I would argue taking words out of reasonable vocabulary makes them more hurtful, and also just leads to more words that have negative connotations. Retarded is a word that has a definition. Calling someone a retard was common when I was in elementary school, but then we were told it was a slur, and we shouldn’t use it. So the accepted words became handicapped, disabled, special, etc.
So guess what we called each other on the playground? Instead of one word, with a scientific meaning, there was now a slew of terms to hurl as insults, and they all meant the same thing. Any term that was trying to be more PC was going to be turned into a slur simply because nobody wants to be retarded.
Nobody wants to be handicapped. Nobody wants to be less-abled. Nobody wants to require special accomodations.
It doesn’t matter what “friendly” word combination you use, it will always become a slur, because it’s not good to be retarded. So by changing the accepted term every few years, we’re just narrowing the vocabulary, and creating even more hurtful terms.
Outside of all of that, the other comment was using a slur as a slur, because fuck those particular retards. They didn’t call them that to be friendly. They called them a hurtful term because they believe they deserve to be hurt. The purpose was the hurtful nature of the term.
I would argue taking words out of reasonable vocabulary makes them more hurtful, and also just leads to more words that have negative connotations. Retarded is a word that has a definition. Calling someone a retard was common when I was in elementary school, but then we were told it was a slur, and we shouldn’t use it. So the accepted words became handicapped, disabled, special, etc.
So guess what we called each other on the playground? Instead of one word, with a scientific meaning, there was now a slew of terms to hurl as insults, and they all meant the same thing. Any term that was trying to be more PC was going to be turned into a slur simply because nobody wants to be retarded.
Nobody wants to be handicapped. Nobody wants to be less-abled. Nobody wants to require special accomodations.
It doesn’t matter what “friendly” word combination you use, it will always become a slur, because it’s not good to be retarded. So by changing the accepted term every few years, we’re just narrowing the vocabulary, and creating even more hurtful terms.
Outside of all of that, the other comment was using a slur as a slur, because fuck those particular retards. They didn’t call them that to be friendly. They called them a hurtful term because they believe they deserve to be hurt. The purpose was the hurtful nature of the term.