As I get older, I have more and more sympathy for people who can’t keep up with socially acceptable terminology. At the same time, I have less and less tolerance for people who deliberately use outdated, insulting language.
No cap, fr fr!
Skibidy truth.
Fun fact: word usage changes over time. For example, “idiot” used to be a technical medical term for extreme mental disability. We live in the Age of Information, and if somebody doesn’t want to learn about historical context that’s actually willful ignorance on their part.
That was simply the euphemism du jour, on the eternal euphemism treadmill.
The euphemism treadmill sure is differently abled
Give it a few more years and then “mentally disabled” will be the new retarded. We’ll cringe at how people would say they’re “disabled”.
I work with the mentally disabled and have for a while now. I love my guys but it’s so annoying seeing how new terms will come and go throughout the years constantly.
The Euphemism Treadmill might stop when the term is so clinically dry as “mentally disabled”. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue of a schoolyard bully the way “retarded” does. I dunno, we’ll see.
It just gets shortened to disabled. I’ve seen it used countless times as an insult.
I’m pretty sure that “mentally retarded” was the medical term for many decades, before it became cultural lingo. There was something similar for erectile dysfunction too, they used to call you impotent, not exactly a great thing to hear at the doctor’s office.
In 1882, this event would have been called Swing For Imbeciles
I am so glad you posted this. Sometimes I get into little arguments about word usage and younger folk truly don’t understand how not only commonplace word usage that is considered some sort of insult now but how officially they were used. Near me was a place that helped folks with all sorts of independent living including housing and job training and just counseling and it was called the NSAR and Im almost sure the R was retardation. Think it changed its name and I can’t find anything on it now but I did find like this https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/pdf/70s/70/70s-WWH-NARC.pdf
It’s hard to fully explain how the reception of words change to people who haven’t seen it first-hand.
Even some bad words, which might be incredibly rude to say today, didn’t have the same oomph in the past, so while the definition technically might not have changed, the intended severity of it has.
Saw this at a consignment shop a couple months ago, from about that same time period.How much was it? I’d buy that just to have a gumball machine.
