrate a class of people, because they’re unlikely to be in this community. First, that’s not necessarily true, and second, it doesn’t just affect the people in that demographic. It also affects anyone who has had friends, family, or other loved ones in that demographic.
Another friend of mine became a Special Education teacher. She would never waste time here if this kind of speech was common and accepted.
(I don’t think it’s common, luckily, and I hope it isn’t accepted.)
I assumed appropriate use of clinical terminology would not be a problem and we were talking about the use of the word as a slur.
I’ve never seen that phrase before. Seeing it today, i definitely have a problem with it.
No, but don’t call another poster one. Also don’t call a politician one, not that it happens but don’t call a celebrity one either.
Pretty much not encouraged at all.
There’s a difference between “below average intelligence” that words like “idiot, stupid, moron” convey, and “mental disability” that words like “retard, spaz” or even “crazy” convey. The intelligence of neurotypical people varies a lot without being pathological, and likewise the intelligence of people with mental disabilities varies too.
A “stupid” person is stupid of their own volition, for one reason or another unwilling to attempt to broaden their horizons. If I call you stupid, it’s with the understanding that you could be something other than stupid if you simply cared to be.
“Retard” on the other hand, grants no such volition. Nobody chooses to be retarded, and while it’s possible to be treated for and live with mental illness it is not possible to stop being retarded. Furthermore, by using it as an insult I am implicitly saying that it’s wrong and shameful to live with mental illness.
If you can’t understand the difference between these two, or see striking “retard” from the record as a slippery slope to removing the ability to comment on someone’s intelligence in any way, then you are (checks which board this is) you need to learn more about mental illness.
My turn for an anecdote.
I was born in the early 60’s. In … I think it was 4th grade … there was a kid at my school named Harold.
Looking back, I don’t know what we would have labeled Harold today, but … he was distinctly neuro-atypical.
And he was either borderline or an actual savant. Sports.
He had significant difficulty communicating and a very obvious movement disorder, but – just like some people are low functioning but can tell you the day of the week of any date in any century – Harold knew like every sports statistic imaginable. He was a very narrowly focused walking almanac.
Kids were not relentlessly merciless to Harold, but they were, at least occasionally, memorably unkind.
What I distinctly recall was kids saying, “You’re going to wake up dead, Harold.”
And that would traumatize him.
On other threads, we talk about moral courage and moral cowardice. I didn’t stand up to these sociopathic bullies. I doubt I could have.
But I’d periodically go home and look up sports stuff – not my thing, organically – and just give Harold pop quizzes when I’d see him. He’d light up. And I never stumped that dude. Never.
I’d like to double down on my belief that ‘retard’ and ‘retarded’ don’t belong here, and that they don’t belong in the lexicon as slurs.
And I’d like to do it for Harold … maybe as an act of contrition for what I couldn’t do for him back then.
And as to The Pit, by its very nature ? Nah. The difference between:
- Telling somebody to F themselves with a cactus, and
- Saying, “Well, isn’t that just like a greasy Mexican”
is profound.
It would be disheartening to believe that anybody here would require much elaboration on that.
Yes, exactly. (Though maybe start by assuming, depending on other cues from their style, that they might just be naive.)
I might be contradicting myself a little. Eh, they’re probably a jerk.
I don’t really get this. What is the functional distinction between this and banning the word as hate speech? If someone uses the word, they are sanctioned by the mods.
We cannot pretend it’s not banned, wait for people to use it then say “aha, gotcha”.
The notion that it should be allowed in order for nasty people to “show us who they are” only makes sense as an argument for allowing continued usage without sanction. If we ban the word, anyone will still obviously have the option of showing us who they are by using the word once (well, a couple of times, nobody is advocating instaban here).
I think that Left_Hand was just being witty.
Ah, my bad, was he just making the same point I’m making, sarcastically?
I really should let them speak for themselves, but I believe that they feel that using such terms is a form of jerkitude, and as such, they should be sanctioned on the Don’t be a jerk prime directive.