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Literal, actual retards are running the show now.
Placed there by literal, actual retarded Americans.
Wild that our country became so pathetic.
It would be great if you could avoid using ableist slurs to refer to people you don't like
It's not a slur as much as it's a definition. To be retarded means delayed or slow. It has nothing to do with mentally handicapped people.
In the context of talking about people, that word has everything to do with the people who it has been used as a slur against, including, but not limited to "mentally handicapped".
OP was clearly using the phrase as a derogatory term for people, and the only dictionary sense that fits there is the one that has ableist allusions. If the context of use were different, we wouldn't be having this conversation. For example, I wouldn't have a problem with the phrase "The PCM responds by retarding ignition timing—either until the knock disappears, or until maximum spark retard is reached." or "The Friar's alibi finds him at the right place but always a moment in retard".
That you're taking such a literal reading here makes me wonder whether your comment was made in bad faith such that I shouldn't bother wasting my time, but I'm hoping that there could actually be some meaningful dialogue here (after all, there's a reason why I didn't just report OP and move on). It might not affect your opinion, but I have direct experience of the r-slur that has been directed at me (not infrequently) when I am people read visibly disabled. I'm not "mentally handicapped", but as a word, it has grown far beyond it's original context of use. I say this to give context on my original comment — I'm not just going about tone policing people for fun: I commented what I did because it hurts to see that word thrown at people when part of what makes it effective as an insult is its attachment to people like me.
Once upon a time, the r-slur was actually considered one of the more appropriate words to describe people who are intellectually disabled. If I were alive in that era, I'd have likely been left to rot in an institution, and allowed only a fraction of the independence I'm able to have nowadays. But times change, and so does our understanding of the baggage that words pick up.
To draw an analogy, it wouldn't be appropriate to call a black person the n-word, on the basis that it derives from the Spanish word for "black". That etymology isn't wrong, but it's still missing the forest for the trees.
Why are y'all downvoting this comment? This person is entirely correct.
It's the erosion of our culture before our eyes.
This my friends is a distinction without a difference. Dude really implied that being "delayed", as in developmentally delayed, has nothing to do with the handicapped. Astounding.
There is a difference. Morons that we call retarded are that way because they choose to be. They aren't mentally handicapped. Mentally handicapped people don't choose to be mentally handicapped. Which one are you?
Mentally handicapped people don’t choose to be mentally handicapped. Which one are you?
Yes, I choose to be mentally handicapped right? And somehow this is not disparaging against the mentally handicapped? Like do you understand what your argument is? I've seen LLMs with more awareness.
You're retarded. Gotcha.
When we're taking flagrantly willfull ignorance my friend, you certainly get the gold star.
Better to be seen as the r slur than to espouse the same rhetoric as Nazis.
A person with down syndrome would be a better president than Donald Trump and probably Biden. There are many people with intellectual disabilities who'd never vote for someone like Trump.
It's being a dick, a horrible immoral person, that got us here, and that's you. You're acting like a Nazi.
Thanks for the laugh. Never thought someone would equate calling some a retard to being a Nazi but here we are.
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib27944
First they killed the "crazies" and "cripples" : the ableist persecution and murders of people with disabilities by Nazi Germany 1933-45 : an anthropological perspective
The Nazis not only initiated their campaign to systematically persecute and murder people with disabilities in the earliest days of their regime; the murders continued during and even after World War II had ended. Yet, knowledge about this aspect of Nazi atrocities has not permeated the dominant cultural consciousness to any appreciable degree. While the facts of these crimes and murders do not represent new information as such, the accounts that do exist show an abiding lack of clarity as to the underlying prejudices toward people with disabilities that allowed the murders to occur. Today disabled survivors are rarely recognized or compensated. Most of the history of these events has been done in the field of Holocaust studies.
It has everything to do with "mentally handicapped" people. The word "retarded", used as an insult, derived from the term "mental retardation", which was previously the actual clinical and legal term for a person with what we now refer to as "intellectual disability". The use of "retarded" as a slur/insult is the whole reason why the clinical term was changed. It had come to be seen as derogatory and ableist even when used in a clinical context.
Source: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The term "mental retardation" was used through the fourth edition, which was last revised in the year 2000. It lasted until the 5th edition, which wasn't published until 2013. Various organizations/agencies changed their terminology prior.
Fwiw, I'm a licensed clinician and I have diagnosed people with intellectual disabilities. I understand your perspective on the word, and I even shared a similar opinion until I learned how it has been used as a slur toward people who do have intellectual disabilities and developmental delays. Because of learning that, I now don't use it as an insult. We do better when we know better.
yeah because nobody ever applied any of those words to disabled people in a disparaging way before 🙄
stop helping to normalize bigotry you dunce.