Wow the 80s were real different. You could advertise as a swinger and it’s just chill.
The secret ninth rule of fight club
there’s something hauntingly poetic about the ebb and flows of human compassion coming together to form language that allows the marginalized to express their need for emancipation, only for the inevitable surge of encultured ableism to quell that spark and steal that language for its own purpose. over and over and over. what will break the cycle? will people with disabilities ever get to have a concrete hold on the words they use to describe themselves, or is this a permanent fixture in the world we are forcing onto the disabled?
In the latest Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM-5-TR), intellectual disability is the term that replaces mental retardation meaning mentally slow or delayed. Before mental retardation, it was mental deficiency implying there was something inferior. To me, there’s no real difference between mental deficiency and intellectual disability. They are synonymous. Before the first DSM, a prominent doctor in the field of intelligence created a tiered system of intelligence that applied the labels moron, imbecile, and idiot (ordered higher to lower intelligence). Those words became derogatory too. The issue is not that scientists can’t guess the correct term that wont become an insult.
The issue is that society defines values for people which allows terms to be insults. As long as oppression exists, the vulnerable will fall victim to it. The disabled, by definition, will always be part of the vulnerable group. Additionally, oppression is always justified by arguments on who deserves what, whether it be religion, race, sex, social class, work ethic, or intelligence. As long as we hold the value that inequitable distribution is not only acceptable but the ultimate goal of a just society, then regardless of the rules we establish, however noble or virtuous, the disabled will always be part of the oppressed, and thus, the terms for lower intelligence will continually evolve from neutral to derogatory.
As long as we hold the value that inequitable distribution is not only acceptable but the ultimate goal of a just society, then regardless of the rules we establish, however noble or virtuous, the disabled will always be part of the oppressed, and thus, the terms for lower intelligence will continually evolve from neutral to derogatory.
Preach! 🗣️🗣️🔥
The deaf seem to own it. They made up their own language and ableism can’t do shit.
But that is the only exception I can think of. (And they are really independent).
Mostly because we don’t give a shit what the hearing say about us
We were commenting on your nice shoulders but that’s fine 😭
excellent point! i hope for a future where the same patterns can work for the good of all disabled identities
Are their other groups that you think experience this? As other poster said, deaf is deaf. Blind is blind. Paraplegic and that family all seem fine. And autism/neurodivergent is having it’s heyday as everyone realizes the symptoms are pretty broad and most people express some of those symptoms and most people want to feel unique.
So…what’s special about this group?
Yes, different subsets of the disabled community have emancipated their language to different degrees.
Have you ever heard “special olympics” being used as an insult? What about “acoustic” or “neurodivergent”? “Special needs” or “the ‘tism”? Sadly, I have. That’s why, when I see these terms being abused in day to day life, I tend to call it out. I want those words to belong to the people they represent, not people who just want to verbally abuse.
But yeah, asking “what’s special” is sort of the wrong way to think about it. The fight for disability rights has barely started in the grand scheme of things, and it’s only natural that some disabled identities have obtained more broad acceptance than others. Good question though.
Special Olympics when I was in middle school or below, I think predominantly from south park fans. It’s always a bit cringe to watch shows from the 90s or early 2000s cause sometimes this stuff will randomly appear.
The rest no, most people seem to call themselves neurodivergent or autistic lately. I’ve never heard of acoustic, had to look it up. I assumed it was something to do with issues handling noise and I was very wrong but right about which group it was mocking.
I think where I’m trying to get to is that for a lot of groups having a label (or if not a label, just knowledge that a concept exists) and find this positive. I know I’ve heard from several people in the various LGBTQ categories who felt that way, xyz event or discussion was the point they realized the way they feel or are is actually an option and that it’s ok. Big deal for them. More precise descriptions of physical disabilities were the first to be broadly understood and accepted. When I was a kid I didn’t know anything about autism except some nutjobs wanted to bring back polio, and then we got the concept of Asperger’s and a spectrum and neurodivergent and now things are clearly much much better. In contrast to LGBTQ it’s more “this is a thing I know about myself and must manage” but still, helpful. But from my PoV I know literally nothing about this situation. I know a bunch of people got upset and tried to phase out retarded. There’s some pushback from people who don’t get or care why. But in my head that word has no other meaning than calling someone stupid. It’s not derogatory to a group, only to an individual. Then one day someone said it was derogatory to some group I’d never met and I should stop using it. And I did, but I still don’t really get it. I don’t think my experience on this has been out of the ordinary.
