I think the idea with these terms is to make them less handy as insults.
Fag and Retard are perfect for insults, they're easy to say and probably for other reasons I can't articulate properly.
If kids in 10 years don't know what calling someone a retard means, I'd be surprised, unless its replaced with some other term. I don't see changing the scientific nomenclature removing the utility of a short word to call someone mentally deficient. Which will have all the associated stigma attached to it that retard has.
Best case scenario thats actually likely is that this forces us(the US) to pick up our game in crafting insults. We are so far behind the UK its shameful.
I think the idea with these terms is to make them less handy as insults.
Fag and Retard are perfect for insults, they're easy to say and probably for other reasons I can't articulate properly.
If kids in 10 years don't know what calling someone a retard means, I'd be surprised, unless its replaced with some other term. I don't see changing the scientific nomenclature removing the utility of a short word to call someone mentally deficient. Which will have all the associated stigma attached to it that retard has.
Best case scenario thats actually likely is that this forces us(the US) to pick up our game in crafting insults. We are so far behind the UK its shameful.
I think that the the terms are becoming increasingly clinical and specific. "Idiot" and "imbecile" were crude terms that applied to any sort of mental deficiency, from vegetables to traumatized children to old people to republicans, while "retard" was a crude clinical term for people who were considered lacking. Now, the terminology has been fully merged into modern disability and not even kids are stupid enough to say shit like "a-ha, you're disabled."
The term has changed from cretin to idiot to imbecile to moron to retarded to intellectually disabled.
Each word was coopted into an insult and subsequently changed to the next iteration in hopes of avoiding the negative stigma.
This is really the only area where I have an issue.
I have zero opposition to people wanting a harmful word done away with. My fear, however, is that changing the word alone makes absolutely zero difference, as shown by history.
Mental retardation is a descriptive term, and maybe that is where this concerns me the most. Cretin and imbecile easily become epithets in their own right, but mental retardation never actually did. Sure, ti was shorted to "retard", or "tard", but there is a significant difference here. See, "Mental Retardation" was ALREADY a PC term. If we run away from it, it is pretty clear that we've made the decision to always be running. In a couple of decades when everyone is calling eacother an "inty", or whatever epithet folks manage to create out of "intellectually disabled" (my money is on "id", because it is likely to start out as a non-judgemental shorthand in medical facilities but quickly find its way in to the slang vernacular) are we just going to switch terms again?
The fight for inclusion requires more than just changing terms and hoping no one does the same thing for the tenth time.
I was wondering why my college's library was clearing-out all the books about mental retardation. One of them had the hilariously offensive title "Educating the Trainable Mental Retard".
If something like this is really happening, I think this would be the line. When you start removing books or stifling discourse because of PC terms it becomes too much. We should not destroy our intellectual history because some terms have become associated with negative stereotypes. Sure in the future it might make sense to use different terms, but denying or altering the past does terrible harm in the name of decency.
As a good example, one of the attacks by anti-evolutionists is that Darwin used terms like savage and barbarian to describe certain races of men in The Descent of Man. Those words were the accepted social science terms at that time and were adopted by the general public to attack those they had racist feelings against. The book is now useless for actual science but is a good historic example of scientific thinking and theory. The idea that we should ignore the original work and that subsequent research based off of it has no value because of terms used in it later became to be seen as offensive is a dangerous appeal to emotion that political correctness can be turned into.
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I was wondering why my college's library was clearing-out all the books about mental retardation. One of them had the hilariously offensive title "Educating the Trainable Mental Retard".
If something like this is really happening, I think this would be the line. When you start removing books or stifling discourse because of PC terms it becomes too much. We should not destroy our intellectual history because some terms have become associated with negative stereotypes. Sure in the future it might make sense to use different terms, but denying or altering the past does terrible harm in the name of decency.
As a good example, one of the attacks by anti-evolutionists is that Darwin inspired Hitler.. Those words were the accepted social science terms at that time and were adopted by the general public to attack those they had racist feelings against. The book is now useless for actual science but is a good historic example of scientific thinking and theory. The idea that we should ignore the original work and that subsequent research based off of it has no value because of terms used in it later became to be seen as offensive is a dangerous appeal to emotion that political correctness can be turned into.
