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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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I no longer describe anything as 'lame' or 'retarded' or 'spaz' or their variants. It makes me sad ableism is so ingrained in even the most inclusive spaces even though the same argument has removed the use of 'gay' for the same reasons.
I also avoid dark or dry humour unless I'm confident the people I am talking to know it's absurdist and not a serious opinion. I don't always succeed at this.
I honestly don't think it's ableism. Languages evolve and retarded doesn't mean a mental condition it literally means "dumb". Most people don't even know "lame" is related to a movement conditions and if you did a statistical analysis 99% of use cases are not related to the "original meaning". People are just ignorant of how language works, especially since English is a global language.
Yeah, people made the same arguments about 'gay' and 'fag'.
Retarded was the word of choice medically in the 60's - 80's for people with developmental disabilities. It derives from the Latin word Tardus which means slow or late.
Languages evolve, but the euphemistic treadmill is ongoing. The word 'cretin' derived from the word 'Christian', the person who coined it intended it to mean that people with cognitive impairments were still people worthy of respect. And now it's just a straight up insult. Similar with 'idiot' and 'moron'.
And these days you can look at wojaks which use physical differences like drooling or missing half a head or being physically unattractive in unconventional ways to indicate ignorance or stupidity.
Every word that people use to try to describe people with disabilities respectfully becomes a slur. That's because of ableism. It's just not talked about much.
More on this topic for anyone interested in the euphemism treadmill: https://humanparts.medium.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-mentally-retarded-e3b9eea23018
Would you then advocate that no one should ever use the words "idiot", "moron", or "cretin" ever again? What about "dumb", or "stupid"?
(edit) - People are fun. They actually believe that no human should ever want to throw insults at another human ever again. Fascinating.
I think they have more historical distance from their original intent, but I still try not to use them. I favour more targetted and creative insults, or at least more accurate descriptions of the problem.
What others do is not up to me. But I do encourage thinking about the context of the words we use and how our world view is shaped by the development of language. There are a lot of cultural eccentricities buried in etymology, and many of them are no complimentary.
I try not to use any of those words, but it is hard as they are so prevalent in society, even in my progressive and inclusive circle.
I decided a while ago to substitute all those with the word "Turnip" - as in the vegetable. I doubt anyone could be genuinely offended by that and it sounds good when said - Don't be a Turnip! try it out, its a fun word to use and people seem to be tickled by it.
I mean it really comes down to context and just not being a dick to those around you, seems like a pretty easy ask to just be decent to people as best as you can idk
Im really trying hard to stop calling shit retarded. im 40 dammit its just what we always said :(
I have managed to stop calling things gay. managed that one a long time ago so yeah ill give myself that. But retard slips out so much still.
Same, even now I've been making an effort not to for years, it still sometimes pops up in my internal monologue. Over-writing preprogrammed habits is hard, I am right there with you.
Is lame ableist? I knew about the other 2, and I think anyone else growing up in the 2000s used them at some point (myself included, don't anymore though), but I've never heard of lame as being a slur.
Lame is kind of an old word for someone or something with a bad leg or legs.
Like how a horse is lame if its leg is broken.
Huh TIL. Tbh lame seems more disconnected than the other two. Looking at the etymology on Google it seems it was last used in that way commonly in the late 1800s, so maybe that is why.
We still use it in English for the original purpose. If I told a native UK/AU/NZ English speaker the horse was shot after a race because it was lame, people wouldn't assume it was because the horse was uncool.
I think lame might get more of a pass because it's very rarely used to describe people any more, so there is a bigger disconnect.
You're right that I have more frequently been described as crippled rather than lame, but I have still experienced some 'fun' double entendre with lame.
That sucks, I'm sorry. Not sure why I'm surprised that people would use the more archaic definition just for cruelty's sake
The interesting part is that it was never intended with malice, it was just a lighthearted bit of a joke. I guess if I had my disability as a kid, I think that would be different. And you laugh along the first few times with them because you know they don't mean harm, but eventually it gets very old and it sinks in that this is how people perceive you - even if unintentionally. It becomes your defining feature and just a constant reminder of how you can't do certain things you want to, and it's worse if your condition is also physically painful it becomes a reminder that you're in pain, even if you've managed to forget for a few happy seconds. It makes it just that little bit more difficult to not think about, when the same word that has been used to describe you just pops up casually in its slang form.
But, for people who have the additional baggage of having how people perceive you as being disabled, when the word has a dual meaning with 'unintelligent' like 'retarded' or 'spaz', its an even more painful sort of othering. It's not one I've experienced personally, but this is why I've tried to stop using words which have a medical + bad thing association... which, as it turned out, was most of the words historically used to describe people with disabilities. It runs deep. Even if I aim the words correctly and precisely, I don't want to make other people feel sad as collateral damage.
I think it actually says something about 'lame' that we mostly only use it to refer to animals now. When you hear it used about yourself or others in the original form, it even has a flavour of dehumanisation that it didn't entirely have before.
Language is a weird thing like that.
Technically yes but I'm disabled and it's literally never seemed ableist to me. I've never heard anyone use it as anything other than "that's a bummer" or "you're ruining the vibe"
I think that specific word has been reformed
You can pry “lame” and “spaz” outta my cold, dead tongue!
You can do as you wish, but I prefer not to join. I don't think it's fair to people with spasticity symptoms, an often very painful condition, to be associated with someone who is just a greedy selfish arrogant waste of skin. They suffer enough without being insulted too.
Yep, an ADHD diagnosis made me realize how ableist society is, stuff that looks easy for some is insurmountable for others.
Crap, it never occurred to me that "lame" was even related to disability. I mean, obviously it is - though in my mind that aspect of the word was almost exclusively related to animals. Is lame rude now too?
The dry absurdist humour being taken seriously is real. Too many times lately I've been getting strange looks to what I thought were obviously absurd jokes/opinions. I've probably been spending too much time online
I think it's partly a symptom of our world being super-connected. There are some loud people out there with some really poorly founded ideas, and opinions which most people would consider absurd. Previously that might be only one or two people in a community, but the internet has changed that for good.
I also try not to do it anymore to help people with disabilities which prevent them from readily picking up on sarcasm like autism. I don't need to accidentally influence someone who has taken me at face value. It's so hard not to revert back to old habits though.
Seems pretty simple to replace spaz with spez now...
Gay is one of the most useful words. There isn't and never was a replacement for that word. It just fits a certain description of a certain something that no other word quite fits.
Gay used to mean happy, then it meant homosexual, then it meant some annoying, uncomfortable, awkward thing. We have words for the first two definitions but we don't have an alternative to the third. It just made sense in some many different contexts nothing could replace it.
Gay (the three letter word) for the third definition was a thing of beauty and I wish it would come back. Let's just go back to calls gays homosexuals and we can use gay for a better untapped market.
Cringe seem to have become popular to describe all kinds of annoying, uncomfortable, or awkward things lately. Maybe use that instead since the other two uses of gay were pretty well established when people started using it as the third definition.
Cringe?