Blahaj.zone admin here. Let me make this simple and clear. I don’t care what specific word you use, if you are using intellectual disability or neurodivergence as an insult, you’re going to get moderated.
Genuinely curious if this applies to moron and idiot, since they have basically the same origin story.
“I don’t care what word you use”
I swear there is so much snark in this thread people forgot how to read. Yes it applies to moron and idiot. 😂😂
Sounds like a yes
Sounds like a silence to me.
lemmy users will hear “i don’t care what word you use, don’t insult based on disability or neurodivergence” and say “sounds like silence to me, too bad the mods won’t answer my questions of if certain words are allowed”
🙄
thank you ada 🩷🩷🩷 sorry about this post i didn’t know it was going to get so awful
Just… don’t use anything one can’t control as an insult.
Yup. Goes for bodyshaming too.
“Retarded” can’t be a slur because it can be used to describe slowed/inhibited things that aren’t people. “Retard” is a slur derived from the adjective “Retarded”. Unlike the F-slur, N-word, and all the other colorful terms hateful people use to show people that they aren’t welcome on the basis of their identity, retarded has OTHER MEANINGS, and it is so much more apt a word than “Dumb” or “Slow” in so many contexts that it’s frankly (choose your adjective here) that we should have to walk on eggshells around it.
Expressing disrespect for a person for things outside their control is cowardly and close-minded. We should censor people who try to co-opt the group they are speaking in to express their prejudice. But extending the censorship of a slur to its root word, even for innocuous contexts, is an overreach of the social policing of our language. It sets a bad example, since ANY WORD can be made to be an insult to someone if used that way, and we set a bad cultural precedent by doing this for “retarded”
I understand that there’s no council that decides what is or isn’t acceptable to say, but I really wish people would think about this with a little more nuance than just “R-word detected, speaker shall be shunned” without considering the context. The way I see it, refusal to consider context is a redirection of the same kind of prejudiced thinking that makes slurs bad. But it’s being applied to a person’s speech rather than their identity, so it’s not as bad a thing to do.
They are entirely different words. No one is calling for an outright ban on those letters; that’s a sentiment you made up.
Don’t use it as a slur. If you are using the word in another, legitimate context where it’s not a slur, I don’t give a fuck. But stop arguing that those two uses are somehow indistinguishable because that’s just not true.
Edit:
Unlike the F-slur, N-word, and all the other colorful terms…
This is false. Examples: “cracker,” the b-word, the f-slur (in UK contexts), “queer,” “gay.”
All of these have other legitimate meanings. So, please reconsider your defense of this specific term, because you’re not even arguing it based on facts.
What does slur mean?
I know so many people who adamantly stand by their use of it. I used to say it, too, but all it took was one person to point out to me that it was hurtful and I apologised and stopped no questions asked. I don’t get why it’s so hard to just have a little empathy.
Good on you for moral consistency. If someone said that eating meat was hurtful to animals (not to mention destroying the planet), you’d have a little empathy and stop, right?
I’m vegan btw, lol
based and i adore people who are like you
it does tend to be a good litmus test for disempathy, sadly. obviously there are outliers, but if one can’t take a tiny correction to like 0.01% of their vocabulary, color me not surprised when that same person starts talking about the immigrant problem or women’s place in the home or something :(
My guy still thinks bigotry is caused by lack of empathy. It’s actually selective empathy that helps encourage bigots.
pedantic_irrelevant_nuance.jpg
Selective presence of empathy is exactly equivalent to selective lack of empathy, which is a type of lack of empathy.
Except that literally everyone who has empathy does selective empathy, even if not intentionally. You also can’t really form an in-group and out-group mindset without empathy. Like if there was no empathy at all bigotry wouldn’t be nearly as big.
Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.
I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.
I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.
I hope that most people can look past it in the same way but unfortunately intent doesn’t change how hurtful some things can be. And it’s still language that serves to otherise a group of people. Just like the N and F words which have both declined heavily in use (at least since I’ve been alive).
