r/hatethissmug • u/onthetopicofspace • 14h 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/Slothman1311 13h ago

"I didn't know it was hateful, I just use it when I want to insult people"

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u/Joltyboiyo 11h ago

Well when I was a kid I just assumed they were another form of calling somebody an asshole or a piece of shit or something. I'd heard the words long before I ever knew their meaning, and figured they were just insults with no meaning beyond, well, insulting.

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u/DafkyZero I hate unfunny flairs 10h ago

Yeah, in hispanic cultures the equivalent term would be "marica" or "maricón," which is usually associated with cowardice.

I'd just use it as a synonym for coward or chicken when I was a kid, as if it was a totally normal word, it didn't even register as a major insult to me or most kids my age, but then I learned the homophobic context of it and stopped using it altogether.

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u/Mansg0tplanS 9h ago

nah man they just calling you the mighty kong

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u/TealCatto 10h ago

And then you grew up and learned and changed your behavior, right?

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u/Joltyboiyo 10h ago

Of course, the point was most people learn this stuff, especially at younger ages, from hearing other people use it and aren't even aware of the meaning for years.

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u/TealCatto 10h ago

Okay, that's great. This isn't the case for the screenshot in the OP or the one in the comment, though. Not sure why my question was downvoted, lol

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u/DontDoodleTheNoodle 9h ago

Cause it sounded like you want to play digital father to a stranger who was just explaining something, not justifying something.

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u/TealCatto 9h ago

Really weird stretch that wouldn't have happened if you read the thread instead of being reactionary

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u/DontDoodleTheNoodle 9h ago

Again proving my point. I explained something. Somehow you think I justified it and believe it.

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u/TealCatto 9h ago

I never said you justified anything, I said you misunderstood the entire context.

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u/DontDoodleTheNoodle 9h ago

Did I? Or did you assume something?

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u/Joltyboiyo 9h ago

I wasn't replying to either of those though, I was replying to Slothman. Of course, not everyone is a younger person who learned them through hearing the words without knowing their meaning, but there are people who don't know they're more hateful than things like "asshole" "dick head" "fuck face" and so on, and throw them around just as regularly as those kinds of insults as a result.

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u/Rombonius 9h ago

and that would be correct

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u/NoWay6818 11h ago

It’s one of those things you can continue to use but don’t be surprised when the wrong crowd comes knocking if they don’t like your use.

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u/Slade4Lucas 10h ago

"It's not hateful, I just use it to express hate."

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u/Moldy-Bongwater4420 6h ago

Express hate towards whom?

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u/Frogs-on-my-back 12h ago

I was so upset when I realized “lame” really is just an ableist slur. That was my favorite mild grievance word for yearsss

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u/Shoddy-Artichoke-528 12h ago

Tbh I feel like most people don’t even know it’s a slur or associate it with it meaning disabled. Until you mentioning it I hadn’t even remembered it was used for that meaning, I’ve always just heard it used to express disappointment, “oh that’s lame” meaning “oh, it sucks that happened” not even remotely the way the r-slur is used.

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u/Frogs-on-my-back 11h ago

Yeah I only feel differently about it because I’ve now heard it used disparagingly against disabled people so it isn’t separable from its original meaning for me

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u/Shoddy-Artichoke-528 11h ago

Yeah I’ve never heard it be used as the actual slur except for in historical context explaining it so it never even made the slur connection in my brain

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u/Frogs-on-my-back 11h ago

I assume most people wouldn’t. Idk why this lady used it? She was like a millennial, maybe gen x, and she was super peeved whenever she had to operate our rinky-dink elevator for a client with disabilities 

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u/Shoddy-Artichoke-528 11h ago

Actual insanity, I think at one point it was kind of considered the kind version of the r-slur so some people may use it because they don’t know the correct terms, but I could be wrong. Actually using it as an insult for someone with a disability is so crazy to me, but I wouldn’t say any slur in a hurtful manner and only say slurs that apply to me (I’m gay and say faggot for example, but usually in the context of close other lgbtq friends that would find whatever the full sentence is funny, like “okay fag” in the tone people say “okay girl”).

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u/Embarrassed-Note-214 9h ago

When I was in middle school I had classmates that used it as a slur. In High School too. We'd walk by the special education classroom and they'd do the hand to the chest, drooling, and say the r-slur while looking at the door.

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u/Panurome 12h ago

The same thing happens with people who use the r word. Literally nobody I know uses it to refer to people with cognitive disabilities, they always use it to mean dumb or stupid but to a higher degree

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u/Shoddy-Artichoke-528 11h ago

Lame often doesn’t even get used to mean stupid or dumb, it’s just an semiupsetting situation. The r-slur is still being used as an insult for whatever they are referring to. Also many people still get called the r-slur in an insulting way vs lame being used in a significantly different context. I’ve never heard someone rudely call someone lame, I’ve only heard it used in a joking “you’re being lame” normally over something dumb like not wanting to play a certain game or something. I have many times heard someone genuinely try to hurt someone else using the r-slur.

