Totally Retarded
Aug. 18th, 2011 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaA little gripe that's been festering for a while.
I'm usually in favor of political correctness but lately I've seen commercials and such on TV trying to equate calling someone 'retarded' to calling someone 'fag', 'kike', 'nigger', etc.
I'm sorry, I just can't get behind this. Retarded is a fundamentally different word. It is used to refer to someone who is slow on the uptake or has a learning disability.
If you explain something to someone 20 times and they don't get it, they're slow. 'Slow' itself is also used as a derogatory for people with learning disabilities. Retard means Slow. It's used this way in music. Give me an alternative word that is short, isn't used to bully the mentally disabled, and I'll happily adopt it but that's the problem: stupid, idiot, half-wit, brain-damaged, GOP are ALL used to speak disparagingly about people with mental disabilities. Shall we ban the use of them one by one until we can't speak about congress at all or should we accept that this is a different type of word?
I'm in the later camp.
I'm usually in favor of political correctness but lately I've seen commercials and such on TV trying to equate calling someone 'retarded' to calling someone 'fag', 'kike', 'nigger', etc.
I'm sorry, I just can't get behind this. Retarded is a fundamentally different word. It is used to refer to someone who is slow on the uptake or has a learning disability.
If you explain something to someone 20 times and they don't get it, they're slow. 'Slow' itself is also used as a derogatory for people with learning disabilities. Retard means Slow. It's used this way in music. Give me an alternative word that is short, isn't used to bully the mentally disabled, and I'll happily adopt it but that's the problem: stupid, idiot, half-wit, brain-damaged, GOP are ALL used to speak disparagingly about people with mental disabilities. Shall we ban the use of them one by one until we can't speak about congress at all or should we accept that this is a different type of word?
I'm in the later camp.