The way I look at it is that my want to use certain words does not outweigh other people’s feelings. English is full of fun and interesting things to say, we can get a bit more creative than just using slurs.
i used to think it was okay for me to say as i’m disabled. what i noticed, though, is that my doing so 1) communicated to my abled peers that it’s okay for them to say as well & 2) made me appear as a pick-me; i was perceived as “one of the good ones.”
the r-slur has been causing a very visceral reaction in me for years & i will continue to report each & every instance of it.
That’s the problem I have when people of that slur use it. And worse, they act like it’s not a big deal. There’s offensive words I can use because of my skin tone that would absolutely get any non-colored person choked out.
But you nailed it. If I brush it off like it doesnt offend/isn’t a disgusting word, then I am giving permission to others that it’s okay to say.
It’s the same these days with the f-slur and cishet folks getting ostracised for using it, at least where I live. I agree, I’ll happily call myself one but never the r-slur. It just gives people a free pass.
I have a question about for you about this if you don’t mind. In certain mechanical situations the word is used to describe a delay added (for example in a car engine you may use this word to describe a certain timing adjustment).
Does the word in a context like that still cause that visceral reaction or does the context make it different - is it only when used to describe people that it hits that way?
I’m only asking this because it popped into my head the other day when I was reading my service book on my engine and ran across it.
It’s kinda similar to how people commonly used a shortened form of ‘transmission’ in the automotive industry but it became a slur for trans people - I feel like I haven’t heard that one in a while so I’m guessing it’s fallen out of use, but I was just always curious if the taint of people bullying with that word crossed over into other contexts.
there’s the initial sting, yeah, but it’ll subside once my brain remembers the context. when used in a bigoted way, the feeling sticks for a while.
That’s along the lines of what I expected. I’m always just curious how our brains work, so thank you.
I always try to find an alternative to the word regardless of the context because it’s not like it’s hard to do and I’d rather not cause that reaction in anyone if possible.
It sucks that we keep doing the same thing over and over as a society as this is not the first word ruined by being used in the exact same manner as a way to bully and harass and make fun of people.
You’d think some day we’d learn that we can actually teach people not to be shitty and we don’t have to accept this behavior from people at all.
context is, as they say, everything
Ootl. Did someone use the word that rhymes with lard?
You can say fart on here
hello rhyme police? yeah this one right here
How am I supposed to just stop using this word?? How else is the plane supposed to tell me to put thrust at idle during landing? This is ridiculous.
Tell airbus to use the proper term “intellectually disabled” instead
no hate to you but i do hate that this is one of the default responses the internet has chosen when discussing this language (twice now in this thread)
i guess it’s like a growing pains thing, but it strikes me as very middle schooler, kind of like bringing up that one word that means unwilling to share with others.
one is a noun/adjective, the other is a verb. entirely different words that simply have the same Latin root. one is used in a professional context in an industry nearly none of us are familiar with, the other i come across as a derogatory on this site pretty much hourly. please let’s grow up a bit about this.
(again no hate to you specifically commenter, it was a funny joke and i just want to call out the broader trend)
You’re just upset there’s a legitimate use for a word you’ve chosen some weird crusade over
This is rich coming from the crowd who throws a tantrum every time someone requests they stop saying a word
You know what else I’m upset about? There’s this insidious figure who has caused unimaginable grief and pain, hiding behind a facade of normalcy. He’s responsible for countless horrors, using his cunning and deceit to further his dark ambitions. His actions have shattered lives and spread fear like wildfire. Yeah, I’m talking about William Afton. If there’s one person who truly deserves all the anger and outrage, it’s definitely him.
It’s been so long, since last I’ve seen my son, lost to this monster, to the man behind the slaughter
This is a real convo I had with middle schoolers when I did a stint as a teacher.
