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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.)

I think attempts to broaden "gay" as a slur beyond male homosexuality don't work, because whatever broader meaning you adopt is impossible to protect and the word ends up being used to describe anything bad, in much the same way as "lame" (or possibly even anything at all, like "fag" on 4chan). In the UK in the early noughties I was part of a group that trolled the humourless scolds of then (then temporarily out of power) PC left by handing out buttons saying "Homophobia is Gay" and "Ablism is Lame". Everyone who wasn't a PC humourless scold got the joke instantly. I also remember a US-based online campaign around the same time trying to oppose the generic negative use of "gay" by saying "Gay is Lame" or something similar.

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