Fixed that for you.
No one should be allowed to criticize Hitler, because if they do, they might get Darwin taken off the shelf.
I'm sorry, but your underlying logic here is very silly.
I was wondering why my college's library was clearing-out all the books about mental retardation. One of them had the hilariously offensive title "Educating the Trainable Mental Retard".
If something like this is really happening, I think this would be the line. When you start removing books or stifling discourse because of PC terms it becomes too much. We should not destroy our intellectual history because some terms have become associated with negative stereotypes. Sure in the future it might make sense to use different terms, but denying or altering the past does terrible harm in the name of decency.
As a good example, one of the attacks by anti-evolutionists is that Darwin inspired Hitler.. Those words were the accepted social science terms at that time and were adopted by the general public to attack those they had racist feelings against. The book is now useless for actual science but is a good historic example of scientific thinking and theory. The idea that we should ignore the original work and that subsequent research based off of it has no value because of terms used in it later became to be seen as offensive is a dangerous appeal to emotion that political correctness can be turned into.
Fixed that for you.
No one should be allowed to criticize Hitler, because if they do, they might get Darwin taken off the shelf.
I'm sorry, but your underlying logic here is very silly.
Um... I was specifically saying that you shouldn't take LATER USES OR INTERPRETATIONS to attack previously created works. You can criticizes Hitler and those who chose to use legitimate terms in racist ways, but when those kinds of comparisons are used as the primary attack on other works, rather then on the immoral words or actions, it is stifling debate with politically correct terms.
There are plenty of ways to attack Darwin's works, I was pointing out politically correct terms in relation to this particular topic. My point is you can attack the terms barbarian and savage as being unsuitable to modern discourse on sociology, because they have come to be associated as discriminatory terms, without banning or ignoring older works which used them in a different context.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
The term has changed from cretin to idiot to imbecile to moron to retarded to intellectually disabled.
Each word was coopted into an insult and subsequently changed to the next iteration in hopes of avoiding the negative stigma.
That's worked out well, and I expect it to continue working out well in the future.
Verily, our codex beseeches vicissitude like a cripple beseeches a velocipede.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
It's not "politically correct". That's offensive.
The new term is "Adjectively Dispassionate".
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
I wonder, should we not just ask those offended by clinical terminology, whether taken as directly derogatory or unfairly used toward others, to just suck it up and stop deriving so much of their personal identity from the acts and words of others?
This all smacks of people trying to manufacture self-esteem from artifice. Calling yourself "differently abled" doesn't mean you have a whole new way of slam-dunking a basketball that most people don't get to enjoy.
it is assinine to argue that mental retardation is still ONLY a clinical term. There is no question that the damage has been done, and it is now quite offensive.
My fear that no one is interested in doing any damage control ever, but rather they are content to just change the word every 20 years. That's not useful for inclusion.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
it is assinine to argue that mental retardation is still ONLY a clinical term. There is no question that the damage has been done, and it is now quite offensive.
I guess my question is why is it so "quite offensive?"
For example, if a friend of mine broke his ankle and I josh him, calling him a "cripple" or a "hobbler," no one takes offense to that.
What's more, if some gets the caffeine jitters and is accused of acting like they have Parkinsons Disease, no one bats an eye.
What makes "retarded" (or any of its other iterations) such protected speech?
it is assinine to argue that mental retardation is still ONLY a clinical term. There is no question that the damage has been done, and it is now quite offensive.
I guess my question is why is it so "quite offensive?"
For example, if a friend of mine broke his ankle and I josh him, calling him a "cripple" or a "hobbler," no one takes offense to that.
What's more, if some gets the caffeine jitters and is accused of acting like they have Parkinsons Disease, no one bats an eye.
What makes "retarded" (or any of its other iterations) such protected speech?
I would imagine that some groups feel they "own" certain words.
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it is assinine to argue that mental retardation is still ONLY a clinical term. There is no question that the damage has been done, and it is now quite offensive.
