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.
If you think “removed” is wrong for degrading people with an actual clinical condition, except for “stupid” which seems to be something like calling that person drunk, I think you shouldn’t stick to those either, because they do the same thing.
No, they used to. Nobody cares about them anymore.
I agree entirely, you cracked the code: stop caring, and “removed” won’t be associated with the mentally impaired. People like OP, who care too much, are what keep it a slur used to degrade people with an actual clinical condition.
As someone who grew up with a very close friend with a sister who has down syndrome who really disliked people using the word as an insult I strongly disagree with you.
So if I, as an ugly person, dislike people using “ugly” as an insult, should that mean everyone is not allowed to use the word?
It’s already considered particularly hateful to insult people based on their appearance as opposed to their actions, so I’m not sure what your point is.
Also specifically disagreeing with this
Which is unrelated to what you said so I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m saying that people with down syndrome and people with family members with down syndrome telling people to not use that word as an insult are not degrading themselves/their family member by doing so.
Well that’s the thing, the word is not being used to insult people who are actually afflicted with the condition.
Exactly, and that’s already a particularly hateful thing to do that many people have a problem with, so what’s your point? You’re asking me what if you didn’t want people to do it and I’m telling you that’s something many people already don’t want people to do, so the hypothetical doesn’t make sense.
I’m saying that playing language police in this way is a waste of time and effort because even if you get people to play along, you haven’t really accomplished much of anything when people just reach for a synonym for the exact same purpose.