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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3654 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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What are the steelman arguments for/against using the word "retarded" to describe idiocy?

The main argument I've heard is that actually mentally retarded people are well aware of their condition being used as a punching bag to put down other humans, and this naturally produces feelings of Feels Bad Man. Why would you knowingly inflict such collateral damage on innocents when there are perfectly valid alternative insults to be used?

And yet I can't help but feel that this is what the left would call "tone policing." I wanna express myself how I feel like expressing myself, damn it, and that shit right there is some fucking retarded shit.

I genuinely believe that the suppression of the derogatory terms "gay" and "retarded" is part of what allowed Wokism to flourish so much. Those two terms were easy ways to shut down a lot of the arguments and psychological impulses behind the movement. They play a similar role to how the derogatory term "simp" shuts down decent but of feminist arguments and actions at a social level. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is up to your preferences.

(I dislike both movements, so I am in favor of these terms being used.)

What would you say are the "psychological impulses" behind Wokism that "gay" and "retarded" are such effective counters to?

"Gay" captures the destructive aspects of femininity (woke is a license to exhibit those qualities): that being effeminacy/learned helplessness, weakness, vanity, and superficiality. (It's not a surprise that men don't like sharing their space with this any more than they do a woman who isn't controlling those failure modes. Tomboys are partially exempt from this in male spaces just as gay men are partially exempt from judgment on those attributes in female spaces.)

"Retarded" is merely a signal that objective results matter.

Tomboys are partially exempt from this in male spaces just as gay men are partially exempt from judgment on those attributes in female spaces

Now that's interesting, I never made the connection. What's the flip side of tolerated failure modes for men? Performative toughness, stubborn self-reliance, unrestrained competitiveness?

It doesn't seem like there's a single slur to capture that.

In British English, "cunt" has become the preferred slur for toxic masculinity taken to the extremes where a harsh slur is needed. "Douchebag" in AmE and "wanker" in BrE capture similar but subtly different aspects of toxic masculinity at a milder level.

Wokists use "bro" or "dudebro" as a slur for this kind of thing, but that usage hasn't caught on among normies. My impression was that "chud" is used this way by the very online yoof.

But the normal way to attach someone engaging in unnecessary performative masculinity is to accuse them of compensating for a small dick. I'm not sure why no dialect of English has developed a one-word term for "small dick energy"

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