Wikepedia states
“Much like today’s socially acceptable terms idiot and moron, which are also defined as some sort of mental disability, when the term retard is being used in its pejorative form, it is usually not being directed at people with mental disabilities. Instead, people use the term when teasing their friends or as a general insult.”
Is it only a slur if directed at soneone with mental disabilities? Is it a slur if durected at onself?
Whats lemmies take on this?
This is important. While we as a society have learned to be more inclusive than ever before, behind all that pretense we forget that what people generally consider as “retarded” isnt desirable. It is a genuine developmental impairment that negatively affects the individuals cognitive abilities. Not one parent in the world is glad their kid is special. They may love and support them just the same because they aren’t fucking ghouls, but if they had one wish no questions asked I’m sure virtually all of them would wish for their child to be “normal”.
And therein lies the truth/problem. We use retarded as a slur because it describes a condition of inferiority. Shifting the window of acceptable speech will not change this, only rephrase it. Policing language never truly works, eventually a different word for the same meaning takes hold, so all this does is spin the wheel of synonyms.