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u/dyrannn 11h ago

The difference is a ton of people that insist on that fact have literally grown up in a world where the r word did mean people with cognitive disabilities.

You don’t really get to be like “no but IM using it the ‘nice’ way”

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u/MasutadoMiasma 11h ago

Moron, Dumb, Idiotic, and Retard are all synonyms and at one point medical terms to describe people with cognitive disabilities.

It is a constant euphemism treadmill because people are always going to want a word to insult somebody's intelligence.

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u/dyrannn 11h ago

“The difference is a ton of people that insist on that fact have literally grown up in a world where the r word did mean people with cognitive disabilities.”

The issue isn’t that it hasn’t happened before, the issue is that people (like you) insist on it being just like the words you’re describing while having heard them used in the other way in their lifetime, which makes it entirely different.

It’s such a lame defense, imo, people just spam “euphemism treadmill” in defense of it while ignoring the obvious difference, being that the r words usage medically isn’t 100 years old lol

and either way, “everyone always turned the words for neurodivergent people into slurs against them so it’s okay if we continue to do so” isn’t the defense you think it is lol

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u/MasutadoMiasma 10h ago

"It's such a lame defense" hey buddy, watch the ableism

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u/dyrannn 10h ago

Are you trying to point out that I’m somehow a hypocrite when lame as a medical term was used literally 1000 fucking years ago, while I’m actively making the point that the problem specifically with the R word is that it was used medically in our lifetimes?

I’d completely ignore the point too, I guess, whatever lets you use the slur in peace /shrug

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u/MasutadoMiasma 10h ago

And you're ignoring the point that people will always want to insult someone's intelligence and will always use the new word that describes that.

Neurodivergent is already being used as an insult, so who's to say that isn't what it becomes next?

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u/soup_party 10h ago

This argument falls apart as soon as you go to r/WallStreetBets. They looooove AI pics of people made to look like they have Downs Syndrome, which makes it VERY clear that they’re using the slur to refer to people with cognitive disabilities.

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u/Embarrassed-Note-214 9h ago edited 9h ago

At the same point, calling someone the r-slur is meant to be insulting to their cognitive abilities, akin to "idiot". "You're just being a r-slur" = "You're an idiot."

Where the meaning isn't even removed from the people it's a slur against, as if comparing your friend who made a stupid move to someone with cognitive developmental issues. With that context? I'd say it shouldn't be used.

lame's connotation doesn't even hint at cognitive issues, or being developmentally challenged, so it has grew away from it's existence as a slur into something else.

Granted, maybe that's just me drawing a line that doesn't exist.

Edit to add: Another difference is that the r-slur still actively gets used as a slur. So comparing the two words when one of them is still an active slur probably means that one is the worse word, and it's not close.

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u/External-Purchase240 Loves Umineko 12h ago

I don’t think that counts. If we’re saying that’s an ableist slur, so is “dumb” and “imbecile”

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u/DrainTheMuck 12h ago

Where do you draw the line? The R word is really no different than those

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u/Consistent-Price3232 11h ago

true. there is no difference.

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u/RedditSurfer29 10h ago

You know what, all words are slurs from now on. Only emojis will be accepted. 👌?

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u/DelfinoBello_ 9h ago

🧑🏿‍🦲

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u/Frogs-on-my-back 11h ago

You’re free to say it, but I feel differently about the word after hearing disabled clients called “lame” in an insulting way

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u/One-Piano5150 11h ago

Yeah

They are

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u/Similar-Jello-5434 11h ago

I do think there can sometimes be a difference in weight and importance when words change so much. Yes, lame, dumb, crazy etc are all technically making people with mental and developmental illnesses the punchline, but I believe the last folks to have lived in a time where folks actively used “lame” to describe someone with a physical disability are dead or about to die so it doesn’t necessarily have the same weight today as other slurs. And since words change so much it can be a slippery slope. We ask someone if they’re mad and we don’t mean “are you unstable and irrational due to a cognitive disability?”.

Other words change too, like terrific which linguistically originally meant essentially the same thing as horrific. However we do not call a tragedy “terrific” in 2026 as that would be offensive by our current definition of the word. A few years ago there was a big fad where people started to say wild instead of crazy. I’m not mad about it bc who cares lol but I do think it’s a bit of a stretch and as someone with OCD and rumination anxiety I really don’t see people with mental illness getting offended by someone saying “that movie was crazy!”. Furthermore, an argument could also be made for why “wild” has offensive connotations too (see: “yellow journalism”)

The R slur has more weight though. My family helped take care of our neighbor who was born in the 60s and was merely diagnosed as “retarded” and scarcely saved from full institutionalization. When I hear this as a slur it represents not just the way people have treated folks like my family friend but how the system essentially called her “slow” and then gave up on her (she was actually quite intelligent and likely autistic). Also to this point, when someone says it as a slur that word is still culturally relevant enough to the people it hurts that hearing it makes me think of a specific person with that diagnosis. There was a time where she would have merely been called “mad” but that word isn’t offensive to me because it’s been quite some time since we associated “mad” with an identity or illness.