ret*d.

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I really hate this word.
It is a slur, and yet people use it so casually, even, I've noticed, to complain about another slur.
I don't get why out of all the slurs that could be used, that one is somehow seen as less bad.

I was not aware there was any "PC" growing up in the 60's and 70's


True. "ret*d" came into common use later


The word was short for "spastic"


It was synonymous with a homosexual. Guys that were "weak", "skinny", "smart", "bookish" and guys that were not into sports were considered unmanly ie homosexual.


They were in common usage but were more than just labels. They were insults, fighting words, especially "queer" and "ret*d"

.

The saying in my dad's 1946 high school yearbook was "Our hearts are young and gay". When the meaning changed we joked about it.

I knew damm well what lesbien meant. It was one of the biggest turn-ons/fantasies. That actual lesbian girls would want nothing to do with us seemed never to be mentioned.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 20 Sep 2018, 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's supposed to have become as taboo to use as the N word. But that didn't catch on and people still use it. Personally I'm not bothered by it, even though I suppose I'm supposed to be.

I remember in elementary school, there were two LD classes. The ignorant kids who went to my school called those two classes "The ret*d Classes". That was back in the 1980s and it really hurt. I thought that I was actually the R-Word until my mum told me about my autism.

I have a Master's in English, and am definitely not mentally ret*d but, in terms of life experience, I would consider myself ret*d. I may never catch up socially and in terms of relationships.

If one is a person in her 50's, and has the "maturity" of a person in her 30's, that's not "ret*d" at all.

That's "young."

I am of that type---except maybe I have the social maturity of someone in his 20's. I've been called "socially ret*d" before. I don't believe in the concept.

That's right. There were no PCs back then. Computers were the size of a room.

i'm not bothered by it either, and i don't buy the idea that you're "supposed" to feel a certain way towards a specific word just because you are a member of one group or another.

if you're not offended by it, that's okay, and that's all there is to it. personally i've probably been called "ret*d" more times in the last month and a half, than the preceding three years put together.

as for "ret*d" becoming as taboo as the n-word, i don't think it's going to happen for the sole reason for the sole reason that intellectually disabled are a smaller group.

I think the N word is taboo because African Americans took the word & made it their own. The intellectually disabled would have to start calling themselves & their group members as ret*d in order for the word to become super taboo.

I was called ret*d alot as a kid but i had no clue what it meant at the time. The word was also sometimes abbreviated as Tardy & I was called Tardy Boy. I'm OK with others using the word as long as the people the word is being used on don't get very offended. I call myself ret*d sometimes because I am mentally slow compared to my peers.

A tardy boy is a boy who has showed up to class late.

He was Olgas b*tch in season 3 though....sadly

("Let gayfellow take you to the cleaners" , slogan painted on a blue van on Batman...hilarious when you consider Cesar was gay

Uh, Vincent Price was Egghead in the old Batman Series. Cesar Romero was the Joker. Besides, the Dynamic Duo of that era has some hints of homoerotic activity. How that got past Standards and Practices at ABC in the 1960’s is beyond me.

I was very seldom late for class so that's not it.

About the subject of how often other terms were used in older years, my parents and other older relatives of mine would used to say "colored" (or at least words similar to that) when referring to minorities. I don't think it was seen as offensive back then as it is today.

Also, being a German of German and Russian descent, the usage of words with racist and anti-Semitic connotations associated with it were common during WW1 and WW2 and even encouraged.