“But teacher why I can’t I say SHITAKE? it’s a mushroom. And James is acting like a little SHITAKE head.”
literally multiple instances of this happening under this post
It probably gets annoying as a bystander, but I don’t have a lot of opportunities to bring aviation into the rest of my life. Especially in a way that’s mildly funny.
honestly happy for you lol i think both of our emotional investments are valid
To be fair to Airbus,
-
They probably chose the language for that call-out way before 2009. Airplanes can live for thirty years, and type designs can keep going several decades longer
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The designers were also likely to be French, but they selected English call-outs. This seems to me like a case where they picked a word that’s technically in the OED l, but is actually much more common in French.
I mean, if it’s a valid word for what they want to say, then I don’t really see a problem. It’s pronounced the same, but it’s a completely different word.
Same with a pork meatball or cigarette in the UK.
What’s the meatball called? Or is it the same as a cig?
What’s the meatball called?
Ron DeSantis
The longer version of what the cigarette’s called
Rhymes with maggot?
-
Airbus is Ableist!
Just don’t use it to refer to people and you’re golden. There are many slurs that are also legitimate scientific terms, like how fag(g)ot is a bundle of sticks, or how in physics you have the Advanced and the Retarded Green’s functions.
this is the way
fag(g)ot is a bundle of sticks
Fagot is also what a bassoon is called in Danish, Dutch, Spanish, German, Romanian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Slovak and Czech, for some reason lol.
Not sure about the pronunciation, though, even though the first of those is my native language 😄
Its fa-'got, fyi. Similar to the slur, but the second syllable is stressed, like the word for good. That is in your native language to be clear, I don’t know about the others.
Same in German
Tell that to anyone in the aviation industry and you’ll get a chuckle and a couple of "bless your heart"s.
entirely different word and we both know it
Try telling that to a text filter or a moderator on a power trip. They won’t give a rat’s ass about “to retard” meaning “to reduce or hold back.” Even the linked article fails to make the semantic distinction when it calls for the elimination of the word.
Je suis en retard dans la discussion, mais tu as raison, les ordinateurs ne tiennent pas compte du contexte.
dot ml friends see this lol
I’m late to the discussion, but you’re right, computers don’t take context into account.
I’m removed to the discussion, but you’re right, computers don’t take context into account.
ur
█▀█ █▀▀ █▀▄▀█ █▀█ █░█ █▀▀ █▀▄ █▀▄ ██▄ █░▀░█ █▄█ ▀▄▀ ██▄ █▄▀
Yup. I was perma banned from /r/politics over on Reddit years ago for using this word in a way that had nothing to do with people.
It was used in a literal manner, with the definition of how I used it meaning “to delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment.”
I tried to appeal, and I was labeled “ableist”. It was the dumbest shit I’ve ever experienced on Reddit prior to the piggy ruining the platform.
The fact that this lame strawman argument has received so many upvotes is baffling. Who gives a fuck what the random moderator that you invented does?
i’m SAYING like 😭 😭
it’s giving 6th grade locker room 😂😂😂
“dude look i found a way to say it and dude it’s allowed because it’s about airplanes”
And a bitch is a female dog, I know. There’s a factor of intention, a.k.a mens rea, a.k.a guilty mind that separates right from wrong based on why a person does something. It’s this sort of inconvenient nuance that dealing with absolutes doesn’t allow.
and there’s a matter of intention to me blocking you, too. literally no one disagrees with you, not even me. i am not calling for an “absolute” anything
your sophomorisms are literally just being posted to give you an excuse to type le edgy words. and worst crime of all you’re not doing it even in a funny or thoughtful way, you are just being mean about it. take care and i hope to me is the most unkind you will be to anyone all day.
Would you use the term “bitch” when talking about dogs? Or just say female dog to avoid being misunderstood? It used to be used that way, but now you’re going to sound like an asshole if you use it.
Once people start using a technical term as a slur, it gets tainted by that additional meaning. You can’t forcefully separate the technical term from the slur. If you don’t want people to think you’re throwing around slurs, you need to find a new word to use.
Don’t blame the people hurt by the slurs, blame the assholes who misused the word so often that they fucked up its meaning.
