idiot/retarded/stupid

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when my brother was alive i abhorred the name calling....retard. because he was. well. until he was later classified as mentally challenged. but, schoolyard assholes still called him retard and i heard his cries nearly every night as went to bed.

i swore never to use the term, retard. seems, it has just become a term. a term such as stupid or idiot. in my research of retard, idiot and stupid were applied to mentally handicap people. was i just being sensitive?

or am i just defensive as watermark falsely says?
 
Yurt said:
when my brother was alive i abhorred the name calling....retard. because he was. well. until he was later classified as mentally challenged. but, schoolyard assholes still called him retard and i heard his cries nearly every night as went to bed.

i swore never to use the term, retard. seems, it has just become a term. a term such as stupid or idiot. in my research of retard, idiot and stupid were applied to mentally handicap people. was i just being sensitive?

or am i just defensive as watermark falsely says?
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Context is key. However context cannot remove any negative feeling you have for the word either.
 
Today it's certainly used as an insult, I expect that it always was, though the clinical description was "retarded" for many years. Now we call people "learning disabled" and that includes many different kinds of disability, from dyslexia to Down's Syndrome to PKU deficiency to brain damage, etc.

I can understand your sensitivity to the term, because it always is used in a denigrating fashion, and kids, especially, can be extremely cruel, though they rarely truly appreciate the extent of their cruelty.
 
Yurt said:
when my brother was alive i abhorred the name calling....retard. because he was. well. until he was later classified as mentally challenged. but, schoolyard assholes still called him retard and i heard his cries nearly every night as went to bed.

i swore never to use the term, retard. seems, it has just become a term. a term such as stupid or idiot. in my research of retard, idiot and stupid were applied to mentally handicap people. was i just being sensitive?

or am i just defensive as watermark falsely says?
Click to expand...
You should never believe what a stupid, retarded idiot like Watermark says! ;)
 
Yurt said:
when my brother was alive i abhorred the name calling....retard. because he was. well. until he was later classified as mentally challenged. but, schoolyard assholes still called him retard and i heard his cries nearly every night as went to bed.

i swore never to use the term, retard. seems, it has just become a term. a term such as stupid or idiot. in my research of retard, idiot and stupid were applied to mentally handicap people. was i just being sensitive?

or am i just defensive as watermark falsely says?
Click to expand...
I had a sister who was micro cephalic, severely mentally retarded. My mother was sensitive to the term, as almost any person who was a mother of a mentally retarded child would be. However since my sister and I never knew our sister (she died before I was born) we didn't have this particular sensitivity and were often berated by our mother for using a term that has become a deep part of the language, but we outgrew the term some time around high school age. It takes a childish, or bigoted, belief of superiority to maintain that type of mentality.
 
Damocles said:
I had a sister who was micro cephalic, severely mentally retarded. My mother was sensitive to the term, as almost any person who was a mother of a mentally retarded child would be. However since my sister and I never knew our sister (she died before I was born) we didn't have this particular sensitivity and were often berated by our mother for using a term that has become a deep part of the language, but we outgrew the term some time around high school age. It takes a childish, or bigoted, belief of superiority to maintain that type of mentality.
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I know what you mean. I have a first cousin my age who as a child contracted measles and scarlet fever at the same time and suffered permanent brain damage from the resulting fever. She is moderately mentally retarded. Has about the mentallity of a 6 year old. I don't like it either when the word is used as an idiom or used as a pejorative.... except in Watermarks case that is.
 
i don't know, i think the term has taken on a different context

i don't think people are truly putting down handicap people when they say it
 
Yurt said:
i don't know, i think the term has taken on a different context

i don't think people are truly putting down handicap people when they say it
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I don't think so either, but they're comparing them to handicapped people, so criticizing them indirectly by pointing out their perceived shortcomings.
 
Yurt said:
when my brother was alive i abhorred the name calling....retard. because he was. well. until he was later classified as mentally challenged. but, schoolyard assholes still called him retard and i heard his cries nearly every night as went to bed.

i swore never to use the term, retard. seems, it has just become a term. a term such as stupid or idiot. in my research of retard, idiot and stupid were applied to mentally handicap people. was i just being sensitive?

or am i just defensive as watermark falsely says?
Click to expand...

if it wasn't the word retard, if it didn't exist, it would be something else. Insult words are meant to insult, that's their purpose. Imagine if I just started calling everyone mentally challenged.

Wow, that was the worst thing I ever read, you're so mentally challenged.
 
Silencio said:
yup just words.
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then you have no understanding the power of words. especially for those who are in fact mentally challenged.

its that no one can make you feel inferior unless you let them, that doesn't mean i should then go around and say your dad is a transvestite who molested 30 kids and molested you. words mean something grind.
 
im just not a faggot mentally challenged retard and I don't get my feelings hurt over silly things
 
Silencio said:
im just not a faggot mentally challenged retard and I don't get my feelings hurt over silly things
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I think the point is that someone who does have a disability is aware of it and is definitely hurt by people pointing it out, usually in a very cruel fashion. That tends to sensitize those around the individual, who care about him, to the hurtfulness not only of the words themselves, but of their obvious intent to wound. Someone like Yurt's brother would not have any defenses, e.g., ego strength, that someone else might have. So to him and to those who love him, the words do hurt.
 
thing is, yurt calls everybody else names. He isn't against insulting people, he just doesn't like a particular word. But if "retard" didn't exist, another word would take its place.

Either don't say harmful words to anyone, or admit to being a hypocrite.
 
Silencio said:
im just not a faggot mentally challenged retard and I don't get my feelings hurt over silly things
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you may not. that doesn't lessen the power of words. i have no doubt if your dad told you over and over that you were a loser, you would say, words don't matter.

you are extremely naive.
 
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