Mildly ret*d v AS

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wow this thread title is pretty offensive.

Not really. "Mental retardation" may be used as an insult, but it is still the name used in the DSM as a medical term.

It may be in the DSM, but it shouldn't be since the word seems to be used more so in a negative manner than a positive manner in that community, as someone who is largely affilated with this community. That's just my personal opinion, though.

Gay is also used as a curse word and yet it is used to describe homosexual men.
Lesbians are actually also inhabitants of the Island of lesbos, and still homosexual women are called that.
Just because something is used to swear at somebody doesn't give it a reason to be stopped being used.

I think with low functioning autism the problem that prevails is the lack of communication . In the old days people he didnt talk were always regarded as ret*d (as dumb means both mute and idiot)

You'd make a lousy barber with all of the hairs you're splitting. Gay is also used to describe someone who is happy, but that doesn't make it okay to use it in deragatory fashion. And the Island of Lesbos is not pronounced the way you're trying to imply it is.

Lets not side track the thread with a debate over terminology.

I agree that the title of the thread could have been chosen with a bit more tact in mind. The term "retardation" gets thrown around so liberally by people pretending to know what they are talking about so much so that the word is questionable no matter what context you're using it in.

But we don't mean it in a tactless way. Look back over this thread--you'll not see a scrap of context that says we're using it as an insult. We are just using it as a word that means "Someone who's slower than typical in development and learning".

Honestly, I'm tired of tiptoeing around everything just to try to please everybody. Isn't the most important part of it treating people with respect? There are people around here with mild MR and we don't exclude them, do we? I mean, most of the time we can't even tell, but when they talk about it we don't shun them. That'd be stupid; they're spectrum just like all of us are.

So, if a person with "MR" asked you sto stop using the term, would you give them the same speech or would you respect them and stop using it?

No matter what word is used to replace "mental retardation," it's going to sound offensive. There's no way around that.

Yep, basically. Any word to denote inferiority in any way is going to eventually be considered offensive, and being slower than average or cognitively impaired is intrinsically inferior by definition.

I think I have mild retardation aswell, because I am not that bright for an Aspie. I was always spoken to like I was a baby when I was at school, simply because the kids who didn't know I had AS all thought I just had learning difficulties.

I've discovered that stupidness comes out onto the surface instead of weirdness. If I'm sitting on a bench, people would come along and sit right up close to me, or when I'm waiting in the bus station people come right upto me and stand almost right on top of me, as though they see me standing there but think ''oh she's too stupid to even realise how close we're standing near her - don't worry about how she feels.'' So people don't avoid me, in fact they stand or sit even closer to me, which is also annoying.

So stupidness must come out more than weirdness. I think I'd rather look stupid than weird, because I know a lot of people with mild retardation who are socially accepted, but people who are just weird and stand out don't seem to have many friends.

That sounds less to me like there was something wrong with you, and more like you responded to life long conditioning. If you're treated a certain way all your life, you're not going to know any better and it's basically going to shape how you are later on.

If you're told all you're life, "you're stupid and you'll never amount to anything."
Odds are you're going to have a poor self-image. You won't do well in school, you won't go to college, and you'll get a crappy job because you will never have recieved any encouragement to do better.





That doesn't make much sense. So you choose not to react to people, they violate your personal space and somehow that makes you stupid? Am I reading that correctly?

The only reason you use stupid to describe yourself is because others have used it. You're so used to hearing it that you've chosen to accept it as a personality trait, which is sad, because I highly doubt that you are stupid.

A stupid person is someone who can't wake up in the morning without making someone else feel bad about themselves, or feel like less of a person. Those people who treat you that way should feel like s**t every day of their lives, but they won't because in their world, their behavior is justified.

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See, the thing that gets me is when people equate Asperger's with being mentally challenged or lump it into a category. the same category in the first place, many of the traits of Asperger's can be overcome and adapted to.

For example, I only have a hard time making eye contact when it's not required of me. In a situation where I know I will need to look directly at someone, I have trained myself to know when and how.

I don't talk endlessly about my favorite subjects, but I used to. I taught myself how to do this because it was necessary for me to survive in the real world after I left high school. I was able to overcome these difficulties because the symptoms of Aspergers' are psychological for the most part.

Mental retardation, or whatever you want to call it, is the result of damage or some kind of defect in the brain. It's usually damage that is permanent and cannot be altered with surgery, medication, or training. It doesn't mean that a mentally challenged person cannot be conditioned to do things. But in all likelihood they will not be able to function on their own for very long.

A person with Asperger's is quite capable of finding a career, getting a place to live, raising a family, and all without the aid of a job coach or other professional baby-sitter. That is the major difference right there.

I am capable of this. But I still know I am mildly stupid because I look stupid all the time. Some Aspies on WP say that they get people avoiding them, but I don't. I know a weird person who sits on a bench talking loudly to himself all day every day, and he's always got the bench to himself because nobody wants to sit on it when he's sitting on it, and they don't even like to put rubbish in the bin next to the bench when he's sitting on it. I know he is harmless because he's been sitting there talking to himself every week day for the last 2 years, and he hasn't caused no trouble. But even people who know of him don't like going near him. I am a little afraid of him, even though I know he's a harmless nutter. He might be clever inside, I don't know, but from the outside he looks and acts very weird.
Me, however, can sit on a bench, and people come up and sit on it with me. It might not be because I'm stupid, but it definately shows I don't look or act weird or untrustworthy. People even sit near me with babies. I know I still get the odd looks as if to say ''who's this stupid idiot sitting here?'', but nobody avoids me.

Depends. I've had people tell me not to use "Aspie" before, and I still use that. I wouldn't deliberately call them that if they were really upset by it, but I probably wouldn't stop using it in general.