Don't say that's retarded, it hurts special kids feelings NOT ABOUT CALLING SPECIAL KIDS RETARDED

[bastardofmelbourne]

And in the end, we, too, inherited this cold and indifferent world.

I'm reading your post and watching your avatar and it's just impossible, man. I'm laughing too hard to think.

I'm barely able to type this

 

[PeterMerkin69]

Well I didn't want to press my luck with the vagina I carved out of a chuck roast...

 

[chikusho]

"If you're offended by any word, in any language, it's probably because your parents were unfit to raise a child." - Doug Stanhope

 

[noxymoron19]

In the words of Michael Scott.

You don't called a retarded person a retard, that's just bad taste. You call your friends retards when they're acting retarded. And I consider Oscar a friend.

 

[Entitled]

It's a shame that you are offended, but tough luck kid, suck it up. Life is a ***** sometimes.

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 *****.

 

[Cheesepower5]

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.

 

[JimB]

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.

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?

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.

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.

Beside that, I have never had someone take offense at me saying the word "retarded."

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."

The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes," not "data."

Obviously this is different online. I have noticed that more Americans think retarded means mentally handicapped than Canadians, even when online.

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."

 

[Smithburg]

I actually find special to be more insulting than retarded. Retarded is an actual medical term for being mentally held back from normal development. Special just makes them sound like some sort of idiotic outcast that shouldn't be spoken to.

 

[Angie7F]

I wouldnt say retarded to a retarded person, however I would totally use it as a medical term, and also as an insult.

 

[JimB]

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.

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.

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.

My meaning might be something else entirely, and there's no objective hierarchy of deciding when a word or symbol is offensive.

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.

It's a shame that you are offended, but tough luck kid, suck it up.

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."

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.

Oh god.

Okay, first, I take it you think leading by example is an invalid leading style if you think self-censorship is ineffectual.

Second: "political correctness?" When the hell did I ever bring that up? My argument has always been that words mean things, not that we must all kneel to the faceless boogieman people love to conjure any time they feel like their sovereign right to be offensive is being infringed upon.

 

[Kroxile]

Whole thread is tl;dr but I'm pretty sure I can say whatever the hell I want to, to whomever the hell I want to and in any capacity I choose to say it in.

A gay friend of mine once said when I asked him if he were offended by words like "fag" and "homo" he just laughed and said "they're just words"

While I'm far from being a right-wing reject I think sometimes that the left-wing loons want to censor freedom of speech with all their BS.

 

[Kroxile]

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.

We should be friends is all I got to say, lol

 

[CorvusFerreum]

Really? I thought the term "mentally retarded" was medical, not just slang.

Not since the mid-eighties, at least. It is not a diagnostic term.

In any event, the word "retarded" is not so vital to my vocabulary that I can't find other terms to insult people with.

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.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23462667
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23463485
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23463419

 

[JimB]

My bad. I heard different in school and never bothered to check it out for myself.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

"Well, it's just like gay people not wanting gay to be an insult"
Uh, no. Gay people still refer to themselves as gay.

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.

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.

not justifying the use, just saying it does happen.

OT: meh, i'm usually of the view that "context" is what matters, because you can call someone a retard and clearly you are trying to get across the fact that "what you just did/said was stupid", which apparently one is okay, and not the other in terms of political correctness.

which i partially think is bullshit, a word is just a word that we have formed up, it's the context behind it that should matter, whatever point you are trying to get across.

still, i haven't used the word retard in years, it's really not that hard to come up with other words to use so you don't rustle the PC crowds jimmies over something like that.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

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.

well look at you, being all likable and shit.

 

[CorvusFerreum]

My bad. I heard different in school and never bothered to check it out for myself.

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).

 

[Lady Larunai]

So Retarded and gay are not fine, yet people get away with the use of the words idiot, moron and other such insults when they were all at one point or another diagnostically used to refer to metal retardation?

Mental retardation is also still used as a diagnostic term in a lot of countries and is still currently present in the most recent printing of the book Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

 

[AngloDoom]

It's a shame that you are offended, but tough luck kid, suck it up. Life is a ***** sometimes.

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 *****.

This is pretty much what it comes down to in my opinion.

If you don't want to "limit your vocabulary" (because we're so short of words these days) then be prepared for some people to dislike you. Personally, if people are offended enough to be hurt by my language then I change it - I don't lose much by choosing not to use a word but I give someone else peace of mind around me and seem more likeable in their eyes.