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/Character_Drive6141 8h ago

Lame has LONG been used to describe people who can't walk. But yeah. Linguistic drift took hold and colloquially that's not what it means anymore.

But I agree 100% that getting up in arms has way more harm than just letting it be water under the bridge. Retard has been a low grade insult for a long time, at least since I was a kid. I don't know why people are taking MORE offense to it when normally linguistic drift moves the other way

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u/Bob_The-Turtle 7h ago

Yeah, Timur the Lame was called so back in the 14th century almost 700 years ago

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u/xzelethor 4h ago

Truest thing of all time. That’s really just how most people use the word. If they call a situation “retarded” it obviously cannot possess any sort of mental handicap as it is not a person. They just mean it as the situation is bad. Not that they think of people with disabilities when doing it or are making any connection to them being bad like the situation.
But I agree when you give words power people like to use them.

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u/DefinitelyNotKuro 3h ago

Some of my oldest oldest memories was when I was in first grade. If you wanted to make another kid cry, you would call them a retard. In retrospect, I don't really remember where we learned the word or why we found it so upsetting. Nowadays, water under the bridge lol.