I guess my question is why is it so "quite offensive?"
For example, if a friend of mine broke his ankle and I josh him, calling him a "cripple" or a "hobbler," no one takes offense to that.
What's more, if some gets the caffeine jitters and is accused of acting like they have Parkinsons Disease, no one bats an eye.
What makes "retarded" (or any of its other iterations) such protected speech?
That's because you're from the area that invented "retard fight club." Most of us are from civilized areas that don't say shit like that.
it is assinine to argue that mental retardation is still ONLY a clinical term. There is no question that the damage has been done, and it is now quite offensive.
I guess my question is why is it so "quite offensive?"
For example, if a friend of mine broke his ankle and I josh him, calling him a "cripple" or a "hobbler," no one takes offense to that.
What's more, if some gets the caffeine jitters and is accused of acting like they have Parkinsons Disease, no one bats an eye.
What makes "retarded" (or any of its other iterations) such protected speech?
If your friend had his foot amputated and you josh him by calling him a "cripple" he might want to punch you in the face.
People's reaction to something you joke about that is temporary is often different from something permanent. You also shouldn't assume the barometer for what others find offensive is restricted to your own social circle's values.
A new edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will be published without the "n word," according to this report in Publisher's Weekly. NewSouth Books and Twain scholar Alan Gribben have decided to replace the slur with the word "slave." (The scrubbed edition will also omit the word "Injun.")
This is why PC needs to go rot in hell.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
A new edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will be published without the "n word," according to this report in Publisher's Weekly. NewSouth Books and Twain scholar Alan Gribben have decided to replace the slur with the word "slave." (The scrubbed edition will also omit the word "Injun.")
This is why PC needs to go rot in hell.
Wow.
edit: this has got to be satire.
edit2: or not.
"This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. "Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."
"After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable." Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms and "general readers" that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy all the book has to offer. "For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs," he said.
The fact that the characters used the word says something, and the fact that the author used the word means something. To say that words can be interchangeable does fundamental violence to literature and the idea of literature. That is really, really not okay.
A new edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will be published without the "n word," according to this report in Publisher's Weekly. NewSouth Books and Twain scholar Alan Gribben have decided to replace the slur with the word "slave." (The scrubbed edition will also omit the word "Injun.")
This is why PC needs to go rot in hell.
No, this is why a certain degree of political correctness becomes self-defeating.
A new edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will be published without the "n word," according to this report in Publisher's Weekly. NewSouth Books and Twain scholar Alan Gribben have decided to replace the slur with the word "slave." (The scrubbed edition will also omit the word "Injun.")
This is why PC needs to go rot in hell.
No, this is why a certain degree of political correctness becomes self-defeating.
Fight on the beaches approach.
I'm sure there's classic lit where the use Imbecile or Retard or Fag. By allowing peoples personal feelings of offense to be valid measure of appropriate usage, you open the door to this kind of shit. By saying quit your fucking whining its just a word, you stop it before it can begin. Giving people a sense of rectitude in controlling others speech leads directly to this shit. If for no other reason than it enforces the idea that there is something inherently wrong with a word.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I would imagine that some groups feel they "own" certain words.
Except those are same groups that are trying to eradicate ALL uses of the term, correct or otherwise.
If someone with a disability is accused of having that disability in clinical terms and gets upset, that's not derogatory, that's the afflicted having some serious self-identity issues.
I'm rarely in favor of indulging people when they seek the calming rhetoric of self-imposed labels. Giving something a different name that changes its context is just a way of removing accountability from the term. It's how you get alcoholics and drug addicts asking for lenience for their "disease."
I can also see where this might do real harm to the very people it is meant to "protect". Most of the agencies which use this term are probably funding or directly helping the mentally disabled. By making them rapidly change a word that was/is a legitimate medical term it will cost money and time that could be otherwise spent on other projects.
