Offensive terms and Disabilities

[darth_timon]

Greetings one and all,

I'm in a discussion with someone who feels the term 'retard' is perfectly acceptable to describe non-believers of his religion. Personally, I consider the expression to be a horrible term, one aimed at being derogatory (indeed, several dictionaries define it as such) towards people with disabilities.

In response, my opponent has argued that using terms such as moron and idiot makes me a hypocrite, because those terms have historically been used to describe people with mental disabilities.

Since the members of this forum are quite learned, I wanted to gain some thoughts. My opponent doesn't appear to draw a distinction between the term retard and the terms moron and idiot, arguing we either drop them all or use them all, because he feels retard can be acceptable in context (after all, if idiot and moron can have different meanings/context over time, why not retard, even though society views these words in a different way).

What are people's thoughts?

[madd0ct0r]

Just because words can have different meanings over time, does not tell you much about the meaning of the word right now.

Retard is a recent word that still carries full weight of stigma. Moron too is a modern word (1910 coining) that I'd argue is still stigmatized, but not as heavily.
Idiot is neutral now. It was an ordinary word for centuries before being used additionally as medical jargon. Since the medical meaning has been dropped again and the normal use never stopped it's not carrying the same stigma.

Usage notes from Wiktionary
Through the euphemism treadmill, the term retard (which originated as a neutral substitute for the terms that had previously designated those with disabilities, namely idiot, imbecile, and moron) has come to be considered offensive; see Wikipedia for more. In a 2003 survey by the BBC, retard was voted the most offensive word relating to disability, followed by spastic.[1]

Similar, readable article by Miriam Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... ve-history

I agree with that article's conclusions, that all can be dropped as there are plenty of other insults available.

[Solauren]

So, stop using those terms, and instead call them 'Logically and Intellectually deficient'

And when he argues back, point out he's supposed to 'Turn the other Cheek'