On a recent VH1 documentary about the history of punk rock, Henry Rollins describes the Ramones as “four retarded guys in leather jackets” (or something like that), but they bleeped him! This is along the same lines as a letter to self-appointed language policeman Ann Landers a couple months ago. A woman complained up a storm that her daughter’s dance instructor had said “this may look a little retarded” while demonstrating some exercises.
But if it’s no longer acceptible to refer to mentally handicapped people as “retarded”, can’t the term still mean something else? One dictionary definition is: “slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress”. It can also simply mean “inhibited” or “restrained” in a particular way, and in the above context it can be understood to mean “awkward”.
None of this need have anything to do with those poor victims of disability or the delicate feelings of their loved ones, so why do we need to resort to censorship?
Amazing. Mentally retarded is okay, but you can’t call somebody retarded. It is a fine and stupid line, and I suspect that the teenagers can be safely blamed for this one.
It is not uncommon to walk through a group of adolescents and hear “Hey, retard!” being bandied back and forth as though it were the wittiest insult ever created. Because of the indiscriminate & incorrect usage of the word, we can’t even use it in the most appropriate settings now.
In this day and age where most of us don’t hesitate to flip the bird to our fellow motorists, we still have to come up with soft bullshit words to make sure people’s feelings don’t get hurt even when the context makes it clear that no insult is implied.
We can’t say “shell shocked” any more either. Now it’s “post-traumatic stress disorder”.
This reminds me of the young lady that got all giggly when I told her that the problem with her car was due to her ignition being “retarded”.
She was very impressed though when I would say “advanced” timing. She finally decided that was what whe wanted, the advanced timing, she said it sounded more “hi tech”.
She ended her visit with us by calling her mother and telling her “the guys say they are going to replace the retarded ignition with an advanced one.”
Where have you been man? “Retarded” has been a dirty word for some time now. The correct term is “mentally-handicapped-american.” E.g. “these exercises are mentally-handicapped-american,” or “your ignition is mentally-handicapped-american,” or “that African-American has never been outside England because he’s mentally-handicapped-american.”
Hey man! I woundn’t want to be called a retard if I was a little slow. The word has been used as a general insult for so long that it isn’t really something that you’d like to call people on an official level.
Both of the usages that you cite are indeed offensive to many. For reasons below, the last sentence also is worded in a way that is somewhat offensive to me personnally.
Please believe me when I say that I am not a PC person in any way, shape or form. But I can see the demeaning slur attached to both useages that you cite.
I have no problem with this word in it’s correct usage: as a descriptive term for someone who’s condition is significantly behind other’s in their peer group. I am intimately familiar with two such cases: my niece, a bright girl who had a difficult birth, and as a result is “emotionally retarded” - she is about 3 years behind her age group. A nephew was born autistic - he is mentally retarded. In their cases, the term is accurate and descriptive. But to use it as a slang term meant as a general insult rubs me (and many others) the wrong way. Must be my delicate feelings.
I work for an agency that provides care for people with MR. The orientation classes taught us that we must refer to them as “people with mental retardation” so we emphasize the fact that they are people, not that they are retarded. I understand why we have that policy, but I get tired of all the PCness.
In my part of the world, the word ‘retarded’ has been eliminated from our vocabulary. The current common term is ‘intellectually handicapped’ or IH for short.
My Mother (and Father did too) works for the psychiatric department of the hospital, and deals with IH people constantly.
Eventually, every new PC term will be superceded by another even more PC term, until the language eats itself up like an ourobouros.
The problem is that if you come up with another term to replace “retarded-as-medical-condition”, it will also soon be adapted to replace “retarded-as-schoolyard-insult”, as well.
The word’s gonna be misused anyway, to describe an undesirable condition… why go through this whole “Think of the children!”-esque brouhaha if it’s all going to be for naught?
Guano are you in Queensland by any chance? The term “handicapped” is as politically incorrected as the term “retarded” here these days. I think the current PC term is “intellectually challenged” (although you might get away with “intellectually impaired”).
