this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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A “moron” was also a medical diagnosis. Historically, the n-word was designed to be cruel and humiliating. The word retard was not.
If you choose to be offended every time the word “moron” gets thrown around that’s your prerogative.
What do you mean by "designed"?
The euphemism treadmill is a known issue. The reason this ableist slur is offensive is, yes, because it is the most recent turning of the wheel. It is the word used in living memory to both refer to patients with poorly understood medical conditions and as an insult to people deemed intellectually inferior.
There is no designer of words. What matters is how they are used. The word "retard" was used to cause harm. It was used by people to broadly and injustly categorize a group of vulnerable individuals by genetic and environmental conditions outside their control.
It was used as a vicious insult by peers and authority figures, it was used in schools and workplaces, it was used by doctors and parents. It was used - yes - to be cruel and humiliating. Of course it was.
Nobody designed the word to cause harm. But anyone who remembers the schoolyard knows that there are countless kids with very real conditions that were mistreated and misunderstood by professionals, parents, and peers. Some may have used the word in good faith. But many more used it in bad faith. They used it as a tool to be cruel and humiliating, and of course they used it on children and adult who could have been diagnosed with a wide variety of very real (and sometimes treatable/manageable!) mental and behavioral conditions that we are still barely scratching the surface of to this day.
It caused harm. It continues to cause harm. And the people who were and are harmed by it are still alive today. Those children grew up to be adults.
People don't choose to be offended. People are offended by any number of things for any number of reasons. It's usually not a conscious choice. It's often a result of injustices experienced or injustices witnessed. In this case, it's because many of us remember when people used the word "retard" specifically to be cruel and humiliating to vulnerable people.
People who use words do so for a particular purpose. That’s what I mean by design. The n-word had one and only one purpose: a humiliating slur against a group of people.
Since this is obviously not the case with the word “retard” or “moron,” etc., I find the comparison obtuse at best and bad faith at worst.
Ultimately, people will use terms to call each other stupid. This is inevitable since people are, in fact, stupid.
I listed so many ways in which the word "retard " was used as a humiliating slur against a group of people. How is this not obviously the case? Because it had other purposes?
The word was used as a humiliating slur against a vulnerable group of people. This is indisputable fact. It is a word specifically referring to a group of people, and it was used against that group of people to belittle, demean, and yes - humiliate them.
It was also used as a diagnostic criteria. That history doesn't change the context for the better - it makes the whole story worse. It was a bad diagnostic criteria. Psychology, psychiatry, and neurology are young fields of study that are going through some serious growing pains - in this case, the usage of overly broad umbrella categorizations of deeply nuanced and complex disorders.
People will always use words to cause harm. But have you noticed the thing that's missing in everyone's misguided defense of this word? How everyone complains about "what's next?" when they refer to idiot, imbecile, and moron?
Nothing's next. This particular euphemism treadmill appears to have stopped on the word "retard". Why? Because the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and neurology are outgrowing their old habits, and taking society with them.
We understand these disorders better now. We're trying to find ways to treat them. We're diving deep into all the intricate little details about symptoms, and causes, and care, and prognosis.
We don't have one broad catch-all term like "retard". We have dozens if not hundreds of diagnoses to replace it. And each "new" vernacular replacement-of-the-week is more awkward than the last and doesn't gain remotely the popularity or ubiquitousness of its predecessor.
The euphemism treadmill stopped. Other terms will be used, and weaponized, and cause harm. But they'll never be used by everyone, everywhere the way the word "retard" once was, nor will they ever be used in quite the same way. They will never carry that same weight of shared, mistreated identity. And because of that it will be immortalized - because it was used as a diagnosis and as a humiliating slur by the generations that began to understand the truth. That society has treated our most vulnerable populations so unbelievably bad for so, so long, and we can do better.
The thing is, you're not entirely wrong in your reasoning. It is just a word. If the treadmill had continued for another generation, and a new word had successfully replaced it, it probably wouldn't be a slur. It might be forever used as casually and as apathetically as we use terms like "idiot" and "imbecile" and lose most of its weight and implications (words, by the way, that I'm not defending usage of - I'm just not elevating them to the morally repugnant status of slur)
But that didn't happen. This word still holds a terrible number of memories for the living. The word "retard" has - as you defined and continue to fail to dispute - a specific history of targetting a specific group of people. A specific group of people who are mostly still alive today and have fresh memories of this harm, unlike anyone who was ever diagnosed as an "imbecile". And it was used with the particular purpose of cruelty and humiliation of that specific group of people. It satisfies all of your stated conditions of a slur.
