I was having a conversation with someone recently and was told I was being rude and insensitive. My lingual crime? I referred to something as "retarded" in the conversation. In fact, when I was confronted, the phrase the young woman said to me was "
You shouldn't use the R word", in a condescending tone. What the everloving heck? The "
R word"? Geeezzz ... I didn't even call a person retarded; I was implying that a specific process was illogical and not founded in facts. But nonetheless, I was chastised. I said "
Well, how can I refer to this so that it doesn't offend you?" (in a half-serious, half-patronizing manner). I was then told by the (self-righteous) person that I should have chosen a different word; something like "
idiotic or mornonic".
HA! Obviously this person doesn't understand the basic history of terms like moron, idiot, imbecil, etc. These are all ranking terms used clinically in categorizing people with low IQ. Hence, "retarded" would be a general classification, whereas "idiot" would be a specific sub-classification. (Kind of like red is a color, but not all colors are red; red being a subclass of the color spectrum). I took the opportunity to point this out to her; she even looked up the origin of the words on her phone, and then began a side-step excuse about "
Words can be violent ..."
Blah Blah Blah ... She was caught in her own hypocrisy, and I enjoyed every second of it. Still, she actually doubled down and said "retarded" is offensive but referring to something as stupid, idiotic or moronic is not. So, it's a bad thing to classify someone, but not a bad thing to subclassify someone?
These terms refer to clinical division of developmental capability:
Idiots: IQ between 0-25
Imbeciles: IQ between 26-50
Moron: IQ between 51-70
Note: "stupid" has an origin of being in a stupor; not necessarily a mental defect condition as much as a physical effect such as a result of being intoxicated, or enduring a blow to the head and becoming dazed, etc, and unless permanent damage is done, one can recover from a stupor.
The selective anger to some things by some folks just befuddles me to no end. It's as if they want to be combative and disagreeable merely to make themselves seem unique and holier-than-thou. Often these kinds of folks exude hypocrisy; typically from their own ignorance of the facts and true nature of topics, words, etc.
So, in summary, it's OK for me to call something "moronic" or "idiotic", but not "the R word".
IMO, the whole topic is retarded ...
