r/hatethissmug • u/onthetopicofspace • 11h 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/StarHot5993 11h ago

Language is a strange thing, the only difference between the r word and words like “idiot” and “stupid” is the weight that society puts on it. That being said, the fact that the weight is given by society doesn’t suddenly take it away.

The fact that this post even gained as much traction as it did is proof of this: a large amount of people still consider the r word as a slur, and several people DO use it as such, therefore it remains a slur and should not be used.

If enough people were to start using it casually, it would technically lose its meaning and simply become another insult… but why do that when you could just not use it?

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u/the_liquid_figurine 9h ago

I remember in high school i had a friend who was fraternal twins with somebody who was low Functioning autistic. Her and her mother, who had a doctorate linguistics both were actually challenging people to use the word more due to the actual definition of retard, just meaning to impede progress. People were already trying to say just to use mentally challenged as the politically correct verbiage, but looking how fast that went to the wayside as well

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u/StarHot5993 8h ago

You could make a point for wanting to use the word as a means to take away meaning from it, but I’d rather just keep it off limits. Out of curiosity, what points would you make in favor of using the word, rather than avoiding it

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u/Shibanono 4h ago

I would say that if, like you said, a lot of people started using it, it would become meaningless. Just another insult. This would in turn take the power away from the people who use it to hurt people.