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euphemism treadmill is not a get out of rule free card pt2
(files.catbox.moe)
i do not believe these words should be abandoned!
in this post i hope to call attention to the same destructive processes happening to “neurodiverse” as to all the other terms. particularly i want to call out the ableist motivations behind it. my intent is to critique society’s weaponization of words, not the words themselves.
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.