The R Word

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Posted on March 31st, 2009.
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3 Comments

  1. Laurentius-rex:
    April 1st, 2009 at 11:47 am

    Well the R word is predominantly a US usage which has made the journey over here with popular culture to the detriment of common sense, however I am inclined to say, taking a leaf out of AFBH’s book, “whose word is it anyway”

    I have commented on this on doc’s blog, and to me special olympics are the last people who have a right to be preaching over this.

    I have in my time been called the verbatim equivalent of that word in the UK and even more inappropriately. “Mong” is still a popular hate word for anyone who has an intellectual difference and was indeed a popular epithet in my childhood, retarded at that time being a word that still existed solely within the realms of science and academia, having not yet escaped.

    Within the Uk various words have been reclaimed, such as Crip and Queer, indeed nutter and bonkers even, given that a psychiatric survivors pride festival is given the title of “bonkers fest” (qv) and I would have no difficulty celebrating that. Only today during a discussion on visibility a friend put me in the category of one of those people whose difference is very apparant and comes within the category of “crazy”

    Those who are not philologists seldom realise where a word comes from, idiot having at various times had specific meanings different from the general understanding on both sides of the Atlantic today, and who would believe that “Cretin” at one time a term relating to a specific physical impairment, originates as a cognate of the French “Chretien” … Christian.

    The problem is that it is never the word itself to blame, but the set of attitudes it embodies, which will exist separate of the word unless the ideology itself is challenged.

    Whatever is neutral now, may become pejorative later, I have a post graduate certificate in special education but “Sped” has become a term of abuse for anyone who “rides the short bus” how do we combat this?

  2. Trish:
    April 1st, 2009 at 7:43 pm

    This is a good video – I hadn’t seen it before. Thanks for sharing it.

  3. VAB:
    April 1st, 2009 at 9:41 pm

    I think LR’s comments make an awful lot of sense. For example, doctors now say “developmentally delayed” instead of “retarded”, and I am pretty sure that, at some time down the road, people will be saying things like, “the phone company is so delayed.”

    I haven’t read AFBH’s post on the subject yet, but it is certainly true the respective civil rights movements have got more out of owning words like gay and black that by asking people to stop saying them.