So my point here at the end is that it feels like the labeling/marketing is wrong. LGBTQ folks and neurodivergent folks have both found ways to feel superior to straight/“normal”(I don’t have a label for this, but it feels weird to say normal when they are in the minority) and to generally reclaim the derogatory terms used against them. So what is that alternative marketing for this group?
Saw this at a consignment shop a couple months ago, from about that same time period.How much was it? I’d buy that just to have a gumball machine.
It was $250, pretty expensive for an old gum ball machine. It is unique though with that sticker on it.
I think a gumball only costs 1¢!
Looking at the tag im gonna presume its either $20 dollars or $200.
Fun fact: word usage changes over time. For example, “idiot” used to be a technical medical term for extreme mental disability. We live in the Age of Information, and if somebody doesn’t want to learn about historical context that’s actually willful ignorance on their part.
As the word “retarded” transitioned to “the r word” in the 2010s, this was pointed out over and over, that this process has happened over and over. We seem to have an innate yearning to find ways to call people stupid.
Give it a few more years and then “mentally disabled” will be the new retarded. We’ll cringe at how people would say they’re “disabled”.
I work with the mentally disabled and have for a while now. I love my guys but it’s so annoying seeing how new terms will come and go throughout the years constantly.
The Euphemism Treadmill might stop when the term is so clinically dry as “mentally disabled”. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue of a schoolyard bully the way “retarded” does. I dunno, we’ll see.
retarded doesn’t have any more negative meaning than disabled. it’s just about how we use it.
Ha. That’s retarded.
It just gets shortened to disabled. I’ve seen it used countless times as an insult.
I’m pretty sure that “mentally retarded” was the medical term for many decades, before it became cultural lingo. There was something similar for erectile dysfunction too, they used to call you impotent, not exactly a great thing to hear at the doctor’s office.
i wish you were right :( citing experience haha
Culture evolves. I will say, some of the new terms drive me nuts because they technically mean the same thing, but are grammatically awkward or are otherwise clunky when conveying the same message.
Like sure, I technically have a disability, please don’t try to frame it as a good thing or something to make it sound better. It just sounds condescending. I don’t need pity, I’m living my life to the fullest now :P
Doug Stanhope has a bit about that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dqsgxLyl5ESo accurate hahaha
I mean, they are disabled! This whole “differently abled” is completely out of touch with reality.
I think the line for disability changes regularly - cochlear implants seem like a massive enabler for example (also worth considering, maybe more interesting, those deaf peeps who refuse to get them when they could)
In my head I think of the line as being self sufficient for daily needs. If you can’t go get groceries and cook them, that’s a clear disability, and one everyone experiences many times (at min from a young age, usually old age, often times in between like surgeries and bad diseases).
would say they’re “handi-capable”.
FTFY
Where can I get one of these shirts…I love it…anyone own a printing press?
All things are possible with the help of a local maker space
As I get older, I have more and more sympathy for people who can’t keep up with socially acceptable terminology. At the same time, I have less and less tolerance for people who deliberately use outdated, insulting language.
No cap, fr fr!
Skibidy truth.
Spoken like a true neurodivergent.
I have zero tolerance for people who think that their variety of a language is superior to all others, and that they get to impose it on others.
Ah the Euphemism Treadmill. Live long enough and words we use today for intellectual disability will become inappropriate too.
I only really mind when it’s done by normies like myself about a minority group that we aren’t a part of. Like taking offense on behalf of someone else.
If a group wants to mix up their own terms just because, I’m 100 percent behind them.
Whenever medical science came up with a term to describe people with cognitive or intellectual impairments, it eventually became used as a derogatory insult. The R word was going out for a long time before Rosa’s Law put the mail in the coffin.
Why is retarded considered so offensive that people self censor but idiot isn’t? Is it just that retarded reached its peak in the internet era of policing speech or is there something special about the word that makes it much more offensive than idiot or imbecile?
They both have the same meanings, intentions, and ability to be used as an insult.
A) Time changes culture and language. I have no way to measure, but “idiot” could certainly have been on par with “retard” in its time.
B) The coopting of “retard” came at a time with a more mature disability rights movement. With the ADA passed in 1990, disabled individuals had a much greater capacity to speak out against the theft of their language than was possible in previous iterations of this pattern. You mention this a bit with your “peak internet era” comment, though a more charitable reading of that sentence might be that internet is allowing disabled people to get together and voice their experiences of being harrassed and abused in conjunction with the word, really speaking out for themselves rather than taking it lying down.
Under Rosa’s law, these would be described respectively as profound, severe, and moderate levels of intellectual disability.
