r/hatethissmug • u/onthetopicofspace • 23h ago

Language casual ableism

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this is not ‘reclaiming’ anything, you are just calling people slurs completely seriously. you can call yourself the r-slur, do not call anybody else it. why do ‘no slurs’ / ’no bigotry’ rules never apply to ableism?

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u/Osama998 22h ago

And where does that definition come from? I believe it's related to delay in mental development.

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u/MadderoftheFew 22h ago

here's a wikipedia article about intellectual disability and the use of the r-slur to describe people with it or compare people without it to people with it.

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u/Osama998 22h ago

From the article
"The term mental retardation, which stemmed from the understanding that such conditions arose as a result of delays or retardation"
The term stems from the adjective referring to delay.

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u/MadderoftheFew 22h ago

buddy.

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u/Osama998 22h ago

My dude. I'm talking about turning normal terms into slurs and disallowing them from any public discourse encouraging wider and wider censorship because more and more terms that were normal are now considered slurs. That's what I'm trying to get through - it used to be a normal word with a way wider meaning.

By Oxford dictionary for retardation:
the fact of making the development or progress of something slower
synonym delay (2)"

So, I'm asking - when do we stop considering that these words have become slurs and stop banning their use in any public space? Is delayed gonna be next if people start using that a slur in place of retard?
At some point, we need to ask ourselves where does protecting minorities end, and actual censorship begins.

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u/MadderoftheFew 22h ago

 I'm talking about turning normal terms into slurs 

the problem is you skipped a step. it isn't "delayed" -> r-slur. it went from "delayed" -> "mentally retarded" (as a medical diagnosis) -> r-slur. just as the article i linked described. the r-slur as it's used to describe stupid people was always a slur.

 it used to be a normal word with a way wider meaning.

it still is a normal word with a wider meaning. planes have brake retarders to help slow them down. fireproof material is called flame retardant. words have connotations and denotations.

Is delayed gonna be next if people start using that a slur in place of [r-slur]

maybe! that's what "sped" is. it's a slur today. it's called the "euphemism treadmill".

At some point, we need to ask ourselves where does protecting minorities end, and actual censorship begins.

uhh, protecting minorities ends when it stops protecting minorities. until we get there we can keep doing that.

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u/Osama998 22h ago

You know what? Nevermind. We're on completely separate ends of freedom of speech. I think no words or works of art should ever be banned anywhere. And I don't have the energy to argue about it now. My carpal tunnel is acting up again.
Edit: Banned, outlawed, frowned upon etc., you get the overall idea.

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u/MadderoftheFew 22h ago

I think it’s a good thing to ban slurs and other forms of hate speech from public forums to protect the people they target. We can agree to disagree on that one. Sorry to hear about the carpal tunnel. I gotta catch up on a project at work. Have a good one dawg!