It is reasonable to ask new publications and forms use the new term, but telling the entire federal government to change every existing publication or form with the term "mentally retarded" will cost much more money.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
I'm rarely in favor of indulging people when they seek the calming rhetoric of self-imposed labels. Giving something a different name that changes its context is just a way of removing accountability from the term. It's how you get alcoholics and drug addicts asking for lenience for their "disease."
I can also see where this might do real harm to the very people it is meant to "protect". Most of the agencies which use this term are probably funding or directly helping the mentally disabled. By making them rapidly change a word that was/is a legitimate medical term it will cost money and time that could be otherwise spent on other projects.
It is reasonable to ask new publications and forms use the new term, but telling the entire federal government to change every existing publication or form with the term "mentally retarded" will cost much more money.
The medical community has already changed its usage. The government is just catching up to the synthesis of mental "retardation" into the disability landscape. The preexisting term was always somewhat insulting, as it was basically a fancy word for "deficient," as I explained in an earlier post.
As for the Twain thing, it's worth it if it can get the book into schools that have banned the book because of the term.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I'm rarely in favor of indulging people when they seek the calming rhetoric of self-imposed labels. Giving something a different name that changes its context is just a way of removing accountability from the term. It's how you get alcoholics and drug addicts asking for lenience for their "disease."
This from a medical professional?
I don't like the terminology is all. By saying an addiction is a "disease" is bringing it to the level of biological and genetic predisposition, and takes accountability out of the language. Parkinsons' is a disease. A substance that you know is dangerous and deadly and has no positive effect on your health that you choose to put in your body shouldn't be described with the same language and a congenital dysfunction.
To quote Penn Gillette, "ask a brain cancer patient if they think alcoholism is a disease. If they have the strength, they'll slap the shit out of you."
A new edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will be published without the "n word," according to this report in Publisher's Weekly. NewSouth Books and Twain scholar Alan Gribben have decided to replace the slur with the word "slave." (The scrubbed edition will also omit the word "Injun.")
This is why PC needs to go rot in hell.
No, this is why a certain degree of political correctness becomes self-defeating.
Fight on the beaches approach.
I'm sure there's classic lit where the use Imbecile or Retard or Fag. By allowing peoples personal feelings of offense to be valid measure of appropriate usage, you open the door to this kind of shit. By saying quit your fucking whining its just a word, you stop it before it can begin. Giving people a sense of rectitude in controlling others speech leads directly to this shit. If for no other reason than it enforces the idea that there is something inherently wrong with a word.
Well, you go that approach and see if you can't get rid of political correctness altogether. Maybe you can and if you so, good for you. But you're fighting hundreds of years of culture, my friend.
The Huckleberry Finn example is more of an example of changes social norms. It isn't that different from changing Ten Little N-words to Ten Little Indians or changing the names of place names with the n-word in them.
With the book, it would make more sense explaining the change from being rustic to being holy shit, what is wrong with you?
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
The Huckleberry Finn example is more of an example of changes social norms. It isn't that different from changing Ten Little N-words to Ten Little Indians or changing the names of place names with the n-word in them.
With the book, it would make more sense explaining the change from being rustic to being holy shit, what is wrong with you?
Historical context is at least half the point of Huck Finn.
I'm rarely in favor of indulging people when they seek the calming rhetoric of self-imposed labels. Giving something a different name that changes its context is just a way of removing accountability from the term. It's how you get alcoholics and drug addicts asking for lenience for their "disease."
This from a medical professional?
I don't like the terminology is all. By saying an addiction is a "disease" is bringing it to the level of biological and genetic predisposition, and takes accountability out of the language. Parkinsons' is a disease. A substance that you know is dangerous and deadly and has no positive effect on your health that you choose to put in your body shouldn't be described with the same language and a congenital dysfunction.
To quote Penn Gillette, "ask a brain cancer patient if they think alcoholism is a disease. If they have the strength, they'll slap the shit out of you."
You do realize that the common cold and STD's are also diseases, right? Addiction and dependance are a hell of a lot more biologically significant than the flu.
To quote Penn Gillette, "ask a brain cancer patient if they think alcoholism is a disease. If they have the strength, they'll slap the shit out of you."
