Can you educate me on the R word, please?
Can you educate me on the R word, please?
R as ret ar ded.
I'm from Balkans and I think there's no swearing anywhere in the world like in Balkans. We use slurs A LOT and pretty casually, so I am always surprised when I am censored on some word online.
It happened just now. The R word was removed from my comment, so I wanted to find out what's going on with it.
Since I talk to people from all around the world, I don't want to be an ignorant fool and I want to learn why it isn't ok to say something, so I can implement it without the feeling I'm being deprived of free speech.
Again, take in consideration the Balkan thing if you think I'm trolling with this post. I'm not. I swear to you, the shit we're able to say are insane and we really think it's no big deal.
So, when did R word became a slur and why it's not ok to call someone R word as an insult?
Thank you for the education. A human learns while grows and until dies.
EDIT: You're really nice community and I am really thankful you've explained this to me. As I said, I can be a Slow Poke sometimes and growing where I grew, some shit has just stuck as normal and I am glad to unlearn it. My heart is leftist, but I grew up as a Catholic in the midst of the war where we learned a lot of hateful stuff as a normal part of identity. I want to fuck it off from me, so thanks, really.
It used to be a very common insult along with the f-slur, when I, an elder millennial, was growing up. Then there was a concerted push to get it out public discourse on the basis that comparing someone or something to a person with an intellectual disability negatively is offensive and unfair. If you think about it disabled people being the go to comparison every time something sucks is pretty nasty. And for a long time, if you heard someone saying this they were either ignorant and uncouth or being deliberately edgy.
Now it seems like it's making comeback sadly. I've definitely noticed an uptick in it's usage lately
Oh, f slur is here pretty common when you want to say that someone is a lousy person. Even my gay friends use it. I'm telling you, Balkans is a really wild place and growing up here as old millennial as well and now being social only online among different people and different generations, I've started to think about the way we use words. And yeah, my first reaction is "you don't get to tell me how to speak" until I realize that it really isn't ok to say it and sometimes I really need an explanation to understand it and stop doing it. Call me stupid, I won't get offended because I really can be stupid sometimes, that's why I asked this.
I think I have a rule of thumb that you might find useful. I have this thing where I never want to denigrate anybody for working hard. As if to say work ethic is a virtue in the same way that honesty, trustworthiness, and generosity are. Now, if somebody worked their ass off to lose 100lbs and your reply is "lmao, but you're still as ugly as cowshit" they're going to feel really bad about it. I'd much sooner say "congratulations on your success!" because it sucks to work that hard without anybody acknowledging it.
You can apply the same concept to racism. You work for 10,000 hours to become a lawyer, you show up well kempt in your suit with a briefcase full of evidence and the judge just calls you the n word. You'd be all "goddammit, does all my effort mean nothing to you? I could be the fucking president of the US elected by popular vote and it wouldn't matter to you bastards." It would be mega frustrating.
Therefore, say you're mentally or physically impaired. You want to make a name for yourself. You work your ass off day in and day out. You send in your resume to a company. They then turn around and go "I should be allowed to pay you less than minimum wage because, out of the kindness of my heart, I've decided to make this otherwise useless pile of flesh into something that can contribute to society." You, frustrated and dejected, talk to your friend about it. You hear some implicit agreement with that would-be employer when they go "Yeah, you're a R-word, what did you expect?" That's sort of what it is; an implicit agreement that your effort is worth less because of something you can't control.
It's simple enough here on hexbear - you can't use that word because the admins and mods say you can't. Whatever. But what I challenge you to do is not go around thinking "I can't use that word because I'm not supposed to" but instead think "I want to show solidarity with those people who want to make a name for themselves by not putting them down."
I've noticed more people using "gay" in that way as well recently too.
The R-slur was considered offensive even when I went to school in the early 90s. I distinctly remember kids getting into trouble when caught saying it, especially if it was directed at kids in the special education classes.
By the 2000s I feel like the lid had more or less been put on those kinds of slurs. But in the last 10 years or so they've made a comeback in spite of chuds claiming that they're being "censored" now, and that the 90s were like some bastion of freeze peach.
yeah it was sort of treated like a swear word though, and any context in which it was okay to say "shit" people considered it okay to say the R word. Some people had the more modern understanding of that being wrong, and a large proportion of the time it was because they had someone in their family with a disability
If you believe broadly that people should be given dignity regardless of gender, sexuality, race, disability, appearance, etc. etc. etc., it should be clear that using a descriptor of those things to mean something generally negative deprives them of that dignity. You're saying they're lesser, inferior, below you, purely because they don't fit into the status quo.
genuinely asking, hopefully this doesn't come off as some reddit snark bullshit since it's a super obvious sounding question, but what about calling things dumb, or stupid then? is that also ableist? or is it not ableist because it's more just saying something is generally bad as opposed to being specifically "r"?