Unfortunately, I don’t see the cycle breaking anytime soon. We got idiot and moron from the same medical textbooks as “retarded”.
Gen B squeakers will start calling people “profoundly/severely disabled” in COD 2k35 and the cycle will be born anew.
this game is fucking PROFOUNDLY DISABLED rage quits
Bury your mail with your dead relatives. Good idea.
The movie Tropic Thunder is what pushed it over the edge
I am so glad you posted this. Sometimes I get into little arguments about word usage and younger folk truly don’t understand how not only commonplace word usage that is considered some sort of insult now but how officially they were used. Near me was a place that helped folks with all sorts of independent living including housing and job training and just counseling and it was called the NSAR and Im almost sure the R was retardation. Think it changed its name and I can’t find anything on it now but I did find like this https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/pdf/70s/70/70s-WWH-NARC.pdf
It’s hard to fully explain how the reception of words change to people who haven’t seen it first-hand.
Even some bad words, which might be incredibly rude to say today, didn’t have the same oomph in the past, so while the definition technically might not have changed, the intended severity of it has.
yeah and part of it is they were used as insults but it was more co-opting than anything else. retarded is pretty legit as saying someone is retarded can be proper, but someone will call someone retarded who is not as an insult. then shortening is almost never correct. You might say someone is retarded and that is a correct thing about their condition but saying their a retard is not as its sorta a made up word based on the condition and further tard or tarded is a way to make it more derogatory. Its like homosexual. its a word that means something without being derogatory but to someone who thinks being a homosexual is bad will use it as an insult and using the word homo is almost always an insult (the rare exception is usage among friends to sorta deflate its meaning). When it comes down to it is that folks who spent decades with a word being legitamate will have trouble when it becomes a taboo thing for a decade or so.
I have a special needs uncle and my whole life I grew up with him being called “retarded” and it not being a slur.
It was just a way to describe his mental functioning.
To me it doesn’t have the same impact because I had never heard it used pejoratively until after it was a no-no word.
You didn’t call retarded people retards, you called your friends retards when they were acting retarded.
yes. as I said that really had no use but as a insult but the word it came out of was legitimate.
And then some things suddenly become okay. You definitely didn’t hear people casually talking about “eating ass” in the era of retards.
Disney’s Recess was censored to remove the term midget
Apparently now little person/lesser human is the preferred term
I find it hard to believe lesser human would be used as a term. Its a bit funny because again midget was also used as opposed to dwarf by the relative proportionality even though dwarfism was appropriate for both types. Was it being used to describe someone in the show with dwarfism though because if not then it was sorta being used derogatorily.
In the first episode the line
the midget girl is right
Was use towards the short girl of the main cast when she stood up to authority
That was simply the euphemism du jour, on the eternal euphemism treadmill.
Here’s my random two cents about disability euphemisms.
I personally think “special”, which was pretty popular like 10 years ago, was/is pretty demeaning. Even the more recent “differently-abled” feels weird.
I think the plain language of “disability”, which seems to have been around quite a while now, is fine. It’s what is says on the tin, without judgement.
Why does everyone assume it’s “eternal” or “never ending”? Each time the euphemisms change, it’s due to more inclusivity, more empathy, and more attempts to understand the plight of others. It’s reasonable to assume that it’ll stop at a point when we reach the right terms. It probably has already, and I just can’t think of any examples off the top of my head…
The euphemism treadmill sure is differently abled
can you really call it a euphemism when it just used to be a medical term back then?
Pro tip: It still is a medical term. Internet activists deciding they don’t like a word doesn’t actually change the word.
It’s not only the ‘SJW’ crowd who are asking people to stop using it, but also the medical field, patients, and their caregivers directly asking everyone to stop.
The results of both the parent and professional surveys support a move away from the use of the term mental retardation. The majority of parents indicated that they would be upset if a physician used the term mental retardation.
Right, the euphemism treadmill works on medical terminology same as common speech. The medical terms used to be ‘moron’, ‘idiot’, and ‘cripple’.
Goes medical term-> common language -> insult -> forbidden
I mean it’s not like the crown will cut your tongue out for saying the word. You can still say it, and people decide if it is taboo or not, and dis/approve accordingly.
But much like we don’t use “negroe” despite that having been the word in common use, we’ve recognized the pain it causes that group because of the way language gets weaponized to ‘other’ people.
that’s not how that works. “idiot”, “lunatic” and “hysterical” were once medical terms. they are no longer used as such.
I mean thing swinging lifestyle is one thing but that might be a bridge too far.
In 1882, this event would have been called Swing For Imbeciles
Dullards
Macaroni Heads