To quote myself, "a brain cancer patient doesn't get to define what a disease is."
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
You do realize that the common cold and STD's are also diseases, right? Addiction and dependance are a hell of a lot more biologically significant than the flu.
I also don't extend much semantic protection to those afflicted by STDs.
The thing is, whatever addiction you may have, you are the one responsible for taking control in regard to both prevention and treatment. A cancer patient or Parkinsons patient or most other kinds of patients of biological illnesses do not have those options.
A food addict asking for special consideration for his or her condition "because it's a disease" just doesn't tug on my heartstrings. I don't deny that there is a disease process going on, but most of it is mental and internalized. The only one who can fix that is the one afflicted, and anyone asking for special treatment isn't looking to get better.
Part of the job for people in my field is discerning which patients get priority treatment in busy or hectic situations. Just about anyone in a physiological emergency is getting a place in line ahead of addicts.
As for the Twain thing, it's worth it if it can get the book into schools that have banned the book because of the term.
No, it's not. Maybe in this one instance, the harm to literature is relatively small, but once you open this door, you end up with works of literature, art or film constantly being changed to fit modern sensibilities.
It would be like editing "Birth of a Nation" to make the KKK look less like the good guys. Or changing "Triumph of the Will" to make the Nazi rallies less rousing. The fact that a racial slur is used casually by a character, or that those two movies uncomfortably show bad people in a sympathetic/good light are very important contextual points.
If some people can't handle this, fine. They shouldn't be reading or watching such works.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
The Huckleberry Finn example is more of an example of changes social norms. It isn't that different from changing Ten Little N-words to Ten Little Indians or changing the names of place names with the n-word in them.
With the book, it would make more sense explaining the change from being rustic to being holy shit, what is wrong with you?
I disagree wholeheartedly. One is a silly meaningless children's song about counting or whatever. Who the fuck cares. The other is a great work of literature that shouldn't be censored to make it "accessible".
What's next, editing Catcher in the Rye such that Holden Caufield doesn't smoke.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons the book is important. Arguably, the main reason.
I also want to know what in the hell the "new classroom" is.
Part of the job for people in my field is discerning which patients get priority treatment in busy or hectic situations. Just about anyone in a physiological emergency is getting a place in line ahead of addicts.
Which is fine! Unfortunately it doesn't your whole "diseases are what I say they are" routine any less dumb.
The thing is, whatever addiction you may have, you are the one responsible for taking control in regard to both prevention and treatment. A cancer patient or Parkinsons patient or most other kinds of patients of biological illnesses do not have those options.
In the same way autistic people need to just get over it, or people with clinical depression just need to get out more, right? I mean, come on.
I hesitate to touch your statement about STDs, but I just can't help myself. It's your fault for contracting a particular disease because you're probably a slut, right?
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
You do realize that the common cold and STD's are also diseases, right? Addiction and dependance are a hell of a lot more biologically significant than the flu.
I also don't extend much semantic protection to those afflicted by STDs.
The thing is, whatever addiction you may have, you are the one responsible for taking control in regard to both prevention and treatment. A cancer patient or Parkinsons patient or most other kinds of patients of biological illnesses do not have those options.
A food addict asking for special consideration for his or her condition "because it's a disease" just doesn't tug on my heartstrings. I don't deny that there is a disease process going on, but most of it is mental and internalized. The only one who can fix that is the one afflicted, and anyone asking for special treatment isn't looking to get better.
Part of the job for people in my field is discerning which patients get priority treatment in busy or hectic situations. Just about anyone in a physiological emergency is getting a place in line ahead of addicts.
That's because we aren't talking about "food addiction," which is a hilarious misuse of the term "addiction." We're talking about people who have actual physical addictions, and you damn well know it, as shown by the fact that you change the subject the second you're called on the ridiculousness of your claims.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
The fact that the characters used the word says something, and the fact that the author used the word means something. To say that words can be interchangeable does fundamental violence to literature and the idea of literature. That is really, really not okay.
But making black kids feel unwelcome and insulted in the classroom is totally fine. Because it's for literature.
