If it were socially acceptable, I wouldn’t have any reason not to use it.
As for how I feel about it being taboo now, it’s whatever. It’s just a natural consequence of how language shifts and evolves over time.
The r-word? Reddit?
it has never been socially acceptable for anyone alive today.
The whole fucking point of an insult is to be insulting.
What has actually happened with this word isn’t that it has somehow become less acceptable but that attacking people for using the wrong language has become acceptable, and I think that is retarded.
That’s not true, “retarded” (from the latin term for delay) was intially used as a medical term to someone with lower cognitive abilities, not an insult per se. but like other similar terms (such as “cretin”) it was eventually used more as an insult, until it was considered offensive by most and only the offensive meaning remained in the common speech.
Correcting peoples use of inappropriate, harmful language is not an attack. There was no reason for you to use an ableist slur to make your point.
I wouldn’t touch it. I don’t trust anyone to use it tactfully. All the people I’ve seen say “I’m disabled so I can use it” art like, low support needs, average IQ autistic people. Someone told me I can use it since I’m dyslexic.
My aunt was diagnosed with that term in the 50s and she was never able to read or write, couldn’t be independent for long stretches of her life. That’s different from me getting laughed at when I read a customer’s order.
Until reading the replies here, I had no idea what you were talking about. It did make me wonder which other words are banished with only their letter to show for it … and it made me wonder if there are multiple words referred to by the same letter, causing more confusion in communication, the X-word, you mean the X or the other X word?
These are what I have so far:
- c
- f
- n
- s
- r
No because then I’d be indistinguishable from the people who felt it was okay to use. It hasn’t “become” unacceptable, it has always been so, the awareness of the harmful language we use has just improved.