A lot of people DO avoid using those words and ask people to refrain from using "dumb" and "stupid" in their presence. Small children are taught that calling someone stupid is mean. It is ableist to insult someone's intelligence like that, but it is an ableism that a lot of society tolerates.
As far as "why can't I use this slur if other words mean roughly the same thing" - I feel like this is obvious. You can say someone is black, but you should not call them the N word, even if the N word means "a black person".
The etymology of dumb is rooted in ableism, yeah.
I'm not sure about stupid.Those are two I struggle with to this day, because in my mind they're so detached from the ableist definitions. I've never in my life associated dumb with a mute person, for example, even though that's the definition.To be completely real, I'm not sold on 'stupid' being ableist butI'll try to avoid the language if it has the possibility to be harmful, e.g. I edited one of my recent comments from stupid to silly. Ignorant is another good alternative.EDIT: Okay, yeah, the etymology of 'stupid' is also rooted in ableism.
I'm not from the global north either, and where I come from we have a very loose attitude towards insults and stuff.
Growing up I didn't think much of it, but now that I'm older and I've interacted with more people, I realize that sometimes using words that refer to a certain category of people as an insult can be very hurtful.
Of course, insulting the person in front of you is hurtful to them, specially if you're implying there's something wrong with them that they can't change or that they might feel self conscious about (like calling them fatty or ugly), but we all know that, I hope. Much more importantly, there's the people who have nothing to do with it, but who "catch strays", when other people use something about them as an insult. It implies there's something wrong with being who they are, like using gay to mean uncool, or the r-word to mean dumb, or using an ethnicity's stereotype to imply someone is being like what people think about this ethnicity. This does two things: it is violence against someone who's part of that community who might overhear, and more insidiously, reinforces the belief that being x=bad, justifying their oppression and current condition.
We must work to break down these systems of oppression, and the first step is to break them down within our minds, such that we're not perpetuating them unconsciously. When we talk, we must be mindful of people who by just being who they are, already are oppressed by a system that has no place for them, and that wastes no opportunity in reminding them of that fact. This includes, but is not limited to, not using slurs, even when we're being jerks to each other for the fun of it, which I really understand.
Dunno if this rambling helps clear it out.
Dunno if this rambling helps clear it out.
Very much.
reinforces the belief that being x=bad, justifying their oppression and current condition.
I get it. I know this about other slurs, but I have this bloody disorder of not being able to implement something on other things, like what you just described. I needed this eli5. Thank you.
without the feeling I'm being deprived of free speech
fart noise
Yeah. That's why I phrased it like that.
There are uses of it that are not necessarily ableist (or even referring to humans at all such as fire removedant) but the word itself has roots in eugenics and exterminationist policies and Nazi shit so that is why it's on the slur blacklist on the site.
but the word itself has roots in eugenics and exterminationist policies and Nazi shit
Argument enough for me to be mindful not to use it anymore.
I remember being taken aback when I saw an episode of the little einsteins and the squadron of toddlers were all excitedly shouting out "removedando!" haha
In the US (and probably other english speaking western countries) it's used to insult people with mental disabilities
The slur filter exists for a reason please dont bypass it
Also, free speech is bad
There's kind of a treadmill of linguistic acceptability going where the technical term for something slowly, by misuse, becomes a slur. The R word is the latest of these, and I think the best comparison for it is the word de-generate (verb, not noun). They're both t e c h n i c a l l y scientific terms, one means to slow and the other means to decay or worsen. But in the context of early 20th century US medicine, when abuse, lobotomization and even sterilization were go-to treatments for all kinds of mental illness, such words became weapons used by the medical establishment to dehumanize "undesirables" and justify their forced "correction". Many such words in the field have run this course: originally intended as neutral descriptors, but their repeated invoking for fascist purposes leaves a stink of nazi on them.
Then there's the whole trickle down cultural aspect of the R word, everyone using it casually for decades (my partner is watching Dexter for the first time and they drop like 3 per episode, it was unavoidable in the US from like 1980 to 2015). But that's more broad, and I'm sure people have written it up already. I just wanted to try and shed some light on the word's more sinister historical use by those with actual power. If you're a G*mer, the word is how you express acute dissatisfaction. But if you're an unempathetic doctor in a capitalist regime, especially back in the day, it's the word you can use to ruin someone's life.
Yeah, far enough back if you were deemed clinically R[...]ed, societal marginalization was one of the kinder things that could/would be thrust upon you. I'd speculate that the subtext is the bigger part of what makes that particular phrase an issue moreso than the immediate insult factor, but then again "Idiot" and "Imbecile" are regarded as much milder insults despite emerging from the shambolic state of early 20th century psychology too.
The r word, idiot, stupid, and lame are all ableist insults we should remove from our speech.
Words like thug and loot are also colonialist and should also be removed.
