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[PATV] my penis deals poison (4th Panel)
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a panda eating cakeseattleRegistered User regular
a panda eating cakeseattleRegistered User regular
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edit: too soon
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Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
http://www.audioentropy.com/
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Well, I do understand the homosexual.
But retarded? That doesn't even imply a person. The game I am playing could be "retarded" because it isn't well developed, not as a comparison to a handicapped person?
Or am I silly? Does it automatically imply a handicapped individual?
If I wanted to shit all over language itself and yell "you retarded piece of gay dick" at the PSN then there shouldn't be anything wrong with that.
you really don't see anything wrong with the fact that people use "gay" to mean both "a homosexual person" and "something that is bad"
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Personally, I wouldn't use anything like gay or retarded to mean "something that is bad" as usually that means anthropomorphizing stuff to allow the word to even make sense, and then we're into a whole new word world.
whats your take, Speed Racer?
One of two solutions is usually proposed: stop people using the word, or rename the thing it refers to. This is why the names of things such as "retard" keep changing. See: "idiot", "imbecile", "moron". These words used to directly refer to the mentally handicapped, but then people started using them as insults. They changed the name to "retard" and now, calling someone an idiot isn't offensive!
Success! Or is it?
The problem is that you simply can't stop people using words in this way if this is what they want to actually communicate. If the message I want to communicate is "your [attribute] is on the level of someone who has [handicap]", I simply cannot do so without making any reference to the handicapped. Changing the name of the handicap is going to change the words I use, but it isn't going to change my message. The next word I use then becomes "an offensive word" and the cycle starts over.
If making such a reference is offensive, then try to educate people to not make such references. Just trying to make people not say "retard" anymore isn't going to do anything productive, because it's not the word that's offensive.
that said, there is a history of using the term vitriolically to deride people with medical conditions that they can't control, and even though it's "bad" to be retarded it's still pretty shitty to use "retarded" as a synonym for bad and/or dumb.
"Bad" and "dumb" both have lots and lots of synonyms in English and there's no real good reason to decide to use the only one that has the potential to hurt the feelings of a mentally handicapped person or one of their loved ones.
One day "retarded" probably won't be a loaded word and will be a perfectly normal insult, in the same way "imbecile" and "idiot" have evolved. As of now though it's still definitely a word that carries a lot of baggage for some people and has the capacity to hurt someone far more than the average user of the word generally intends to, and it really wouldn't kill you to avoid using it.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
how often do you talk about your penis
Of course, just because it's sensible doesn't mean it's going to stop being being offended. Which is why society is retarded.
I use the word retarded as a pejorative, but not as a description for those with severe mental disabilities. What should I be saying instead? If someone is doing or saying something foolish, and we feel they should know better and thus have chosen to act and are responsible for their actions, we want to insult and mock them. The problem with using "retard", as I understand it, is that it both refers to someone who is not responsible for their actions and refers to their condition in a pejorative, undesirable way.
I don't really know anyone who still uses the word retarded for the actually seriously mentally handicapped, but to objectors that doesn't matter. What about other words though? Dumb, stupid, idiot, etc all used to refer to actual conditions but have passed in to slang. And does using lesser terms even avoid the problem? Even if you're referring to a higher level of functioning as a pejorative, such as calling someone dumb (and not as in mute in this case), aren't a lot of dumb people also less mentally capable because of genetics as opposed to choice, just as with the severely mentally challenged?
Then there is the problem of using the term as an undesirable condition, which is frowned upon. I don't know anyone that, given the choice, would choose mental handicaps. If cognizant of their condition I doubt those with mental handicaps would prefer to keep them. Some people deserve to be insulted, how can we do that without using terms that refer to undesirable things? As long as people treat the handicapped with respect as opposed to using pejoratives to them, can't the pejorative be used on others?
I don't know, it certainly is still a charged word. I think it should pass fully in to slang. I think it should be okay to call some moron "retarded" or a "retard", and that people shouldn't use it to refer to the handicapped.
