There’s a clear campaign against the mentally ill with the global rise of fascism. Lots of it shows up in anti homeless rhetoric, but you can see it in the MAHA and anti vaccination movements.

There’s no reason to use the word “r-tarded” to describe someone. As someone who’s worked with the intellectually challenged, it’s an insult to them to compare them with people who are willfully ignorant.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    3 days ago

    I get what you are saying but if idiotic and imbecile are still available as insults and are further from medical definition than retard then why not just use them instead? The point being is that retard still has the bite of comparing the person to the mentally disabled and the others don’t.

    • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      Wouldn’t it be nice if all pejorative terms of mental incapacity went the way of idiot & imbecile? Why shelter derogatory words[1] from ameliorating?

      When a term begins as pejorative and eventually is adopted in a non-pejorative sense, this is called melioration or amelioration. One example is the shift in meaning of the word nice from meaning a person was foolish to meaning that a person is pleasant.

      1. perpetuating stigmatization ↩︎