“That’s retarded!” or any derivation of that word?
I work with and link to and get linked from disabilities activists (and I’m on the Loudoun County Community Services Board (and the VACSB)) and using “retard” or any derivation of that word is like using “nigger”. By using that word to describe a person or action, you’re not insulting that person or action. Instead, you’re saying that likening that person or action to people with intellectual disabilities is inherently insulting. Which means you’re insulting an entire community of people who are blameless.
I have been assured that people with intellectual disabilities do, indeed, feel insulted when that word is used. And they would like for all of us to please just stop using it at all and particularly to stop using it as a way to insult people or actions that are spectacularly foolish or inept.
I am assured by people with physical disabilities that “lame” is similarly hurtful.
Since I tend to NOT want to hurt innocent bystanders when I make criticisms of behaviors I find ludicrous or inane, I have modified my vocabulary accordingly.
Alternatives to “retarded” and/or “lame”: Foolish, inept, uncool, clumsy, inane, obtuse, dull, disappointing, unthinking, misguided, disasterously unsuccessful.
Please add your own alternatives to these words in comments.
Comments that ask what ever happened to freedom of speech* will be deleted from the comments thread, but I will keep a tally of them and will post a total later.
Comments that use offensive words just to use offensive words and not to offer up non-offensive alternatives will be deleted.
*Freedom of Speech is your ability to create your own blog and say what you like there.
Here is the other part of the comment from the “reintroducing” thread:
Two stories this reminds me of:
1. The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, from Catch-22, which Major ________ de Coverley so ably ended in the mess hall.
and the following:
2. A young woman I saw interviewed on the Harvard quad maybe 25 years ago, on a news program, and I don’t even remember what issue she was so passionate about, because in the process of passionately stating whatever she stated, she was being very careful that each pronoun of her message was neither “he” nor “she”–she actually said “he and or she” every single time, and was very carefull holding her hands up to sign her words for the camera at the same time.
I have to admit I was impressed at her ability to sign and speak, and also had to note her determination to make sure that no one was excluded in any way by or from her message, and that no possible personb was offended in any way by any usage of any kind in her method of conveying it.
But for the life of me, even the next day, I can’t remember WHAT she was talking ABOUT.
Which is why I understand what you’re saying, and even applaud it in its spirit of sensitivity and inclusion, but I am made a bit nervous about a possible future in which we are so hamstrung by form that we have entirely lost content.
(also a bit of a reminder of “precision of langauge” in The Giver. Book of the year in Loudoun, last year or year before)