Comment on Greens defector’s use of slur against fellow senator exposed in text leak
ziltoid101@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thorpe and now Cox… they really dropped the ball on vetting senators in 2022 it seems.
This is tangential, but it feels kinda weird where the “R word” is atm, seems like we can’t decide if it’s genuinely offensive or not. I have some social circles where saying it would be almost like saying homophobic/racist slurs, but other social circles that throw it around as a synonym of “idiot/lunatic”. I’m almost afraid to ask at this point what the correct answer is/should be, but I think humans will be joking around about mental cognition for many generations to come, R-word or not.
Grossing up in the 90s and early 00s, saying “that’s gay” for something that sucked/was bad, and “that’s retarded” for something stupid/nonsensical were just common phrases amongst millennial kids.
Not saying that either should be acceptable nowadays (especially the former), but having a brain-fart and reverting to a phrase from Torre childhood can happen. Best we can do in that situation is to apologise, and move on.
Yeah it’s a weird one, I’d take offence if the context was actually towards someone with a disability.
But shit, Pauline Hanson is genuinely fucking stupid if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard her called a retard I could pay for a fortnight’s of groceries.
Now I’m having a laugh about that time she wore a burqa into parliament and was ridiculed to oblivion…
…maybe I should be offended on this one.
seems like we can’t decide if it’s genuinely offensive or not. I have some social circles where saying it would be almost like saying homophobic/racist slurs, but other social circles that throw it around as a synonym of “idiot/lunatic”
I don’t think it’s a lack of decisiveness. It’s just some people are very slow to adapt. Like some people still used “that’s gay” as an insult into the 2010s…or worse, used the f-slur in much the same way the r-slur is being used here. Heck, a prominent player of one of my favourite games used the f-slur in that way in just 2020. It was a relatively big scandal and I think he was briefly banned from streaming sites, but frankly as far as I’m concerned being that far behind the general public in adapting to that sort of change indicates a degree of homophobia that should not be considered acceptable.
Ilandar@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
It hasn’t been widely used as a slur for disabled people for a very long time and is almost universally accepted as an alternative to “extremely stupid”. People can choose to continue being offended over it if they want but it makes a lot more sense to just let it become another generic insult if they genuinely care about nullifying its damage. All the continued performative outrage over the word from a minority of people has accomplished is turning it into a right wing clarion call.