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 At the same time, I have less and less tolerance for people who deliberately use outdated, insulting language.
Spoken like a true neurodivergent.
I have zero tolerance for people who think that their variety of a language is superior to all others, and that they get to impose it on others.
spoken like a true bigot mad about getting shamed
Spoken like a true linguistic supremacist.
That was simply the euphemism du jour, on the eternal euphemism treadmill.
can you really call it a euphemism when it just used to be a medical term back then?
Pro tip: It still is a medical term. Internet activists deciding they don’t like a word doesn’t actually change the word.
It’s not only the ‘SJW’ crowd who are asking people to stop using it, but also the medical field, patients, and their caregivers directly asking everyone to stop.
The results of both the parent and professional surveys support a move away from the use of the term mental retardation. The majority of parents indicated that they would be upset if a physician used the term mental retardation.
Probably under pressure from the SJWs. Medical people are practically minded, not given to rewriting the nomenclature to suit the fashion of the hour (they still use Latin for God’s sake). Unless the money is threatened of course.
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.
retarded doesn’t have any more negative meaning than disabled. it’s just about how we use it.
