DEBATE TIME: "Gay" vs. "ret*d"

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I'm just looking for the opinions of those whose feet are planted in both of our communities on a little "debate" I am having with a friend of mine, who is gay. For the record, I am pansexual, but unlike him, I was beat up a lot more for my neurological and physical differences than my sexual orientation, so maybe I'm missing a little perspective here.

He is arguing that the word "ret*d", unlike "gay" or "fa***t", does not qualify as hate speech, and that crimes committed against those who are perceived as mentally and socially inferior while being called things like, oh, I don't know, "ret*d girl", does not qualify as a hate crime. Needless to say, as that girl, I disagree quite strongly with him!! I may not be mentally impaired, but being called "ret*d" is nothing new in the life of most, if not all, autistics, and despite it's "relevance", it is no less a hateful and demeaning word, but he seems to think it's allowed to simply mean "stupid"...but if you use "gay" in the same way, you're gonna earn a bat upside the head under his roof...

Please discuss. Give me more cannon fodder, or defend his stance, I don't care, just some outside perspective would be helpful to us both. We enjoy our arguments, but this one's getting a bit heated, and a bit personal...but it has a potential to be very educational, in a way. If we can keep it civil.

How would YOU feel if you were in my place?

This is the last thing he said to me, for some discussion points...

"I do not feel the two (gay and ret*d) are similar. There is a multitude of protections to the physically and mentally handicapped that are not available to other groups. There is a vast network of resources to help the handicapped. And ret*d is not a hate word in the same way fa***t is. I have used the word ret*d in casual speech to describe things, and I've even called people ret*d before that were acting a fool. People don't walk into a room full of people and use the word ret*d as a way of asserting their dominant sexuality. Or their intelligence. It's an adjective. And a very descriptive one. You can say "congress is ret*d." That works on any level. But saying "That songs gay" or "that bands gay" or "that's gay" has nothing to do with description and everything to do with hate speech. I haven't seen you lose a job over being abused by coworkers calling you ret*d. It is different...I'm not saying it isn't a hurtful or pejorative word. But it is not the same..."

None of that argument makes any sense whatsoever; in fact, there isn't even a coherent argument in that paragraph. How the two of you can have a debate by exchanging a random slew of sentences is beyond me.

I would concur with 1st responder... gay.. ret*d... labels.. who cares

haters gonna hate. news at 11.

both are hate speach both wre wrong

if you want to have anything to say about a person/song/situation language is a beautiful thing, get a vocabulary and use it. If you can't thenm don't speak to me OR around me - I will call you on it.

here - and article on substitures for "the R word", all of these words are great, learn them and learn to speak well.

http://specialchildren.about.com/od/dis ... R-Word.htm

I've been called insults of both types, and had people want to beat me up over both issues (gay haters and ret*d haters hating on me), neither type hater are nice people.

I'd rather be called a dyke than a ret*d.

I wouldn't call using these words hate speech because I don't feel its progressive or positive for reality, but if you do it makes you sound like you have evolved or added new words to your vocab since you were twelve to me. both just make the person using them look extremely immature, not hateful.

People who consider them offense to me just look like try hard progressives who want to fight to be at the top of politically correct mountain instead of being realistic, or logical.

If either word is used with the intent of ridiculing, mocking, demeaning, etc. the recipient those words, then it is hate speech. If any word is used with such intent, it is hate speech.

Personally, as an agender asexual panromantic female-bodied person with a girlfriend, (that was relevant, I think), I believe that using "ret*d/ret*d" in any other context than "They have a diagnosis of mental retardation" is bad, and I believe it to be worse than using 'gay' to describe something. People use "ret*d" to mean stupid, which, frankly, ticks me off, because they're not synonymous in the least. "Retardation" comes from a Latin word that means, IIRC, "to slow down", and thus "ret*d" is closer to meaning "slow" than "stupid". When people use 'ret*d' to mean 'stupid', it upsets me, especially as one of my very close friends from Jr. High was diagnosed with MR. I know more about her than I do about any other friend of mine - by which I mean I knew her favorite animal, favorite color, birthdate, as well as understood her as you would someone you talked to often. I don't know the favorite animal or color of anyone else, even my girlfriend. She certainly wasn't stupid - she could read at a first grade level, and do basic maths, which, for her age of twelve, wasn't very "good", but she also comprehended and understood a lot more than the SpEd teachers at the school gave her credit for. She may not have been a genius, and we may have been on different ends of the IQ curve, but she was amazing. If anyone had called her a "ret*d" or used the word "ret*d" to mean stupid around me, I probably would have punched them in the face at that age.

Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble, and went further than the topic really called for. It's just a subject I feel passionately about.

Ever been called gaytard or gaytarded?
Yeah. I like how it's wordsmithery though.

there is no versus,disablist hate speech is disablist hate speech.

am intelectualy disabled as well as TG and a autism and ID activist,also a campaigner against disablist hate speech like 'ret*d', heres a post of mine had recently wrote on the slur as well as what intelectual disability actualy means for us-
http://theresidentialautist.blogspot.co ... ctual.html

and here is the special olympics campaign against it-
http://www.r-word.org/

to call anyone 'ret*d' or 'ret*d' is dehumanising and abusing US ,we are the most vulnerable group of all minorities and in many cases are not able to defend ourselves against issues like this so the least we deserve is a bit of respect against being used as negative/ dumb comparisons for people who act foolish.
the term is bigoted,prejudiced and highly disrespectful no matter what the intent behind it was.

there is no such thing as mental retardation, it actualy got replaced almost a full year ago in the DSM with intelectual disability and it had infact been in unofficial use for years before by organisations in preparation for this awaited change,unfortunately most people only care about what affects them and remember that aspergers got merged into autism last year but dont remember another change that affected a large number of us on the autism spectrum.

am often having to say this on WP but we are not ret*d,we have a different mental capacity to autistics or NTs who are high functioning, our more limited mental capacity has a knock on effect on our overal functioning and understanding of the world but it doesnt mean we dont have smarts.

'ret*d' and 'mental retardation' are both absolute outdated prehistoric offense to us and limits and offends us in a way people who arent intelectualy disabled will never truly understand, so many people act like they have blinkers on when it comes to these slurs,they use them and think those of us who dont agree with them are just being politicaly correct and sensitive when they dont realise the utter hate,dehumanisation and resentment so many of us experience as a direct result of being associated with these terms.