The problem with playing devil's advocate, as you suggested you were? It's a philosophical device in which you defend a position that you wouldn't normally commit to, for the sake of challenging your beliefs or the beliefs of others.
But you seem very commited to this position. Why? Because people don't like the words you use? Have you ever, truly, played devil's advocate against your own belief here? Have you ever genuinely challenged yourself on this the way other people have challenged you, and thought "what if it's not their fault that they're offended by this word? What if that offense - those feelings of pain, and anger - what if that was something forced upon them? What if it's easier - in literally every sense of the word - for me to avoid using this word, than it is for them to avoid hearing it?"
The word doesn't need to survive. Plenty of incredible insults have died out from everyday usage for literally no good reason - language just evolves constantly over time. What's the harm in letting this one die for plenty of very good reasons?
You - any of you reading this, anyone who needs to hear this - you don't need to die on this hill with this word. It continues to wither away, and there's genuinely no personal or societal value in trying to keep it in use. No history needs to be preserved in your vernacular, and certainly not such a troubled history.
No one is trying to take away your speech. No one is coming for your words. But you will upset people with your words throughout your life. You'll upset people with the truth, and you'll upset people with lies. You'll upset people with words carefully chosen, and you'll upset people with off-the-cuff remarks.
But in this case, you will upset people by carelessly using words that carry painful memories. You are not being bold or rebellious. You are not standing proudly against some nebulous tide of societal overcorrection for past mistakes. This is not some last stand for sanity in a world gone mad. There are many places to make that stand, many worthy causes to fight for - this isn't one of them.
You're just using the last word that many people remember being used for cruelty and humiliation against a specific, vulnerable group of people. That will upset people. Please try not to blame them for that.
I am not fully committed to this position. That said, I just think we disagree on the extent to which intention and context matters when measuring blameworthiness for language acts. For instance, the n-word as repeated by black people might be harmless, whereas its utterance by anyone else is unacceptable. Similarly, using the word “idiot” against a neurodivergent person is very bad. If used against me, though, that’s fair game.
I also don’t know the extent to which people are entitled to control what others say because they’re offended. Christians are constantly offended, Muslims are offended, apparently some folks in the special Olympics are offended.
Look, unless a word is linked to a hateful ideology, I see no reason to be scared of it quite so categorically.
You are committed to this position, because you continue to hold it despite the core premises of your argument being disputed without reconsideration. You didn't change your position when challenged, nor did you hold your position against that challenge - you just changed the terms of the argument.
We have established countless reasons why the word "retard" had a specific target and a very cruel purpose. It wasn't designed that way, but it was used that way. We have also established that it doesn't seem to have the same vernacular trajectory as moron or imbecile, because the treadmill stopped, and "that's so intellectually disabled" has not and will not be used colloquially to mean "that's so stupid".
I have also provided numerous reasons why this isn't something as simple as "people making things about themselves".
You don't seem to dispute any of these things. It had a specific target and a cruel purpose, and was therefore a slur according to your own definition.
Was it "designed" that way? No. But did it come to be used that way, with the prevalence, apathy, and ignorance of a shared misplaced identity? An identity that was far too broad for a diverse group of people? An identity that was forced upon that group?
An identity that held them back at every turn by a society that believed them all to be lesser, unworthy of consideration or employment? Unworthy of respect?
"It's for their own good", society said, as they broadly and injustly labelled these people, and then used that label to strip them of their rights, abandon them without treatment or help, and abuse them for being different.
So what is a slur?
Again, two main questions I need to figure out (believe it or not, I don’t use “retard” in my everyday speech — which is hard for me because like 80% of the human population is retarded):
Are we really blameworthy for speech acts independent of our intention and context? Right now, I’m leaning no but maybe.
To what extent are others entitled to control our personal, private speech on the basis of their own internalized (and possibly neurotic) offense to it? I.e., religious groups getting mad, or autistic people being offended when people call each other “retarded.”
We just disagree on the facts I think. You have once again, without a morsel of empirical evidence, equated “retard” with the n-word, which is totally preposterous. So I think we are at an impasse.
I appreciate your good faith and legitimate concerns. But if you could, please answer the question. What is a slur? Your original definition was sufficient for both terms.
There is no such thing as empirical evidence for an emotionally qualitative claim. There is no feasible way to achieve true objectivity there. Trying to call one word worse than another scientifically (rather than philosophically) is like asking people to decide which genocide is worse than another. Not all genocides are the same, of course, and already people might rush to say "but we know the worst one!" And maybe they do know the worst slur, or the worst genocide. I don't presume to tell them otherwise.
