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.
OP, I just gotta say, I really agree with you, and I find it really disgusting the amount of people in this thread trying to renormalize it or argue that it’s not problematic. This thread has been one of, if not the, most frustrating threads here over the past two years. Like I’m genuinely feeling gaslit by some of these comments. Do people not remember the voice people would use? Do people not remember the motions people would do? Those weren’t just a mild way to call someone stupid. It was always ableist and still is today. Maybe in five to ten years I’ll feel differently, like language really has moved on, but it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening. It feels like people just being more comfortable being edgy.
I’m with you on that. A lot of times lemmy feels like 4chan for self-proclaimed leftists, like look at how popular problematic greentext screenshots are.
But hey, at least this thread lets me know who I should avoid interacting with in the future
Is that the fault of the word or the person?
The word choice is the fault of the person.
Exactly so.
Myself and many of my friends were called it a lot growing up, but we still said it to and about each other super often. Now I kinda think people should probably avoid it, but I don’t think it’s “disgusting” for people to think they can say it, it’s very normalized and most people see it as a synonym for “you should know better than this” or “that is the dumbest thing ever.” I’ve seen it used 500x more in those ways than actually against anyone (not saying it’s rare people are called that, just extremely common to see it used not against anyone)
other people don’t agree with you.
why do you find that so problematic? why do you feel your thoughts/feelings on this are superior such that other people should subordinate their beliefs and feelings to your own? is your moral authority over language use superior to other people’s?