Edit: Just saw SpeedRacers post, that definately helped. I guess there are plenty of possible synonyms that wouldn't offend that I could use. They just don't seem to have the same emotion though. Calling someone or something dumb instead of retarded feels like saying frick instead of fuck. Coincidentally I heard the term "ableism" for the first time today as a result of the Dilbert shit.
While there are synonyms for bad or dumb, the example of using it as an adjective to mean slowed or inhibited development is, i think, pretty valid.
Retarded is actually a slang term when used to define the mentally handicapped. It actually means something quite different from a mental disorder. If you're using it to mean that something isn't developed well, you aren't including that group at all. It's different from something like (since we've been using the example) gay, because that went from an original meaning, to a term to describe a group, which was then used as a pejorative still connected with that group.
When someone uses retarded in that way, they are actually just using the literal meaning of the word, not a negative connotation to the mentally handicapped.
Try thinking about it like this: when you say you're fashion-retarded, you're saying a couple things. One is that you are as impaired as a mentally-handicapped person. That's obviously hyperbole, but it also serves to diminish the difficulty and experience of people so impaired. Could they improve their impairment with education and effort, the way that you could improve your bad fashion sense? Not really, so it's kind of a bad analogy.
The other thing you're saying is that it's bad to be retarded. And, yeah, there's a certain perspective from which being impaired is "bad". But the "hoopla", as you put it, over the use of "retarded" is an outgrowth of the effort to treat these people as genuine, even valuable, members of society and not just as its unfortunate cast-offs. The families of people with disabilities on this spectrum love those people the way that they are; many of them would not go back in time to "fix" the impairment, because they have the son/daughter/brother/sister/etc. that they care for and who is a real person. The impaired can hold jobs, go to school, be kind, fall in love. There are things you can do that they can't, sure, but that's true for everyone relative to everyone else. What matters is whether they can find a place and an acceptance in the society around them, and casual use of the word "retarded" as an insult or a denigration helps to promote an atmosphere in which that is increasingly difficult, because it promotes the idea that the mentally-impaired are just wrong somehow.
Basically, using words that have at their core a denigration of people for attributes which are beyond their control is always problematic for pretty much all the same reasons. It's always members of the majority culture who want to say aggressively that those words no longer have those negative connotations towards the minority culture, but the thing is that it's not really up to the majority to decide that, assuming of course that the majority is uninterested in continuing patterns of marginalization and paternalism. The people to whom these words refer will let you know when they don't hurt anymore. I'm sorry that you have to wait a little a while.
Yes, but part of the point is that that was not what he was saying by saying "Fashion retarded." Through the original use of the word, there is no direct connection to the mentally handicapped. The word retarded does not have at it's core a denigration of people for attributes which are beyond their control. The phrase mentally retarded does.
I think I'm misunderstanding your point
"gay" used to mean happy, then came to mean homosexual, then because of its relation to homosexuality became a pejorative
"retard" used to mean to impair or slow down, then came to primarily mean mentally impaired or slowed down, then because of its relation to mentally handicapped people became a pejorative
other than the fact that there are a few rare cases in which we still use "retard's" original meaning (flame retardant is the only one that comes to mind for me), what's the meaningful distinction between the way the two words are used?
Saying "oh I mean 'retarded' in the sense of being slowed down" sounds like the same sort of dodge to me as "oh I mean 'gay' in the sense of being happy." When a person says "retarded," they are drawing a comparison to a mentally handicapped person, because that is the main connotation that word has anymore.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Pretending that words have no connotations and are used to express nothing other than their literal dictionary definitions seems disingenuous to me. Even if that's how you're intending to use the word you can't act like it's reasonable to expect people to know that, especially when you're using it in a context where it can be very easily conflated with the colloquial meaning of the word.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I was really just replying to the person who was asking the difference, and if the word still could mean under developed, without regards to a mentally handicapped person. And I have used, and have heard it used in that way, without meaning stupid or handicapped.
I'm not saying that every 12 year old who calls his friend retarded is using the actual meaning of the word, but I do think there is a difference in that the actual meaning of the word has not been completely lost.
I mean, no one really uses gay as a term for happiness anymore, but I hear retard in regards to growth quite a bit, actually.
I'm not really joining into this argument full force, but I think that there are a few important little distinctions.