Slippery Slopes Indeed.
From Wikipedia: "Git is a mild[1] pejorative with origins in British English for a silly, incompetent, stupid, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person.[2] It is usually an insult, more severe than twit or idiot but less severe than wanker, arsehole or twat.[1][3][4]"
Even Linus has said he named git after himself because he's so egotistical.
I don't use either of the words because I'm an adult who isn't British.
So next time someone who is not mentally disabled cuts you off in traffic just yell out "You're a mentally disabled individual!"
The underlying issue has nothing to do with the word but the meaning, you can kill the word but the meaning will be attached to something else. People who don't have respect for the mentally disabled will not be changed by censoring a word.
#sigh
Note: I don't endorse actually calling anyone mentally disabled, retarded, slow etc.. We should try to be better humans then that and treat people with the respect they deserve.
If "medical description of a person with mental disabilities" was a sufficient criterion, all of these would be equally inappropriate (even in an informal / vulgar context). But even tumblr will find it hard to get outraged about the use of the word "cretin" (outside the use as a direct slur against someone with mental disabilities).
Context is important and context is not just about the original meaning and use of a word but also time. We generally find archaic insults humorous -- this isn't because the phrases were harmless at the time they were in widespread use but because they haven't been in widespread use (in their original meaning) for a significant amount of time.
The problem with "retard" isn't merely its historical usage. The problem is that that historical usage is fairly recent.
If you say a material is fire retardant, you not only are free to say this, it would be ridiculous to have to invent or supplant a new word because one was co-opted over time and personified, turned into a noun. People will disagree, but it takes mental gymnastics to be offended by things like that.
That's why people have developed the SJW social justice warrior moniker and I think it fits well. Because it's an imaginary problem and working within that framework these kinds of people will eat themselves to death. So why engage or contribute to it at the expense of time, logic, and a reduction in cohesion of everyone else working towards goals.
You have to give people the power to use words like this where a true meaning well defined is absent of insult and if used as insult, if not specifically directed at someone, you can't allow another person's claim of offense to affect the conversation thats apart from them.
this is my biggest problem of a lot of the narrative spread by certain people and the media. maybe it's a thing with modern society where foolish people misidentify real problems and instead use their valuable time on things like microaggressions thereby taking focus (sometimes on purpose) off actual aggressions. And so far it's recipe for a failed state. Christopher Hitchens said it well. "The fact that you’re offended has absolutely no bearing on the truth of the matter"
The sad thing, the very sad thing is the media do better on these kinds of controversies because they generate views. I have chosen to participate here on this in hopes it might actually set somebody straight. The people who claim this kind of censorship are the same people who purport that there is strength in diversity. But unfortunately they don't really know what diversity really looks like in terms of diversity of ideas. They imagine it means comfort but they are wrong. Understanding diversity means bearing with discomfort and dealing with the imperfections of speech, perception and letting go of this idea that you can break down useful frameworks and infrastructure and it will make things better. That's not how one becomes a valuable participant in anything and they make communities suffer.
The term "rebel without a cause" comes to mind. Except this time around it's borrowing a jargon that makes it sound legitimate enough to infiltrate everything.
The word they are looking for isn't "diversity", it's "gleichschaltung". For all their supposed grasp of academia, they're not very good at establishing cause and effect before getting their pitchforks ready.
There is one really important point to keep in mind, when someone is offended about something someone else says or writes that is their decision and it is their problem not the one who did the offending.
I personally don't generally use the term "retard" I also don't generally put slurs of any kind in my code. However I do take issue when someone says that I can't.
"Whoever is the stupid fucking idiot who made this dimwitted decision should go get their brain checked."
That's no less offensive then using the word retard and it's anyones right to down vote the comment on that basis or to just ignore me. Thus my point has been made.
You're free to use retard in your code as much as you want, apparently not on Github though. They, as a private company, are allowed to pick and choose what they want on their site.
> idiot: MEDICINE (archaic): a mentally handicapped person.
Google "euphemism treadmill" for more info.
[1] http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2011/06/euphemism-treadmi...
Just switch back to imbecile for the next 100 years? Problem solved? Clearly not, the underlying issue has nothing to do with the word but meanings that people attach to them and that is something that will not be fixed by outlawing the word as the meanings attached will shift to a new word.
There's actually an entire ranking for those with disabilities - just below a "normal" person was the "feeble-minded", which ranked ahead of a "moron", which was more functional than an "imbecile" which was the last step before an "idiot".
This was all common parlance in the 19th and 20th century.
So explain to me again why retard is specifically offensive.
That is all. Really. Give it a few decades and we wouldn't be having this discussion because no person with mental disabilities would feel offended by anyone using it as a mere synonym for "dunce".
Of course so-called Internet feminists might still demand your head on a silver platter even then, but (in stark contrast with actual feminists) nobody should be paying attention to them to begin with, even if they make it hard not to.
We like to get offended on other people's behalf. This is incredibly disrespectful -- it's no different from male feminists speaking on the behalf of women.
If at least some people with actual mental disabilities find the use of the term (as a substitute for similar phrases like "idiots" or "dummies", not as a direct smear against people with mental disabilities) inappropriate and hurtful, I fully agree that we shouldn't be using it.
The reason we don't use the "N-word" (even outside the context of "black person") isn't that it's offensive, it's that a significant share of black people find its use in any context extremely hurtful. If it was just white people complaining, we shouldn't change a thing.
Outside of the use as a slur against people with mental disabilities, the only difference between "retard" and "idiot" is how long it's been since the term was considered appropriate when describing people with mental disabilities in medical texts. This in itself is not sufficient.
This is actually a big problem with self-identifying feminists on the Internet (read: leaking from tumblr) today. Instead of empowering the actual victims they get offended on other people's behalf or just plain insist they themselves uniquely have the right not to be offended (but nobody else does because whoever disagrees with them is wrong, even if they self-identify as feminists, too).