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user-inactivated  ·  3839 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "That's Retarded." Words and Offense.

I have "retard" in the same category that I have "fag" and "nigger" - offensive. That's really weird for me, because I'm an incredibly vulgar person (I don't blink at "cunt" - my own hypocrisy, I'm sure).

I wrote an article on "word re-appropriation" which is the process of repossessing a word (the most notable one I can think of is "queer" - another word I still detest). I think it's an overall useless objective: any word can be used offensively, trying to redefine the word isn't going to change what the people using it intend it to mean.

As for the word "retarded" in general: I don't use it, and I cringe when people do use it. Why? I don't know, exactly. I have a distant cousin who's pretty severely handicapped - perhaps seeing some of his life has made me a bit more sensitive to it. Perhaps it was my High School Accounting Teacher, who was stoically against the word as her brother had a mental deficiency (her brother being one of the nicest people I know). I don't know if I have a solid reason for not liking that word. With "fag" and "queer" and "homo" I have a solid reason: I'm gay, and I find them very offensive. (Though, that begs the question, do you have to qualify for an adjective to find it offensive (I don't think so)?)

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As for tumblr: I don't consider tumblr "social justice" - I consider it, instead, the fetish-izing of ultra sensitivity. I find the tumblr group particularly annoying because they (using that term very generally) never seem to actually care, they only care because they're told they should.

That, and they go far, far, overboard. For instance, on reddit I was called out for committing "trans erasure" because I thought the institutionalization of the word "xe" was idiotic. The same person later said, "Fine, then I don't respect your decision to call yourself gay." That's just ridiculous. They're unable to discourse in any respectable matter, and I think that's why tumblr gets a very bad wrap.

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Side note: I'm familiar with JonTron, and have always found him extremely annoying (DYKG is at least bearable, thankfully). None of this is surprising.