Do Certain Derogatory Words Bother You

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First off, I hope this is the right place to post this. If not, can someone tell me where a better place would be. Thank you!

Ok, so my question is do derogatory names like "autistic" (as in using it in a rude way like someone says to some, "That's so autistic") or "ret*d" bother you. It really bothers me personally. Sometimes I talk to people about it and try to correct them. Some make efforts to change the behavior and understand why it bothers me, while other people just keep doing it and see no issue with it. "ret*d" really bothers me because when I was twelve, my thirteen year old step brother passed away. He had a rare disease called INAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantile ... _dystrophy) and it's a developmental disorder which I guess in this case is kind of like an intellectual disability, so the word "ret*d" bothers me for that reason, more so than just because I have Asperger's, although it still bothers me because I kind of feel it is just rude to people with special needs in general. I feel like it is like calling a black person the n-word. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts and opinions.

i've been called many variants of that word. the callers IMHO were not paragons of brainpower.

A lot of the time when I hear the word or variants of it, I just think to myself, they must be one if they are the ones using such a word.

^^^btw, welcome to WP

That word also bothers me. I used to get called that all the time, in elementary school. There was one time when I was in my 20s and I was waiting for my dog to finish doing his business before calling him in for the night. There was a guy having a house party and he spotted me from where his back yard was. He said, "The ret*d is looking out her window. I yelled out to those people, "Your souls are ret*d!" There was a dead silence. One of the guests asked him why everyone was so quiet. Another guest told the person, "He called that Mod over there a ret*d."

CockneyRebel, that sounds awful. I'm sorry that happened to you.

I am pretty good at passing, so the types of problematic conversations that I frequently encounter are where an NT says something to me about how some rude guy at work / the gym / the street "must have Aspergers or something." Because I don't like to tell most people I know that I am on the spectrum (only people I know well and trust deeply), my hands are a little tied.

What I want to say in these cases is:
"Yes, because your ability to judge who around you has an autism spectrum disorder is really impeccable."

But what I have to say if I don't want to volunteer this information to someone who looks down on people on the spectrum is:
"You know, not everyone who is a jerk has Aspergers. Most people I know with an autism spectrum disorder aren't jerks at all."

The word autistic doesn't bother me because...well, that's what I consider myself. Other words, or any word used as a put down? Sure that would bother me, but I've learned not to give words or the people who use them like that too much power over me. They aren't friends, thus their opinions don't really matter as much to me.

As the r-word is now considered far too derogatory to be used nowadays by teens my age, some have decided to find a substitute. They were probably like, "Hey! We need to find a substitute for r—ed! Let's use autistic!"

There are so many things wrong with using autistic as a derogatory term. For example, it's NOT a derogatory term, so any type of "insult" or argument one would make with it would be ineffective and lame. In addition, when a person calls an autistic person autistic, it would have no harmful effect as the person who said it probably doesn't know that the other person is autistic.

Spot on - language scientists call this the "euphemism treadmill". Slang words get overused sometimes, so that they lose their punch or get people into trouble, and young people often like to have their own slang to set themselves apart from their parents' generation; so people find new ones. The word "ret*d" was once only a formal medical term, just like "autistic"; but it got picked up as a slang insult, and spread so widely that the "official" meaning got lost. And before doctors started to use "ret*d", they used words like "idiot" and "moron" as technical terms - "ret*d" was introduced partly because those words had become such common insults.

Words shift in meaning like this all the time, but with slang and insults, it tends to happen much faster. In a sense, there is no such things as a "derogatory word", only derogatory ways of using them; and sometimes there is a general agreement that using a certain word at all is derogatory.

We can't ban "autistic" as a word to stop it being used in an insulting way, because then we'd lose the proper use too. But if the nasty use became common enough, we might decide that finding a new name for autism was the only thing left to do. The only lasting solution would be a world where people don't throw insults at each other - we can encourage this by promoting respect and tolerance for diversity. But so long as there are vindictive people in the world, there's not much that can be done to stop the meaning of words getting shifted like this.

"ret*d" bothers me because it was ubiquitous when I was growing up and I had a cousin who was one of my favorite people on the planet who was severely mentally disabled and I didn't like when people would refer to him that way. I hate the term, actually and will always refer to it in quotations.

I don't like the word Aspergers, but that's mainly because I can only think of: Ass Burgers and it sounds stupid to me that way.

The problems with finding new words for legitimate words that have become weaponized are
1. The next words are usually boring and less descriptive ie manic-depression to bi-polar
2. The bullies win again
3. The new words will inevitably become pejoratives and will have to be abandoned and the euphemism treadmill will keep on keepin’on.

At some point the euphemism treadmill needs to be euphemistically smashed to pieces. But I don’t hold much hope for that anytime soon, the trend is the opposite and accelerating.

How long before before before the word autistic is abondoned to the bullies?

Thank you. I've been wanting to do it for a few years now, but something about it kind of made me nervous, but about a few weeks ago I made an account and starting posting replies, and this is my first original post/thread. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Yeah exactly. It's like shut up. I just wanna tell people they are the stupid ones for using a word that's so derogatory, and they wouldn't have the balls to walk up to someone with a disability and call them ret*d, because they don't have the balls

True.

That is what I was talking to the first poster about. Really they are the ones who are stupid because they don't have the ability to like you know separate those who do and don't have the disorder in question.

Sadly I hear both way too much. And I am a senior in high school so yeah it's mostly the teens using it
(sadly I hear too many adults use these words too many times themselves, especially "ret*d"). I'd expect more from an adult, but what can you do?