this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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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.
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