Ah man, loot too? Shame
it's not that bad actually, I still have me plunder
radical politics was abolished in the anglosphere by relegating it to the symbolic.
of course symbols matter, but it is notable that the crusade against political obscenity has not been accompanied by a war against the violent medical system that it crudely invokes.
i'm especially doubtful of the arguments that the problem with calling things removed is that it's a "misuse" of the word, as if the credentialed authorities who used it "correctly" in the course of diagnosis weren't doing something even more evil than a schoolyard insult.
As buh said. Please also be aware of other words which use the suffix of the last four letters of the word which may also be considered derivative slurs and may be removed
Like left-tard? First thing that crossed my mind and sorry for being literal, but if I understood you well, then noted, I will be careful about using phrases like those.
Yeah, anything that tries to leverage a derogatory term towards a marginalized group is just as detrimental.
It usually refers to people with genetic conditions. So it feels mean to them. Worse constantly associating bad things you don't like with genetic conditions is like eugenics language. Further it isn't actually descriptive or useful in discourse so it is intellectually lazy.
The normalizing eugenics language thing seems like a bit of a stretch I am sure. However, almost everyone here on this form started making jokes about comunism ironically. Then they got comfortable with it. Then they read some theory. It turns out our brains are really bad at keeping stuff out so you should make an effort not not say things that you don't want to effect you. We don't have free will. We are salty bags of goo. Brains don't work as well as we'd like, mental hygiene is important.
It gets more complicated as this has happened with every use of the word. Fool, was a diagnosis. It referred to someone intellectually disabled back in the renesance days. Then it became an insult. Then we stop using it and forgot the context. Now it is a regular word. We can see people in this cycle with special and disabled currently.
Brian's don't work as well as we'd like...
Brian in shambles!
I understand what you mean,as a fellow Balkaner,but this is an international forum and we need to conduct ourselves appropriately
Still,the normalization of slurs here is something I deeply disagree with,as I believe all humans deserve to be treated with the appropriate respect
I live my life just fine without making use of this word,and I haven't felt like my speech was limited in any significant manner. I do admit I use dumb or stupid on occasion,but I've been trying to limit those as well. Anyway, insult-wise there are plenty of other words to use without the negative connotation.
I don't really have an issue with not saying certain words, because,let's be honest,their non demeaning use is marginal. I can live my life just fine without saying them and I wouldn't feel stifled.
As a semi-relevant bit of trivia regarding slurs and how they manifest across different languages, the antiquated medical jargon to grave slur pipeline isn't solely an English thing - There's similarly loaded phrases in others. I know for sure that there's a close analogue in Japanese, mostly since a early iteration of Celeste's Japanese script ended up using it inappropriately in a particular piece of character dialogue as a translation for the English phrase "Crazy".
I don't have any more to add than what's already been said.
Just want to say it's good of you to be interested in growing and being able to so humbly ask for assistance to do it. Thanks for being so open.
It's not just English. In French and German, you are going to find a similar word with the use case.
If 2 people insult each other, they're usually on an even level. If a bully hits a weaker person, that's bad because they're (literally) punching down. If an able-bodied person punches someone in a wheelchair, that's even worse. Same concept for other disabilities...
Not gonna lie, I’m on the spectrum and got called that very often, so I took the habit of using it too. Now, swearing in France is a national sport and we used very often, but people stopped using it over time and replaced it with less offending words like: stupid, slow etc. Personally I found it boring to use and pretty mean, it’s more fun to string insults together using normal words imo, but kicking the habit took a while. As for why it’s frowned upon, it’s got a charged history and people taxed of r-words were often rounded up and committed of worse. So yeah don’t use it.
There's nothing wrong with the word r3tard. It's just a word, it doesn't even mean "developmentally disabled" or whatever the proper term is anymore - and those people don't care anyway.
Western society is just the softest shit ever these days. Some of realized we were wrongly treating non-white people badly, and tried to shove our entire societies, cultures, habits, and language the opposite direction. So much so that if a white man puts on a Mexican poncho, sombrero, and tapes a fake mustache to his face white people will blubber and try to cancel him. Literal Mexicans in Mexico will welcome him and compliment his attire, however.
So, good luck learning about The Great Filter. It's pathetic, it's quite literally NewSpeak, and there's nothing to be done about it.
We shouldn't normalize calling other people "r*tarded", because it implies someone is inferior or subhuman in some way.
Also, you can't just declare a group of people to "not care". Plenty of neurodivergent people get offended when a neurotypical person refers to them by the R-word because of the aforementioned connotations.
I'm neurodivergent, and I think people need to quit being such ridiculously sensitive babies about words. They are fucking WORDS. It's not a physical assault on your person, It's not a law restricting you or allowing physical assault on you, it's a damn sound/thought/text that you're choosing to be offended by.
energy and I hate it. It should die with the boomers, but I'm not so sure it will.