Sorry to post again, but I want to clarify that when I hear people whom I don’t really know use the term, I think they’re numpties. If someone I know and like / respect says it, like anything else, I know them and know their heart and so understand they are not being jerks. I’m looking at you, my respected and liked Doper friends 
OK, well, at least we can agree it has that connotation now, I think.
Why do you think too much PC is bad? It creates an environment where people are stifled and afraid to “speak naturally”. You can see lots of videos of kids on college campuses screaming about the use of some word they don’t like… but isin’t that kind of what kids do in college, protest stuff?
Why do you think too much PC is bad?
Last time this came up, I joked about having a vested interest in this. But, for some reason, I’m in less of a joking mood this time. It may be even the same reason the OP thought to start to this thread.
My take? Of course the words are offensive. That’s why they say them. The point is to offend. It is an insult, after all.
The question is how offensive. At this point, it’s just a little bit shy of “faggot” and “nigger”–and that’s only because you could conceivably still not know the issue. The mentally handicapped community has asked people to stop saying it, making a concerted campaign over it. Hell, I just saw on my very Right-leaning Facebook someone posting a 2012 story about a man with Down Syndrome calling out Anne Coulter for using it, and pretty much all likes.
When that happens–when there is a concentrated effort by a minority to get people to stop saying a word that is grossly offensive to them, the times up. The fact that the group in question told us it was grossly offensive and asked us to stop is why we stopped saying those other words. Any argument about censorship of the word “retard” must also apply to “nigger,” “faggot,” “kike”, “spic,” “chink” or whatever.
On this board, actually using those words (and not mentioning them) can get you in trouble. So likewise should “retarded” and “tard.” If this were some super freedom of speech board, maybe it would make more sense.
Not that I hold out hope any time soon. People say this is a liberal message board, but it’s remarkably conservative in some areas. I still marvel that the whole “jokes about women having sex” rule made it through. Normally, if it was okay in 2002, it’s okay now.
And this isn’t a lecture. It’s just me sharing my opinion. And I’m not being holier than thou. I used to use “retarded” all the time.
In the pit all language should be acceptable. The whole point of what the “people” in the pit do is to be offensive. Why have arbitrary tiers of douchebaggery?
Allowing the words to have that power allows too much power for those who are looking to be offended. I don’t want a world where an MLB owner in a private conversation with his mistress gets secretly recorded saying “player x’s contract is retarded.” and then due to mass hysteria over the word forced to sell his team.
could you please clarify what you mean by “looking to be offended”.
I don’t know anyone who wants that… where have you heard of such a thing?
Even going back 50 years (yes, I’m old), it has always been juvenile - only used by those both young AND stupid; only since the advent of “Politically Correct” has it become offensive all by itself.
c.f. niggardly, which was a perfectly good word. Because people who did NOT know what it meant, but nonetheless felt empowered to judge it, decided it SOUNDED like something else, it became taboo.
Worrying about people who go out of their way to demonize someone for what is said on a secret tape is not a paranoid fantasy. That girl at Princeton who probably had an aneurysm over an email in support of the 1st amendment is another example.
And the world where you can be forced to sell an asset because of a secret recording of a mere word does exist. Regardless of anyone’s desire for its existence.
What example are you referring too?
It’s not like he said 1 wrong thing then had to sell the team. Donald Sterling had to sell the clippers because he was a racist who used derogatory racist terminology on several occasions. This is not the type of person who should be deciding the salaries of black people who work/play for him.
The big point here is there is no Official Board of Political Correctness. Nobody has any power or authority to make pronouncements on what words people are allowed to say.
People love to point out attempts at extreme political correctness. What they don’t say is those attempts get laughed at. People won’t stop using the word fish because PETA wants to call them sea-kittens.
A call to avoid the use of a word is completely voluntary. Words only become taboo when the majority of people decide to stop using them. It’s just a social standard like any other.
'Tard or REtard are offensive.
But to call somebody ‘intellectually retarded’ is not,
Better though to label them as ‘intellectually disabled’ to avoid stuff.
Would you use the term “intellectually retarded”, referring to a 3rd party, in front of someone who you knew was actually mentally retarded? (I doubt you would).
It’s offensive, not because it’s an outdated description of some human phenomenon into which someone’s trying to classify someone else, but because it’s meant to be offensive, and being offensive isn’t a particularly grown-up or civilised way to debate. Isn’t that the point?
It’s an insult. Insults are supposed to be offensive, I mean, they are constructed to be that way. So, yeah.
I don’t know why it should be either more or less repugnant than any other insult people use here.
It doesn’t offend me though I’m sure it offends some people. I would not use tard or retard in front of someone who I thought might take offense but don’t have a problem with it on these boards.
Some insults are only offensive to the insulted party, e.g., “you motherfucker”. Other insults may be offensive to the insulted party AND whatever group of people the insulted party is being compared to, e.g., “retard”, “spastic” etc.
A gentleman is someone who never hurts anyone’s feelings accidentally. If I hurt someone’s feelings, I do it on purpose and with bad intentions.
Were I to call someone a retard in the hearing of a person who, unknown to me, had a retarded child, I would feel bad. It’s kind of a collateral damage situation. You shouldn’t use an indiscriminate weapon in a crowded room. Why use a hand grenade when you only want to harm one person?
This. Thank you. I’m not always thrilled with PC hypersensitivity either, and don’t really have a problem with “retarded” as a descriptive term for a D.D. person, even though I know it’s not considered polite anymore. The problem is using the term as an insult when it also applies to a group of people who are not the intended target (just like “gay,” above) – but they catch quite a lot of the damage anyway. Not cool at all.
“Mentally retarded” or simply “retarded” people are now described as “mentally challenged”.
Which means the two formerly used terms have been freed up for other uses.
Such as another way of saying stupid or dumb.
[emphasis mine]
“Should be”, maybe (I disagree) but definitely not “is”. (It might be a fun experiment to test out the limits there sometime. Not really.)
I’d like to see “tard” added to the rather long list of words which, if used as insults, are already completely forbidden here, even in the Pit. By the way, this isn’t censorship. It’s just house rules and I’m proposing an amendment to them. It shouldn’t be a hardship for most people.
If you want to call someone [hateful racial slur] as a casual insult, you’re free to do that in lots of places. Not here, thank God and TPTB.