I don’t think the SPECIAL OLYMPICS needs to make the semantic distinction between ableism and aviation (I WONDER WHICH ONE THEY WOULD TALK ABOUT)
It’s quite obvious that it’s very different to use it as a verb and as a noun to refer to someone.
But yet, people bitch about it even when you’re not calling someone retarded. It’s almost as if they are too intellectually disabled to understand the difference.
I put my sourdough batard into the fridge to retard. Retarded dough tastes better!
It was offensive even way before that. I remember us not serving a customer at the fast food place where I worked because he used it around my co-worker whose brother had Downs Syndrome.
I’ve never really associated with people who use that word.
Lemmy seems to be pretty good about not using it, though. Reddit, on the other hand…
it absolutely was offensive way before that. from my understanding 2009 was the year there was a unified push to change things across the language though :)
also wow reddit was worse? i won’t lie i never saw it there in the past decade but perhaps i was browsing more wholesome subs than some
but yeah on lemmy it’s not an exaggeration to say i come across it (used as a slur, not in an aviation sense, children 🙄) almost hourly. in another thread i am getting dogpiled with downvotes for asking politely not to use it in a derogatory way.
Every time I’ve reported it on lemmy, I’ve seen it removed by mods, but I guess there are a lot of communities here I just don’t visit.
Reddit had a very popular sub with the r-slur in its name, and I saw it a lot on CTH (don’t ask me why I ever visited that sub – I ask myself, and I have no answer lol).
And yeah, Rosa’s Law was 2010, but even dating back to the 70s people were abandoning its use. I recall my brother having to write an essay about people with disabilities when he used it in school in the 90s (not that I approve of using writing as a punishment).
it does get left up by certain mods here 😭 part of the reason for posting this
in my individual non authoritative opinion OKBR gets grandfathered the pass but only because it’s used in a purely non offensive context. the mods there did a good job of that.
hereabouts though i’ll see like, a thread argument about cross stitching and boom, r-slur used as a derogatory. like come on kids this isn’t kindergarten lmao.
in my individual non authoritative opinion OKBR gets grandfathered the pass but only because it’s used in a purely non offensive context
Hard disagree here. It’s the very definition of it being used offensively.
You have a right to that, I probably need to do some self examination there.
That sub opened in 2017
Yeah, my mom used to work for an organization called ARC, which pointedly hasn’t been an acronym since the early '90s.
And NAACP is still around, even with a name that was offensive 40 years ago, because a) it’s clearly not intended to offend; and b) the name recognition is incredibly helpful: I hear NAACP, I think W.E.B. DuBois and Thurgood Marshall.
Is this just a general “don’t use slurs” or is this a reference to some current event I missed?
don’t use slurs
As someone who learned English through internet, I just thought it had the same meaning as idiot. Took me a long time to actually know the correct meaning.
I understand not calling disabled people the word, because mocking people for something about themselves they didn’t choose (like a disability) is cruel, I am totally on board with never using words in this way to target disabled people.
I don’t understand why I can’t use the word to mock someone who is not intellectually disabled for choosing not to use their perfectly well-functioning brain, it seems like a very apt analogy. It communicates “you aren’t disabled, you have no excuse for acting like it, start choosing to use the fully functional brain you have”.
Additionally, only the “r-word” seems to be the bad one, despite there being many other words in our language that originally began as a medical descriptor for intellectually disabled folks. If I call someone a moron for running a red light because they’re playing with their phone nobody bats an eye, but if I call them the “r-word” I’m a terrible person?
what annoys me is that no one cared about this until Sarah Palin made a big deal out of someone calling her that and she pretended to get offended for her baby with down syndrome as if it was targeted on them.
but I’m also ok with never saying it again. not a big loss who cares. at least we got a legendary Linus clip out of it.
no one cared until
literally misinformation. rosa’s law was passed in 2009, four years before the incident you cite.
that’s not what we’re talking about. as the original commenter said, using the r word to refer to any mentally challenged person was already a no-no. that law changed official use of the word, not the r word itself used as an insult.
law reflects society. just providing a timeline for things, the word as an insult was a problem starting well into the 70s so it’s absolutely absurd to blame it on sarah palin in 2013.
if you think people started saying r-word in the 70s you’re out of your mind
sorry *90s that was a typo
ok, but the r word was very much acceptable through the early 2000s. it was even casually used on tv.
