Political correctness gone too far?

 

Best event double-amputee Tae-Kwon-Do tounament.

 

They aren't striving to remove the word retard from daily use. That would be retarded. Only derogatory usage, i.e. calling someone a retard for doing something stupid. I heard about this on the radio last week.. everyone that phoned up to comment called the whole thing retarded.. I giggled. Personally I use nigga and faggot all the time, so there is 0 chance of retard sitting the bench.

 

The catalyst was the movie "Tropic Thunder" in which one of the characters has played a man with retardation who has no significant spllinter skills, i.e., Dustin Hoffman's "Rainman" performance with savant capabilities, such as counting cards and toothpicks. The actor is told that having gone "full retard" caused him to be ignored by the awards people.

Some people took seriuos umbrage at this usage, though in my mind, showing these people as cute little people with Down's syndrome and a heart of gold does more to disrespect them as a whole and reduces the difficultlies they, their families and care providers face on a daily basis.

Yes, the overuse/misuses or "retard/retarded" is evident as is the derogatory "that's so gay." As mentioned by a previous poster, whatever word is used is likely to become misused.

Locally, the term "mental retardation" is being supplanted with "intellectually disability". So that MR will become ID. Now what word that starts with "ID" has been commonly used to refer to a stupid person? Hint: it was once used as a formal psychological term to identify a specific range of IQ. Yep, idiot. It will just be a matter of time.l

 

This thread is repugnant!

 

When it gets hot, the spark timing in my car is retarded.

 

Indeed. I had an aunt who was (insert synonym for retarded) that passed away. I give money to the Special Olympics. I chaired committees working on the SO in college, and donated literally hundreds of hours and dollars for the cause.

And when I saw this campaign, I said "that's retarded."


It's like the word "sucks." Kids today use "sucks" all the time, to mean "stinks." But older people think of the sexual conotation when they hear it, even though there is very little sexual aspect to it anymore. It simply doesn't mean that to them. So when adults get angry at kids for saying sucks, the kids don't understand because it simply doesn't have a sexual meaning for them.

Same with retarded. People of my generation (born in '82) didn't use retarded growing up to refer to people who were, well, retarded. They used "disabled" or "handicapped" or whatever other euphemism. Retarded literally doesn't refer to actually handicapped people for them, because they were never allowed to use it that way in the first place.

And that's what happens when you euphemize a word; it loses its meaning, people use it for alternate things, and then others get upset at people for using it and not being aware of the potentially offensive original usage. So really, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that "retarded" is not the correct way to refer to the mentally handicapped, and then get angry when people use it while not referring to the mentally handicapped. Doing so would be retarded.

 

This thread wins!!

 

I found yesterday that a friend of mine has been selected to represent Scotland/Britain in the next SO, I've never thought of him as R*******, nor any of his mates from his school/club, it's not a word I've heard to described a person in ages so possibly without threads like this reminding people of it's usage it might die out naturally.

 

The point isn't really to ban a word in the English language- it's to deter that word from being used in a negative connotation- the politically correct term would be intellectually disabled, but the "End the Word" is supposed to end its use as a slur- c'mon we know the difference between right and wrong here, and when you direct the R-word at one of your friends just messing around as an insult, that's what we're talking about here- you never know who's listening or who can be offended by it