Yeah it's weird. I'll sometimes describe actions, or ways of thinking, as '-tarded', but I don't think I'd call someone '-tard' regardless of whether they are disabled or not. It's like if I direct the word at a thing or a process, rather than a person, the word is ok? Bizarre.
I think arguing about which words are ok to use as insults is a way sillier argument than saying calling people stupid is really just as bad no matter if you use the word stupid or something else. You'll offend more people genuinely saying they are trash (or hoping they are sterile) than saying that what they did was ***.
The goal here shouldn't be "insult people not with these words, but these instead".
I'm not pro-use of the r word, censor it all you want. It's easier. I stopped using it the moment it started being a violation and it's actually is a great idea to censor words in game to reduce violations/reports and fix the problem (though lucid would be needed). But yes, context does matter. You can't say it doesn't. It's a word, if the use of the word is not to belittle the mentally ill, and the person had no intent to refer to them at all, or anything like that, then it's just as bad as calling someone stupid. The b and n words and gay and whatever are all words which have actually positive meanings sometimes nowadays but they're still "bad" words. The r word also loses much of it's original meaning too but still remains an insult, so no matter what using it cannot mean any good thing. And yet, there's no point to glorify the use of the word "idiot" in its stead. It's just as bad, unless you're actually referring to those kinds of people. In a perfect world you'd have neither. I won't get into an argument (wait, I guess I did, whoops) about whether if you use two words and mean the same by them, if using one of them is worse than the other., they're just as bad. The r word has worse potential, of course, and that's what HC should be for, IMO.
Not defending the use of the r word or any insults here, and the best thing would be to just censor it, but imo arguing the moral high ground for using x substitute with the same intended meaning over the r word is, well, you know.
I thought I'd vote 'yes' until I realised I'm completely desensitised to the word despite having a disabled niece. 'R' word doesn't have a lot of meaning anymore - it's thrown around too regularly. Usually nowadays it's used to indicate stupidity, rather than genuine disability.
I guess context is a big thing. I wouldn't call a disabled person a '-tard' but might describe a way of doing something as '-tarded'.
deletedover 9 years
can we go back to discussing the r-word now or what?
deletedover 9 years
sorry we don't have black people in ireland, i am not used to it
