“IDGI, this person has the option to be the worst version of themselves. Why dont they choose to do that?!? Also why does noone want to be around me? Could it be that marinating my brains in a writhing compost of clapbacks and dunks is desensitizing me to my own dehumanizing? No. Clearly this is because woke.”
Comment on Anon interviews for a job
wetnoodle@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago“whatever you want”… they wanted to be a respectful person.
VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Aermis@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Is saying the word retarded without calling some it disrespectful? Is it now a trigger word? I’m genuinely wondering. Because when we were growing up we used the word EVERYWHERE. It was as common as saying “fricken”
Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It’s a slur, that’s why. Some slurs are major slurs that are considered offensive even when it’s not referring to someone, and I think this is one of them. They’re often forbidden because of it, and a lot of people find it easier to follow universal rules than to check the rules of each place they post, because the universal rules will keep you in the clear 95% of the time. And even if not, it’s still respectable to not want to use slurs.
And yeah, it did used to be a lot more common. And before that, it was a medical term. That’s the way it goes, we have a word to insult people’s intelligence, doctors deal with patients who have a disorder causing that, they don’t want to use the mean word to refer to the patients, they come up with a new word for it, the word gets out, and then everyone makes it a new word to insult intelligence. Though this one seems to be taking a different track because it hit modern sensibilities, and at the same time I think doctors now know better than to come up with a new word for mental deficiencies.
randy@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
It’s the euphemism treadmill in action.
Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 6 months ago
That’s what it’s called, okay. I didn’t remember the term.
lost_faith@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
We used LOTS of words then that are now not ok to use. Growing as individuals and groups is a good thing, being attentive to others is a good thing, understanding that you see no offence to a word where others do and changing that behaviour betters everyone.
HackerJoe@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Nah, speech police is just a disguised form of fascism.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Dude, I don’t think you understand what fascism is about. Telling someone something is wrong isn’t fascism or saying murder is wrong would be fascism.
Gonkulator@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Were the insults necessary or did they add anything useful to your comment?
As for the actual question in your comment, though your quick follow-up to insults suggests you meant it as a rhetorical question and just wanted to assume they were doing the same thing as they were criticizing, “fricken” (or “friggen”) was used in many cases by kids who were scared of getting in trouble for using “real” swear words. Which was the whole point of that comment: kids who were afraid to really swear casually used “retard” and many adults who would lose their shit over “fucking” didn’t bat an eye at “retard”. And even when they did, it was because of the insult to the one called “retard”. If anyone brought up mentally disabled people, it was more about furthering the insult rather than actually caring how they felt.
Aermis@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The other said what needed to be said. Do you talk to anyone the way you do? You do realize you’re talking to real people with real life experiences. And if you used any critical thought you’d understand the innocence of using the word “fricken” or “friggen” in my comment was to illustrate that in our child community growing up, we used the retard word along with that. And it was almost never used to call someone that, it was used to call a situation that. Like “that’s retarded let’s not do that”.
And yeah I don’t use that word anymore as an adult.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
People used to use the n-word all the time, so it must be perfectly OK to say!
This is the exact same argument. It doesn’t work, right? Why would it here? Sure, there may be other reasons why it’s OK to say, but throw that argument out.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The n-word did not have any other definitions. Something is is retarded is merely delayed or slowed down usually in the context of some task.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
It did though? It was used for black things. The word literally means black.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah you’re not supposed to even say “my son’s reading skills are somewhat retarded but we hope he can catch up to his peers”. Or “Progess on Trump’s border wall has been retarded for various reasons.”
Aermis@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No kidding