Pembs wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 9:35 am
The R word? I've worked hard on dropping that from my vocabulary (though I reserve the right to use it about myself) and have started using 'rem' (short for remedial) instead.
I have mixed feelings about this, partly because I grew up in the 80s when it was in its prime. But seriously, it's anathema to my professional training and experience, from doing entry-level direct care with developmentally disabled persons to doing clinical work that requires a master's degree, to use a slur that comes at the expense (at least theoretically) of these vulnerable populations. However as a realistic person I don't think that an isolated use of the term among friends is capable of doing any direct harm unless one of them has IDD kids (which some of my friends do) or unless one of them is actually retarded (which some of my friends might be). So it's safer not to say it, especially if you believe that using these terms can embolden others to do the same.
I do take a personal exception; when I was in undergrad, I was talking to a few fellow students (people half my age because I'm a late bloomer) and when discussing some aspect of the course I was having a hard time with, I referred to myself as "retarded" before I realized what I said. Right or wrong, that's what came out of my mouth. Well wouldn't you know, this passel of youngsters just turned around and walked away from me as if I had just sworn allegiance to Hitler.
But what really bothered me was that just before they turned away, one of the young women scornfully said "Oooh, hard R!" Now I know that's become a catch-all term for saying something offensive, but BITCH, you do NOT throw your sanitized version of "nigger" at me. There is no similarity between calling one's self retarded and calling other people the N-word.
It's like we have lost all sense of scale, which of course is kind of true when we look at the world through the eyes of people in their teens and 20s, because they don't have any fucking perspective. There's so much hypocrisy in privileged young white people who think they have the right to police other people's language. I know the music they listen to, and it's full of misogyny and N-words and negative shit, but they don't have the guts to critique these "artists" because they're black and "speaking their truth." If I, an actual negroid individual, expressed the content of one line from a rap song in real life, they' "hard R" me into the next life.
Re: cunt, twat, etc.; the vagina is a beautiful and magical body part and I would never refer to it when insulting someone, unless I said "your cunt smells like dog food" or "take the hairbrush out of your twat and listen to me" which I would never say either. And the cultural defense of "I'm British/Australian/etc. and so that's just what we say" is about as worthless an excuse as "I'm German, so gassing Jews is
just what we do."