That clip is so funny
nobody is going to arrest you for using the word, and many people will celebrate you using it. The problem is those people are mostly assholes. The word you should be thinking about is “audience”.
It communicates “you aren’t disabled, you have no excuse for acting like it, start choosing to use the fully functional brain you have”.
look, if this doesn’t make you see how it’s a shitty thing to say, i don’t think anyone else can help you understand.
i appreciate how they admitted it out loud: “but how can i harrass people and call them unintelligent if the r-slur is unacceptable?”
what about dont call people unintelligent. hm?
I prefer to tell people they’re being foolish. Foolish is something we all do, and one can snap out of it.
I’ve come to use this more as well. There’s never a real need to insult someone’s intelligence, but there is often a need to point out when someone is acting like a fool.
Seems like a good word, I like that
What is wrong with calling people unintelligent when they are doing unintelligent things that are directly causing me problems (for example, people on their phones blowing through red lights?) If someone tries to change lanes into me and I say “are you blind? You almost hit me!” is that similarly bad?
yes haha
I’ve been called dyslexic before as a slur a few times. I laughed every time and explained that I am dyslexic.
Zero times have I ever, EVER cared that someone used this word like this. Why? Because they are human beings that saw symptoms and thought it was funny.
Is dyslexia funny? Yeah, sometimes. In the same way, there are some hilarious characters that are blind. Our differences don’t have to be something we’re constantly defensive about. Humor is a very human reaction to coming to terms with such things.
Some people just need to take a step back and realize it’s okay to inject these things into humor, IF you do it tactfully, and with a measure of compassion.
i’m glad you can find humor in it but it’s also important that you shouldn’t tell others how to feel about it
I could not agree more! I hope you re-read what you just wrote.
Well I guess that’s where we disagree. It’s clearly offensive to make fun of a blind person for being blind, no one should do that. But I do not see how it is offensive to actual blind people to call a sighted person “blind” for refusing to use their eyes. It is of course not polite to the person I’m speaking to, but that is the point, there are plenty of times it is ok to be rude to people, such as when they’re harming you. Offending purposely harmful people like bigots, racists; and negligently harmful people like inattentive drivers, people who leave knives pointing up in the dishwasher, etc presents me with no moral quandary.
I’m not sure if you’re saying it’s offensive to disabled people to make the comparison, offensive to the abled person you are speaking to, or both.
I don’t agree with OP that you should never be allowed to call someone names… But I do think the r word is potentially hurtful to actually mentally disabled people, so I wouldn’t use it for that reason.
In general its better to use words that represent choices people make and not unchangable aspects. I wouldn’t use terms “black”, “retarded”, or “gay” as insults, for example. Someone below suggested “foolish” as a good example since it’s not an inherent trait but a behavior.
i don’t think you shouldn’t ever be allowed to call someone names, not sure where you got that lol. for the record i 100% agree with your comment :)
sorry if i come across any other way i just personally find it important to sass people who vehemently defend “muh rights” to use established slurs
Foolish seems like a useful word, probably could be substituted and keep the intended meaning intact.
The main issue that seems to be the disconnect is simply that you are using the word as an insult.
Calling someone unintelligent is fine (I feel at least) but specifically using words that are associated with disabled people as an insult towards abled people is blatantly putting one group on top of the other.
The insult in that case cuts both ways. The person you are directly talking to is insulted because they are acting like a “lower group” and you’re also insulting the entire group by saying they are inherently lesser.
