I'm reading your post and watching your avatar and it's just impossible, man. I'm laughing too hard to think.PeterMerkin69 said:And in the end, we, too, inherited this cold and indifferent world.
I'm barely able to type this
I'm reading your post and watching your avatar and it's just impossible, man. I'm laughing too hard to think.PeterMerkin69 said:And in the end, we, too, inherited this cold and indifferent world.
When other people note that your words are hurting them, and you continue to use those words with that justification, it's not exactly "life" that is being a *****.Spinozaad said:It's a shame that you are offended, but tough luck kid, suck it up. Life is a ***** sometimes.
I'm making a fuss about two things. The first is that your statement quoted above contradicts itself, first saying you don't use the word the way most people do and then saying you won't change it from the way most people do, so I had to choose which of those two statements I believe, and I believe the first one. The second is that I asked you where you got the idea that most people do not refer to people with learning disabilities when they use the word "retarded," you refused to answer, and now you repeat that no one you know means it that way without explaining how you know that, which I consider bad form.Torrasque said:None of the people I talk to on a regular basis consider "retarded" to be a reference to people who are mentally handicapped, so I don't see what you are making a fuss about.JimB said:So...you're deliberately using the word in a way other than the way people understand it, and you're expecting them to know you don't mean what they do?Torrasque said:I see where you're going with this, and no, I didn't gain my definition of retard(ed) from mass consensus, so I will not change my definition from mass consensus either.
That's like saying, "I have never met a black person who has HIV, so the statistics saying black people are more likely to contract HIV are false."Torrasque said:Beside that, I have never had someone take offense at me saying the word "retarded."
So your argument is that it's a matter of regional dialect? That the word means different things in different nations, like the famous example of "fag" in American English versus the Queen's English? That might be reasonable, assuming you can back it up. I just wish you would have led with it rather than a "I don't mean it that way, so no one does, and you'll have to take my word for that last part because I won't tell you why I think so."Torrasque said:Obviously this is different online. I have noticed that more Americans think retarded means mentally handicapped than Canadians, even when online.
No, the key point is that you understand people take offense at the word, and you continue to use it in a way contrary to that understanding because you seem to think that when it comes to communicating your point, the greater burden is on the listener to find out exactly what you think each and every word means than on you to use words in the way most people understand them.Spinozaad said:You're not required to ask anything. You're even allowed to be offended. The key point is that words are not intrinsically, inherently and in itself offensive or "pejorative." That's ascribed meaning, your ascribed meaning.JimB said:Your argument here seems to assume that I am required to ask you what each word in any of your sentences means because you want to use words in ways they are not generally accepted as meaning. You therefore want to use words in ways that actively hamper understanding your meaning, which defeats the purpose of having language at all; never mind that you do it apparently all for the sake of making it okay to use pejorative slurs.
There's no objective hierarchy of what any word is defined as, either, so you're kind of wasting your time using words for arguments, aren't you? After all, they only mean what the speaker wants them to. Maybe it only sounds like I disagree with you. Maybe I'm actually transcribing my recipe for meat loaf, using words in the way I personally define them because if I used them the way most people do that would be self-censorship.Spinozaad said:My meaning might be something else entirely, and there's no objective hierarchy of deciding when a word or symbol is offensive.
Uh, how about no? Seeing an offense and taking no steps to correct it is nothing but cowardice, and I will not submit to an offense like this unless you have a much better reason than "Words don't mean anything except what I want them to mean and there's therefore no way I could be using them incorrectly."Spinozaad said:It's a shame that you are offended, but tough luck kid, suck it up.
Oh god.Spinozaad said:Calling idiots retarded, black people niggers, or denying the Holocaust are inane uses of the right to free expresion, but I firmly believe that such idiotic concepts will drown in the market place of free ideas eventually. They won't disappear if you (self-)censor them through political correctness.
We should be friends is all I got to say, lolCheesepower5 said:I choose not to limit my vocabulary based on an arbitrary societal reaction to the word I'm using. Retarded, *****, fag, ******, antiquing... I don't believe in the latent offensiveness of any term. Regardless of that, I also choose to be respectful of homosexuals, women, the mentally/physically disabled, people of African descent, antique collectors and any other group be they marginalized or not and try not to say anything of offense to them in their presence. If I'm still a bad person regardless by your concept of morality, then so be it.
While I think calling someone "mentally retarded" is a tad out of fashion "mental retardation" is a diagnostic term to this very day. Here are just three randomly picked scientific publications fron the past two days using the term "mental retardation" to describe a sympton in their abstract. You will find a hell of a lot more examples with ease.JimB said:Not since the mid-eighties, at least. It is not a diagnostic term.A Satanic Panda said:Really? I thought the term "mentally retarded" was medical, not just slang.
In any event, the word "retarded" is not so vital to my vocabulary that I can't find other terms to insult people with.
well to be honest a few close friends of mine (all gay) use gay as a derogatory term all the time, hell they use it more than any straight person i know, even referring to me or any of them with that word quite often.TrilbyWill said:Yeah, but gay people don't use it as an insult when referring to other gay people. There's a difference between using a term and not wanting that term to be an insult.Moderated said:"Well, it's just like gay people not wanting gay to be an insult"
Uh, no. Gay people still refer to themselves as gay.
well look at you, being all likable and shit.Cheesepower5 said:I choose not to limit my vocabulary based on an arbitrary societal reaction to the word I'm using. Retarded, *****, fag, ******, antiquing... I don't believe in the latent offensiveness of any term. Regardless of that, I also choose to be respectful of homosexuals, women, the mentally/physically disabled, people of African descent, antique collectors and any other group be they marginalized or not and try not to say anything of offense to them in their presence. If I'm still a bad person regardless by your concept of morality, then so be it.
No biggy. I just noticed because I work in genetics an come across the term quite often (there are many genetic disorders wich have mental retardation in one form or the other as a symptom).JimB said:My bad. I heard different in school and never bothered to check it out for myself.
This is pretty much what it comes down to in my opinion.Entitled said:When other people note that your words are hurting them, and you continue to use those words with that justification, it's not exactly "life" that is being a *****.Spinozaad said:It's a shame that you are offended, but tough luck kid, suck it up. Life is a ***** sometimes.