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.
i’m austistic and love the word retard, really don’t understand peoples need to be offended for others. it’s not remotely close to the n-word, saying “r-word” just makes you seem like a tool imo
But OP worked with “intellectually challenged” ???
Jfc can’t even call myself retarded without offending an unrelated neuro-typical “standing up” for us.
Look we can’t call each other retards because other people will get triggered for us…
Besides every sane person knows that in common speech this is just means “extremely stupid” with no derogatory intent.
I think you should look up the definition of derogatory. Calling someone stupid is derogatory.
I meant derogatory towards disabled people.
Riiiiight, in the same way people used to pair it with motions mimicking cerebral palsy? Do you also believe that didn’t have derogatory intent towards people with disabilities and only meant “extremely stupid”? 🙄
I’ve no idea what that even is. Sounds like some pseudo science
You don’t remember when people used to imitate spasticity by curling their hands and whacking their chests while changing their voice? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spastic_cerebral_palsy It was extremely common to do when calling people that word.
I don’t. Never even heard about that disease.
BTW: People over internet don’t know who you are, what race you are, and what disabilities you have. If you get called a brain dead retard, it because some dumb shit you wrote. Nothing less, nothing more
I’m 33 years old and grew up in the southeast US. Maybe it’s a generational or regional thing or maybe I just grew up around some genuinely hateful people, but calling people that word was very commonly paired with other things you can’t just explain away. Terms like “sped” (short for special education which was the term for the special courses people with disabilities went through in school), “short bus” (referring to the school buses that were shorter and used for children with special needs), and others were used. Actions like mimicking the voice impairments or movement impairments of people with disabilities was common. All of these things were, just like the one word this thread is about, just like people are saying it’s used today, “just” meant to insult people for being stupid.
The derogatory intent is directed at the insult target, not an uninvolved group of people, is what they meant.
How else would you refer to people with below average critical thinking skills who perform actions without understanding or considering the consequences.
Please keep your answer non-derogatory.
I never said it’s wrong to call people stupid.
You should look up context clues
It doesn’t take much literary analysis to understand that using that word to mean “extremely stupid” is ableist.