You can not use a group of people as an insult without inherently viewing that group as insult worthy.
correct
This really focuses on the darkest possible aspects of people. I think I finally get why I’m not offended by the same things folks like you are.
I hear someone use a word like this, and I think “they are using an obvious example they saw, and applying it here in a deliberately facetious manner”. You hear the same word, and you think “that person is deliberately denegrating an entire group of people.”
You’re not going to like my saying so, but neither approach is always right or wrong here. There are people that absolutely are doing what you think they are. What your stance doesn’t seem to accept, however, is that others are not.
You can live your life any way you wish, but I think people who think this way may want to take a step back, and maybe put their swords down. White Knights don’t always do well in a grey world.
By comparing people to these slurs, you enforce societal norms that indicate that the said group has less value in society.
Since humans are social creatures by nature, you are essentially dehumanizing an entire class/group of people because you can’t come up with something more clever to say.
To err is human, we all make mistakes, intelligence/sight/etc. has nothing to do with it.
based
It’s not stating that group has less value, it is stating that that group has less ability to think which is just as true as blind people have less ability to see, or physically disabled people like me have less ability to walk than people with normal feet.
That doesn’t inherently make someone less valuable, and my point when using such a term as blind or retarded directed towards a non-disabled person isn’t to attack their value but instead to attack their behavior, specifically to point out that they aren’t utilizing their abilities to their full extent. If you hear the word retarded and think that means the person is less valuable, maybe check your assumptions about disabled people’s value.
Your submission in “lemmy user(ule)s: “this sign won’t stop me because i can’t read”” was removed for Using disability as an insult is not ok, end of story.
words do area-of-effect damage, friend.
if you use the r-slur around me, even if its not directed at me, it hurts, and it makes me feel less safe with you, because of the way that word has been used to specifically target me for hatred based on my neurotype. plus there’s the fact that you acknowledge it to be a mean word for disabled people, and if you’re using it as a weapon against non-disabled people, you’re really saying ‘haha, you’re like those disabled people, and that’s terrible.’ i hope you can see how this probably doesn’t feel so good to a lot of us?
I like area-of-effect damage as a framing device.
I agree completely with this. This campaign to make this word just as bad as the “n word” is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve brought this up with a lot of people, and I’ve yet to meet someone in real life who genuinely thinks this word should be censored in this manner.
Look I usually only lurk because im too anxious but I have to say something.
Your logic is the exact logic my neo nazi family use. (not an exaggeration, I grew up around the klan)
“If they act like an N word, why cant I call them an N word, its not like im racist, i call stupid/criminal/bad whites N words too.”
So i think anyone who uses this logic to justify a slurs usage should take a moment for self reflection.
(This is coming from someone who is queer and will use queer slurs only in certain company, in private, where everyone involved is aware and into it. (and even then I get uncomfy, especially when im in a new group and I don’t know people and they start throwing words around.))
(Also to add I was one of those “slow” kids who has alot of history with the cruel things my family and others called me.
Using a slur to insult someone, regardless of if they are a member of that group, shows that you view it as an inherently negative trait, and that people should be ashamed of being a part of, or associated with, the group.
Here’s an image many of you will like.
I think it’s fine in its original contexts (i.e. “retardant”, or to “retard” something), but could maybe be avoided in 80% of cases.
It is inexcusable to apply it to people though.
I used it yesterday and feel kinda bad. Having said that, the guy I said it to was in an online lobby and I’d said one word on mic and he immediately asked if I was a baddie and told me to rate myself out of 10 for him.
I said some not okay things…
those are entirely different words; different parts of speech, etc :) fully agree but it’s helpful to think of it that way instead
It’s just lazy. If you want to hurt someone’s feelings you need to do the work.
i miss old school r/murderedbywords
Lemmy users?
Take a look at Twitter.
I’ve definitely seen it a lot on here. Maybe it’s only a few people, but it’s rare for me in all my other online spaces. Granted, I don’t use Twitter.
On Xitter, people also regularly use the N-word, because reasons.
