I am wondering why that is. Surely people could use ill informed, ignorant, unsophisticated, poorly educated, lacking in perspective, etc.
Why do woke people use disparaging terms for developmentally disabled people to describe posters they disagree with? Why is it acceptable?
I moved this to IMHO for you. Clearly not a GQ question.
Retard is a slur used against people with mental disabilities. The rest are not.
It’s akin to asking why it’s okay to say someone conned you or cheated you, but not okay to say they “jewed” you. To use those words shows prejudice against that group.
If you were unaware that retard is a slur, that might be why you are confused. It is—it has been historically used to attack people with intellectual impairments, like this with Down Syndrome, and theyve asked us for decades now to stop saying it. That’s the same logic used with any slur: the n-word was historically used to attack black people, and black people asked people to stop saying it.
And, note, I make no comment on the equivalence between two slurs. Just that words that are generally regarded as slurs are generally not allowed, while other negative words are. This isn’t unique to this board.
Finally, I’m not interested in a debate about whether the term is a slur. It is widely regarded as one, and that’s all that matters to answer your question.
Dictionary.com disagrees with that.
Moron is no longer in use as a medical term, and it’s offensive and ableist to equate someone you think is acting foolish to a person with a disability.
No need to complicate this, as a society we have collectively decided to stop using retard and retarded. We have not collectively made the same decision on Idiot, Moron & Imbecile at this time. Probably coming down the line but hasn’t happened yet.
The Straight Dope is not different from US Society in general in this regard.
Learning for justice has this to say: Calling those people ‘stupid’ may be cathartic, but it doesn’t communicate as much about the problem as the other words that are available. Compared to words like “bigoted”, “belligerent”, or “thoughtless”, its only strength is that it’s demeaning.
It does not. I never said anything about the word “moron” or ableism.
What I said is that “retard” is generally regarded as a slur, and thus you are expected not to use it. Debating over what is or is not a slur does not answer your question.
You’re in IMHO, and originally asked in GQ. Your question asks for an answer, not a debate.
Do you agree calling someone a moron is offensive?
On the liberal offensive scale, we’re does it rate?
What level of offensiveness is not allowed?
These questions are not relevant to the question you asked in the OP. My opinion or yours has no bearing on what is or is not regarded as a slur by society on general.
This isn’t even a liberal/conservative thing.
All those other terms were quasi-medical at one point. There seems to me (I think I saw it mentioned so not original) something of a treadmill for insulting terms like this where a medical description gets coopted by the general public thus eventually falling out of favor in the medical community because of the negative connotations.
I understand that you don’t want to answer.
My sister (a nurse) works with the Developmentally Disabled. So she broke me of the habit of saying retard. This is going on well over 25 years and I think a lot longer than that.
But while I haven’t seen the phrase before, I think I know what you mean with the treadmill.
I have long since stopped trying to make sense of why certain slurs are OK and others are not. A lot of people resort to a circular argument: It’s not offensive yet, so it’s not offensive yet - but then say another slur of equal weight is offensive therefore it’s offensive.
It’s called the euphemism treadmill and was coined by Stephen Pinker. The article gives good description of how retarded replaced moron, idiot, and imbecile and now is being replaced by developmentally disabled etc.
Yes. And it’s obviously meant to be offensive. That’s why use of the term against another poster isn’t allowed on the Dope, except in the Pit.
Maybe what you really have a problem with is the existence of the Pit, where posters freely speak their minds and provide their unfiltered opinions. Some posters enjoy that sort of environment, others don’t.
The problem with terms like “retard” is that they carry historically recent associations that are particularly insulting to the developmentally disabled. Those other terms carry no such associations in most contexts.
I would offer up my posting in the pit as evidence that I do not have a problem with the pit.
I like it because it allows people to show the contents of their character.
I’m offended by your term “woke people.”
And your not-too-subtle efforts to imagine some kind of liberal hypocrisy here.
By imagine you mean point out? My understanding of woke people is aware ness of privilege, bias, discrimination, intolerance etc.
When people who are intellectually gifted demean those who are not, it seems to violate the principles of being woke.
So, you’ve got it all figured out. What’s the purpose of this thread?
You won’t get disagreement from me. I wouldn’t call another poster an idiot, a moron, and imbicile or stupid any more than I’d call them a retard.