But the truth is the answers will vary wildly by the person you ask, and you will not walk away with scientifically rigorous definitions, just a dataset of emotional responses that either agree or disagree with your own internal emotional response.
What - in your opinion - are the qualities of the n-word that differentiate it from "retard", such that one could be called a slur, and the other is not? Are these differences universally applicable, regardless of the slurs in question? There are more slurs than the "n-word". What sets those other words apart from the word "retard"?
I really do appreciate your points, because they are reasonable concerns about the nature of human communication and moral philosophy.
Certainly independent of intention, because we as human beings can never truly know another's intentions with certainty. We can do our best but that's not useful for establishing moral principles.
But this is the important thing - being worthy of blame is not being worthy of shame. A person can be blamed for an act they commited with all the right intentions and a morally disputable context. Others can tell them "you should have known better", or others can even choose to no longer associate with that person if they want, because that's their freedom to do so.
But that doesn't make them a bad person. Other people's opinions are not truth. Not in a philosophical sense, not in an objective moral sense. The difference is if that person can accept that blame in the first place. If they can genuinely see why other people blame them, why other people don't want to associate with them, and genuinely try to make sure what they did and what they do next was right to do.
They may even come to the wrong conclusions. They may genuinely think they're doing the morally correct thing, and everyone else is morally incorrect, and sometimes people are right when they think that, and sometimes people are wrong when they think that. That doesn't make them bad people, if they decide to do the wrong thing when their intentions were good. That doesn't make them worthy of shame. But everyone else does unfortunately have to blame them for whatever they do next, good or bad, because there is nobody else to blame.
I know this is terribly apropos, but I have to ask... Was the use of neurotic here intentional?
These examples are not control. If you say a word, and another person says "how dare you!" and decides you're a bad person... have they controlled you?
Sure, sometimes these groups get power and exert control. But I want to clarify that that's not your stated concern here. You didn't bring up examples of theocratic governments or religious persecution. Your stated concern is "to what extent are others entitled... to getting mad... to being offended?"
The answer is to the fullest extent. Others are entitled to be offended, and get mad. They're not entitled to imprison you or harm you. That's control.
But to what extent are others entitled to being offended? What do you think the answer to that question should be? Do you think that you should control them? To tell them that they're not allowed to feel the way they feel about your behavior, and they're not allowed to use the words they want to use to express those feelings?
Or do you think they're allowed to be offended, just as much as you're allowed to be upset when you believe someone is insulting you or judging you without cause or justification?
Everyone is entitled - to the absolute fullest extent possible - to their beliefs, and their feelings, and their expression. This includes you. Just as everyone else is entitled - to the absolute fullest extent possible - to believe you're a bad person for your beliefs, and for the way you express yourself.
I don't think you are a bad person. But I also don't think they're being bad people when they tell you they don't like what you have to say.
A slur is an insulting or disparaging remark (according to the dictionary). Our contention is not over the definition of that word (I hope), but over whether the use of offensive language (such as slurs) is categorically unacceptable.
There are lots of slurs, but only a handful cross the line (for me at least), because I consider them to exclusively and belligerently perpetuate some evil ideology (usually racism). I don’t want to list these words here, but I can think of maybe 3 or 4.
Well, history is not a matter of emotion. It is a matter of empirical fact. We can trace the origins and common usage of words, and the n-word is no exception. That body of knowledge is the product of research (historical data). The (mis)use of the medical term “retard” is also well understood. Its transference to colloquial slang is actually unexceptionable. Consider “psycho” or “cretin.” In the same vein, the word “autist” is now being used disparagingly among teenagers being goofy or weird, and so on.
“Autist” may not be sticky enough to require the medical community to come up with an alternative, more technical (and therefore less appealing) term for that mental disorder.
Regardless, people will continue to look for ways to call each other stupid, and the best thing we can do is encourage researchers to come up with long and convoluted names for medical conditions so they don’t get co-opted by teenagers looking for creative ways to insult each other.
Well, yes and no. You have a responsibility to be mindful of those around you. But they also have a responsibility to at least attempt to understand what you’re trying to say. If we ignore your intentions, the result is tantamount to willful misunderstanding.
Remember, we are apes. Nothing more. Language is complex, and the average person is painfully, animalistically stupid. That’s why we have to be charitable to one another and give folks leeway to communicate without losing our shit over misunderstandings.