I mean, really come on. I'm sympathetic to the side of the argument that favors keeping the book the same as it is and still teaching it, but I'm also not a self-centered compassionless myope -- the reality is that this word being taught in a classroom causes pain for many students, especially those who are in majority-white classrooms. It can and is felt as hurtful and alienating. A lot of people don't care about the context -- hearing a white person say the N-word is uncomfortable at best, painful at worst, because it unavoidably has emotional association and conjures up memory and feeling of abuse and insult that any black child will have experienced by the time they're reading that book.
And really, what the fuck do you, personally, viscerally lose out on if someone changes one word in a book you didn't write and probably had to be forced to read when you were a pot-smoking high school sophomore?
It all just smacks so much of "I don't like it when they tell us what to do" that I can't help but feel uncomfortable, even though I'm otherwise sort of sympathetic to the keep-the-word-in-there side of the argument, on grounds of context!
The point is, even if they do this, it's not a goddamn travesty -- it costs you essentially nothing. It's a far better solution than not teaching the book at all, which would be a real downside.
I mean just look at yourselves, all of you, for Christ's sake!
You're a bunch of white men, mostly or all straight and able-bodied and young, many of whom are educated and well-off, and you're spending this whole thread patting each other on the back for how people in discriminated-against groups should shake it off and "not make everything about race/gender/ability/age/sexuality/etc" and just quiet down please...
But then when something happens that you don't like that has to do with race, something that is even quite benign and doesn't insult or demean you personally, you're all thrown into such an inflamed tizzy you'd think someone pissed on your shoes or wiped their dick on your mom's face.
For a bunch of people who seem to think everyone else should stop making such a fuss, you all throw a pretty big tantrum over some pretty insignificant shit.
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If kids in 10 years don't know what calling someone a retard means, I'd be surprised, unless its replaced with some other term. I don't see changing the scientific nomenclature removing the utility of a short word to call someone mentally deficient. Which will have all the associated stigma attached to it that retard has.
Best case scenario thats actually likely is that this forces us(the US) to pick up our game in crafting insults. We are so far behind the UK its shameful.
I think that the the terms are becoming increasingly clinical and specific. "Idiot" and "imbecile" were crude terms that applied to any sort of mental deficiency, from vegetables to traumatized children to old people to republicans, while "retard" was a crude clinical term for people who were considered lacking. Now, the terminology has been fully merged into modern disability and not even kids are stupid enough to say shit like "a-ha, you're disabled."
This is really the only area where I have an issue.
I have zero opposition to people wanting a harmful word done away with. My fear, however, is that changing the word alone makes absolutely zero difference, as shown by history.
Mental retardation is a descriptive term, and maybe that is where this concerns me the most. Cretin and imbecile easily become epithets in their own right, but mental retardation never actually did. Sure, ti was shorted to "retard", or "tard", but there is a significant difference here. See, "Mental Retardation" was ALREADY a PC term. If we run away from it, it is pretty clear that we've made the decision to always be running. In a couple of decades when everyone is calling eacother an "inty", or whatever epithet folks manage to create out of "intellectually disabled" (my money is on "id", because it is likely to start out as a non-judgemental shorthand in medical facilities but quickly find its way in to the slang vernacular) are we just going to switch terms again?
The fight for inclusion requires more than just changing terms and hoping no one does the same thing for the tenth time.
If something like this is really happening, I think this would be the line. When you start removing books or stifling discourse because of PC terms it becomes too much. We should not destroy our intellectual history because some terms have become associated with negative stereotypes. Sure in the future it might make sense to use different terms, but denying or altering the past does terrible harm in the name of decency.
As a good example, one of the attacks by anti-evolutionists is that Darwin used terms like savage and barbarian to describe certain races of men in The Descent of Man. Those words were the accepted social science terms at that time and were adopted by the general public to attack those they had racist feelings against. The book is now useless for actual science but is a good historic example of scientific thinking and theory. The idea that we should ignore the original work and that subsequent research based off of it has no value because of terms used in it later became to be seen as offensive is a dangerous appeal to emotion that political correctness can be turned into.
