i do not believe these words should be abandoned!

my intent is to point out and critique society’s weaponization of words, not the words themselves.

also! this is a descriptive post, not perscriptive

what that means is just that i want ppl to be aware that this pattern has happened in the past and of course the forces behind those happenings haven’t just disappeared. i think pride in being ND and the fact that “neurodiverse” is a word that is created by its own community are powerful reasons to doubt that the word will have the same fate. perhaps i would call this a “call to awareness” post rather than a call to action.

(making this disclaimer because a couple people are violently adamant that i am just trying to make an argument saying all these words are the same and predicting the future, which, sorry you got that impression it’s not true. but now you know!)

  •  regul   ( @regul@lemm.ee ) 
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    10 days ago

    OP, at a certain point there has to be a word to describe what is happening. Just because someone uses it in a derogatory manner doesn’t mean that you have to abandon the word or that every usage of it is derogatory.

    See: gay

    Alternatively, make a third meme about it on a niche Internet forum.

  • If I’m not mistaken, all those other terms were imposed on people not really self described.

    I think neurodivergent will survive because people can proud to be neurodivergent. It’s closer to an identity than a prescriptive label.

    I for one am proud to be neurodivergent.

    •  spujb   ( @spujb@lemmy.cafe ) OP
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      79 days ago

      I think neurodivergent will survive because people can proud to be neurodivergent.

      💪💪i share your hope. having pride in your identity is a powerful thing. ❤️

  • Idk. I can’t agree to the game being played here bc all they have to do is say it with that sneering condescension and then it’s a slur.

    I’m gonna take a page from gay people, because I am a gay person. Remember before it was a slur attempt it meant HAPPY and we fucking TOOK it from them. We took a word thateant something GOOD and they can’t ever have it back. Fuck them.

    So fuck em again. I’m not divergent. I’m … idk. People who can do what I can do are “NORMAL”, or “NATURAL”. Aww, you have problems learning about things you like and talking about them? You can’t write code or understand logic puzzles? Why can’t you keep up huh?? Why can’t you memorise things or babble for an hour on command, what’s wrong with you? Well not everyone can be NORMAL. 🤟🖕

      • And why is it an insult? Because nobody wants to be seen as intellectually disabled. No matter what new words we make up, mean people will always use them to make other people feel bad. It’s not the words, it’s the ideas behind them.

        •  spujb   ( @spujb@lemmy.cafe ) OP
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          19 days ago

          You’re on the right track, but there’s more to it. It’s not just that people “don’t want” to be disabled—though that’s true for many. The deeper issue is how society devalues disabled lives, shaped by capitalism and white supremacist systems that teach us disabled people are less worthy, less productive, and less human.

          Consider the insult “you are a woman” a few decades ago. Sure, it worked because the man didn’t want to be a woman, aligning with your point. But it was also powerful because women were treated as inferior, denied rights, and subjected to violence. The insult carried misogyny—it didn’t just say “you’re not a man,” it implied “you’re part of a group society actively devalues and mistreats.”

          The same applies to ableist insults. It’s not just about not wanting to be disabled; the insult works because it taps into the belief that disabled people are lesser. That’s the real harm—society’s systemic dehumanization of disability, which gives these insults their weight.

    • Why “regarded”? I don’t get it tbh. To me it just says that you want to call someone “retarded” but you’re just too much of a coward to commit. Like, it communicates the exact same contempt for someone’s cognitive abilities but also an aversion to using a proper No-No Word™ because you don’t wanna transgress some sorta social taboo against them while doing so. Cuck behaviour, ngl chief.

        • Yes, and I still think that shitlordy behaviour of “teehee I didn’t technically break the rules-as-written despite it being blatantly obvious to everyone around that my intent was to do exactly that because I’m scared of getting a comment removed on the internet” is a pathetic display of weakness.

          Idk, I find all three alternatives preferable: either say the slur we all know you mean and just cop the consequences, be more creative with your insult game, or idk, maybe just don’t use cognitive impairments as a punching bag???

          •  spujb   ( @spujb@lemmy.cafe ) OP
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            39 days ago

            honestly i support more shaming of this kind of behavior. i can even identify areas where this would have been more rhetorically effective in my own experiences.

            instead of getting defensive: “what do you mean by that?” “no no i don’t understand please explain what ‘acoustic’ means?” “what is restarted?”

            unserious ableists deserve unserious conversations

    •  spujb   ( @spujb@lemmy.cafe ) OP
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      59 days ago

      i’m not against you reclaiming slurs!, if that language is accepted in your communities and you aren’t using it to do value judgments or insult, this is totally slay and acceptable 🙂

      • The difference is that Something like Retarded is used by someone else, someone who isn’t like that person. It was a clinical term used by clinical people who would never know and could never know the feeling. That is to say it wasn’t great to begin with. People who were “retarded” weren’t embracing that for what they were, it was imposed upon them by medical professionals who don’t really understand them as people (many were studying them like specimens). It was primed for derogatory use.

        Neurodivergent on the other hand is a term embraced by the community, it’s used as a self-identifier. It doesn’t have the same oppressive connotations the others did. To turn it into a slur would be like turning transgender into a slur. It won’t work because the group identifies as that, and will keep using it.

        • Same could be argued with n-slur and f-slur. Those were not terms chosen by those groups. Both were created by the socio-economic dominating class in an attempt to dehumanize. That’s the whole point of the word “reclaiming” that I used. Takes the power back. There’s a user above (kitten for the sake of reference) who is Autistic and uses the R-Slur. I’m autistic as well but I don’t use it. For kitten, I’m sure there is power in taking the word away from people to apply to themselves.

    •  spujb   ( @spujb@lemmy.cafe ) OP
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      110 days ago

      Yeah turns out there can be multiple different insults over the course of centuries and some of them are a lot worse than others at certain periods of time :)