Personally, I kind of like “intellectually challenged”, it’s a descriptive term which allows for the fact that the person referred to may find intellectual tasks more challenging than others, but is far from being incapable of tackling them.
I’m in Victoria, but actually I was referring to New Zealand.
I think they use IH as an abbreviation so that the word ‘handicapped’ isn’t uttered much. But as far as I know it’s still the term they use (I’ll ask my Mum one day and double check).
Isn’t it true that many “stupid” insults used to be medical terms for the mentally handicapped, such as “moron” and “idiot”? This is just the word “retard” following the same evolution.
Medical community makes the term
People get wind of it, use it as an insult
The mentally handicapped and their family begin to resent the term
The term begins to be considered un-PC, and is rejected by the medical community
…and there was a time when the word used for Down syndrome was “monogoloid”, innocently referring to the shape of the person’s eyes.
I agree with the others that say the word itself is not the culprit, it is the fact that the word becomes part of our popular culture and is no longer descriptive and if left to young people and assholes, becomes derisive.
In my area the word “special” can be derisive if spoken with the accent of a person who is struggling with speech.
I suggest that we all start doing our part to replace the colloquial use of the word “retarded” with a synonym that also somewhat slurs a particular group of people, who are nonetheless far too intelligent and broadminded ever to take it personally.
Although MR is still used, around here they try to use the term “developmental delay” whenever possible. The problem is that parents tend to hear “developmental delay” and think, “Oh, so he’s just delayed–he’ll catch up, right?”
I worked with a pediatric neurologist who took the time to explain to parents that this was often not the case. “We don’t like using the term anymore,” he would say, “but what we’re looking at is mental retardation.” He was very good at helping the parents understand the situation without making them feel even worse about it.
Strangely enough though, “dope”, at least as of a few years ago, had taken on a new meaning in youth lingo. I.e., when used as an adjective, it mean’t “cool” as in “That’s dope” and I believe a girl could even describe a boy she liked by saying, “He’s dope”. Apparently, this was some sort of positive connotation spreading from the drug usage of the noun “dope”. The evolution of slang is weird!
As to the main subject of today’s symposium, without trying to judge one way or the other, I will just second A Friend of the Devil’s statement that if you interact with someone who has, say, a close relative who is really mentally retarded and you start throwing that word around in slang, you might offend that person. My mom has a very severely retarded brother (who has lived in institutions basically all of his life and who I never knew as an uncle, although I did finally see for the first time about 5 years ago). One of my colleagues at work uses the terms “retarded” (and “moron”) all the time and, while I wouldn’t say it exactly offended me, it did make me twinge a bit. I was also quite sure I would never want my mom to meet this guy because I think she really would be offended by it. I have to admit that “moron” to me is almost so far divorced from its original technical usage that I don’t strongly make an association, so that I even recently used it talking to my mom when relating, with agreement, what a (different) colleague had said regarding managers in our company. She didn’t “call” me on it directly but said something just implicitly expressing discomfort enough that I realized what I had said and thought “Whoops…I guess maybe I shouldn’t have used that word.”
As to the issue of when the technical terms are then changed away from the ones that have gotten into the popular lingo (or even if it is just felt that it has too much of a negative connotation)…I won’t get into that. I must admit that the use of the term “client” in place of “patient” is a bit weird and the word “customer” really goes too far. When I go to the doctor, I am his/her patient, not customer!
All in all, I think there has to be some give and take on all sides.
The guy in the VH1 doc was being insulting. So what? Insults have to be bleeped out of T.V. now?
No matter what you want to call the medical condition, it will be regarded as an insult if you call someone that term if the are not retarded/mentally handicapped/moronic. . . whatever.
Words also have a way of decaying in meaning. Moronic and idiot are examples of words that have become too broad to be used as a medical term. Perhaps this will happen with the word “retarded”.
As for using retarded as an adjective: Ummm, sometimes things are, in fact, retarded. Isn’t retarded an adjective all by its lonesome without the modifying word “mentally”.