Fixed that for you.
No one should be allowed to criticize Hitler, because if they do, they might get Darwin taken off the shelf.
I'm sorry, but your underlying logic here is very silly.
Um... I was specifically saying that you shouldn't take LATER USES OR INTERPRETATIONS to attack previously created works. You can criticizes Hitler and those who chose to use legitimate terms in racist ways, but when those kinds of comparisons are used as the primary attack on other works, rather then on the immoral words or actions, it is stifling debate with politically correct terms.
There are plenty of ways to attack Darwin's works, I was pointing out politically correct terms in relation to this particular topic. My point is you can attack the terms barbarian and savage as being unsuitable to modern discourse on sociology, because they have come to be associated as discriminatory terms, without banning or ignoring older works which used them in a different context.
The new term is "Adjectively Dispassionate".
This all smacks of people trying to manufacture self-esteem from artifice. Calling yourself "differently abled" doesn't mean you have a whole new way of slam-dunking a basketball that most people don't get to enjoy.
My fear that no one is interested in doing any damage control ever, but rather they are content to just change the word every 20 years. That's not useful for inclusion.
I guess my question is why is it so "quite offensive?"
For example, if a friend of mine broke his ankle and I josh him, calling him a "cripple" or a "hobbler," no one takes offense to that.
What's more, if some gets the caffeine jitters and is accused of acting like they have Parkinsons Disease, no one bats an eye.
What makes "retarded" (or any of its other iterations) such protected speech?
I would imagine that some groups feel they "own" certain words.
That's because you're from the area that invented "retard fight club." Most of us are from civilized areas that don't say shit like that.
If your friend had his foot amputated and you josh him by calling him a "cripple" he might want to punch you in the face.
People's reaction to something you joke about that is temporary is often different from something permanent. You also shouldn't assume the barometer for what others find offensive is restricted to your own social circle's values.
This is why PC needs to go rot in hell.
Wow.
edit: this has got to be satire.
edit2: or not.
No, this is why a certain degree of political correctness becomes self-defeating.
Fight on the beaches approach.
I'm sure there's classic lit where the use Imbecile or Retard or Fag. By allowing peoples personal feelings of offense to be valid measure of appropriate usage, you open the door to this kind of shit. By saying quit your fucking whining its just a word, you stop it before it can begin. Giving people a sense of rectitude in controlling others speech leads directly to this shit. If for no other reason than it enforces the idea that there is something inherently wrong with a word.
Except those are same groups that are trying to eradicate ALL uses of the term, correct or otherwise.
If someone with a disability is accused of having that disability in clinical terms and gets upset, that's not derogatory, that's the afflicted having some serious self-identity issues.
I'm rarely in favor of indulging people when they seek the calming rhetoric of self-imposed labels. Giving something a different name that changes its context is just a way of removing accountability from the term. It's how you get alcoholics and drug addicts asking for lenience for their "disease."
It is reasonable to ask new publications and forms use the new term, but telling the entire federal government to change every existing publication or form with the term "mentally retarded" will cost much more money.
This from a medical professional?
The medical community has already changed its usage. The government is just catching up to the synthesis of mental "retardation" into the disability landscape. The preexisting term was always somewhat insulting, as it was basically a fancy word for "deficient," as I explained in an earlier post.
As for the Twain thing, it's worth it if it can get the book into schools that have banned the book because of the term.
I don't like the terminology is all. By saying an addiction is a "disease" is bringing it to the level of biological and genetic predisposition, and takes accountability out of the language. Parkinsons' is a disease. A substance that you know is dangerous and deadly and has no positive effect on your health that you choose to put in your body shouldn't be described with the same language and a congenital dysfunction.
To quote Penn Gillette, "ask a brain cancer patient if they think alcoholism is a disease. If they have the strength, they'll slap the shit out of you."
Well, you go that approach and see if you can't get rid of political correctness altogether. Maybe you can and if you so, good for you. But you're fighting hundreds of years of culture, my friend.
Giving those schools incentive to ban more books isn't really a good thing.
