I wouldn’t touch it. I don’t trust anyone to use it tactfully. All the people I’ve seen say “I’m disabled so I can use it” art like, low support needs, average IQ autistic people. Someone told me I can use it since I’m dyslexic.
My aunt was diagnosed with that term in the 50s and she was never able to read or write, couldn’t be independent for long stretches of her life. That’s different from me getting laughed at when I read a customer’s order.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
If it were socially acceptable, I wouldn’t have any reason not to use it.
As for how I feel about it being taboo now, it’s whatever. It’s just a natural consequence of how language shifts and evolves over time.
it has never been socially acceptable for anyone alive today.
The whole fucking point of an insult is to be insulting.
What has actually happened with this word isn’t that it has somehow become less acceptable but that attacking people for using the wrong language has become acceptable, and I think that is retarded.
That’s not true, “retarded” (from the latin term for delay) was intially used as a medical term to someone with lower cognitive abilities, not an insult per se. but like other similar terms (such as “cretin”) it was eventually used more as an insult, until it was considered offensive by most and only the offensive meaning remained in the common speech.
- No
- Should stay that way
My district just switched from MR to ID about 5 years ago. Our county still has mhmr services. I think they mostly just say the letters instead of the words but it’s what the public knows it as
The r-word? Reddit?
I think they mean recession.
(They actually mean that word from the 90s for developmentally challenged if you’re truly unaware).
It becoming socially acceptable is a really nebulous bar - if I found myself among folks who found it acceptable I wouldn’t use it as I consider it unacceptable at a personal level - but if it’s usage completely changed in the year 2270 then sure I might use it.
The n-word and r-word will never be socially acceptable in our lifetimes and anyone who says differently is just an asshole trying to cloak their behavior. I also don’t really see a need to put effort into reclaiming either term…
In general, I think it’s a bad thing that we have words that have become unacceptable to use and I wish those words had never been so associated with hate - but they were do we are where we are.
I agree with everything except for the N-word R-word comparison. I think the history of the N-word is significantly worse but I see what you’re saying.
I agree that the N-word is far worse - I didn’t mean to equate them but to use it as a point of comparison. The really fucking hateful and widespread usages of the n-word mostly date back to the 70s - it’s now used almost exclusively by badge wearing racists… so it has had about fifty years of pop culture non-hateful uses but is still clearly unacceptable.
The R-word was seeing widespread usage a mere twenty years ago - it’s still part of the active memory of millennials and older.
An interesting comparison might be gypsy (I type it out only because I can’t think of a clear way to abbreviate it) which is seen as an unacceptable slur (especially in the verb form) which had fallen out of social use in the 50s - even that word (though it is less openly hateful) is still pretty unacceptable.
It’s a similar story for other less common racial slurs - once a word becomes such a hateful slur it seems like the most common social response is to just abandon it with reclamation being a rarity and confined to the in group in every case I can think of (the n-word and the f-word both have gained some usage within their communities but it isn’t universal… I have an extremely negative memory of the f-word which makes me uncomfortable even when people I trust use it).
It’s a good thing that it’s socially unacceptable, at least when applied to people, or as a pejorative generally.
It’s still a potentially useful word though in other contexts, eg to inhibit the spread of fire. That’s a different pronunciation, of course.