With the book, it would make more sense explaining the change from being rustic to being holy shit, what is wrong with you?
Historical context is at least half the point of Huck Finn.
Removing that word completely undoes that.
You do realize that the common cold and STD's are also diseases, right? Addiction and dependance are a hell of a lot more biologically significant than the flu.
I also don't extend much semantic protection to those afflicted by STDs.
The thing is, whatever addiction you may have, you are the one responsible for taking control in regard to both prevention and treatment. A cancer patient or Parkinsons patient or most other kinds of patients of biological illnesses do not have those options.
A food addict asking for special consideration for his or her condition "because it's a disease" just doesn't tug on my heartstrings. I don't deny that there is a disease process going on, but most of it is mental and internalized. The only one who can fix that is the one afflicted, and anyone asking for special treatment isn't looking to get better.
Part of the job for people in my field is discerning which patients get priority treatment in busy or hectic situations. Just about anyone in a physiological emergency is getting a place in line ahead of addicts.
It would be like editing "Birth of a Nation" to make the KKK look less like the good guys. Or changing "Triumph of the Will" to make the Nazi rallies less rousing. The fact that a racial slur is used casually by a character, or that those two movies uncomfortably show bad people in a sympathetic/good light are very important contextual points.
If some people can't handle this, fine. They shouldn't be reading or watching such works.
Rigorous Scholarship
I disagree wholeheartedly. One is a silly meaningless children's song about counting or whatever. Who the fuck cares. The other is a great work of literature that shouldn't be censored to make it "accessible".
What's next, editing Catcher in the Rye such that Holden Caufield doesn't smoke.
I also want to know what in the hell the "new classroom" is.
Which is fine! Unfortunately it doesn't your whole "diseases are what I say they are" routine any less dumb.
In the same way autistic people need to just get over it, or people with clinical depression just need to get out more, right? I mean, come on.
I hesitate to touch your statement about STDs, but I just can't help myself. It's your fault for contracting a particular disease because you're probably a slut, right?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
This is pretty much the opposite of what I said. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
That's because we aren't talking about "food addiction," which is a hilarious misuse of the term "addiction." We're talking about people who have actual physical addictions, and you damn well know it, as shown by the fact that you change the subject the second you're called on the ridiculousness of your claims.
So food addiction isn't "real" addiction is what you're saying?
But making black kids feel unwelcome and insulted in the classroom is totally fine. Because it's for literature.
I mean, really come on. I'm sympathetic to the side of the argument that favors keeping the book the same as it is and still teaching it, but I'm also not a self-centered compassionless myope -- the reality is that this word being taught in a classroom causes pain for many students, especially those who are in majority-white classrooms. It can and is felt as hurtful and alienating. A lot of people don't care about the context -- hearing a white person say the N-word is uncomfortable at best, painful at worst, because it unavoidably has emotional association and conjures up memory and feeling of abuse and insult that any black child will have experienced by the time they're reading that book.
And really, what the fuck do you, personally, viscerally lose out on if someone changes one word in a book you didn't write and probably had to be forced to read when you were a pot-smoking high school sophomore?
It all just smacks so much of "I don't like it when they tell us what to do" that I can't help but feel uncomfortable, even though I'm otherwise sort of sympathetic to the keep-the-word-in-there side of the argument, on grounds of context!
The point is, even if they do this, it's not a goddamn travesty -- it costs you essentially nothing. It's a far better solution than not teaching the book at all, which would be a real downside.
You're a bunch of white men, mostly or all straight and able-bodied and young, many of whom are educated and well-off, and you're spending this whole thread patting each other on the back for how people in discriminated-against groups should shake it off and "not make everything about race/gender/ability/age/sexuality/etc" and just quiet down please...
But then when something happens that you don't like that has to do with race, something that is even quite benign and doesn't insult or demean you personally, you're all thrown into such an inflamed tizzy you'd think someone pissed on your shoes or wiped their dick on your mom's face.
For a bunch of people who seem to think everyone else should stop making such a fuss, you all throw a pretty big tantrum over some pretty insignificant shit.