Elon Musk keeps tweeting the 'R-word.' Disability advocates say he needs to stop.

They edited their post to be completely different from when I replied.

No, I did not. I added a second paragraph to address your obvious misinterpretation.

The first paragraph is what you replied to, and remains intact. You could have tried to understand it on its own, but instead you chose to look for an excuse to chide a stranger. That was unkind, unwarranted, and unnecessary.

The question asked by throwback3090@lemmy.nz stands.

The edit to my comment merely added the second paragraph, which explicitly spells out what should have been obvious to anyone with basic reading comprehension skills, or failing those, at least a modicum of simple human kindness.

or it can be exactly the same as “moron”.

Because people keep using medical terms as insults necessitating the need for new medical terms without the connotation of insults...

So instead of just constantly making new medical terms so people can try a new insult, why not just fucking stop?

How is that difficult to understand?

It's not "fear" it's not "censorship" it's not any of the things you're whining about

It's about stopping the process of turning medical terms into insults.

You have enough insults already, if you feel like you need more how about you make one up I stead of just using actual medical terms?

Why is thnkng so difficult for the people who insist on disparaging that population?

Can you even tell me the definition of a fascist? Because I can guarantee you by any way you slice it I do not fit that bill even a tiny amount lol.

Unless of course we are using the made up version of the word where it means "anyone that I don't like" which is how some of y'all seem to use it.

I never said it was wrong for people to take offense to the word inherently. My point is that it's a choice to get offended by a word. Some people don't like other random words and they freak out about it. I knew a guy in highschool that hated the word "moist" and because he had such an entertaining reaction to it everyone on the class made sure use it as much as possible. Eventually he stopped being bothered by the word entirely. The meaning hadnt changed. He just chose to stop being bothered by it.

Stop letting other peoples words have so much power over your.

No I do not tell depressed people to smile more. I lived with a buddy who is handicapped in a way nobody can see. Called him a useless cripple all the time and not only did he laugh but so did all the other people who knew about his condition because they all have a sense of humor.

Yeah I don't care for that. If you have a word and it's been used for something for a long time I do not see the need to change it if it suddenly starts offending people later.

Like working on cars. Lots of parts on cars use terms that some people are now taking offense too. Master/slave to refer to parts that work in a chain of command. Or male and female fittings to describe a connection that protrudes and a connection that has a hole in it.

I'm not going to change my vocabulary because suddenly after hundreds of years people are deciding they don't like the words anymore. They make sense in that application to describe the function of the parts and there is no need to change it. Nobody is being called a master or slave. Nobody is being called a male or female. These are car parts that got named the way they did because it made the most sense.

I'm not gonna get upset with people using the term "fat" to describe anything wide or large just because I'm overweight. That was be stupid.

I consider 4 people my "parents" as in they all helped raise me to varying degrees. My bio mom and dad obviously. My dad's second wife and now his third wife both helped ar different points of my life.

My mom is about to re-marry finally but I'm a little old to be parented by her new man so he's sorta just a guy who makes my mom happy as opposed to yet another parent.

I think even if there’s no absolute “intrinsic” meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word.

I'm not sure of a succinct way to say that, so I see why intrinsic may have felt right. Maybe firmly established meaning?

I think it’s a little academic to say “any offensive word” can be said in an “inoffensive manner”

Technically correct best kind of correct? 😄

I point it out because some people get carried away with bizarrely simplistic claims that make the rest of their argument hard to follow. The best way to interpret their argument is unclear.

we’d then need to debate what it means to “use” a word in an offensive context versus another

I think it could suffice to state it was used in a conventional sense as an insult or to stir animosity. Musk clearly is using it in the conventional, offensive sense to outrage progressive & elicit right-wing support of outraging progressives: classic demagogy.

Back to your contention, yes, he's using the firmly established meaning to offend & be bad, which bad people do. People criticize him to try to hold him accountable, which he is exploiting to advance his agenda.

While I can't see the comment you're responding to, I'm going to guess it concerns the question why do words offend & do we need to let them offend us that much? You wrote

Nobody is making the word bad.

This is the crux of the matter. Conventions change, words change meaning. It's not instant & uniform: various people influence & promote changes that not everyone agrees with, leading to contention. Some people do make words bad. This case had a campaign to do specifically that when the word was uncontroversial until then. People had to choose to make that word more offensive than it conventionally was, and not everyone was onboard with that with many still holding out.

To see that choice, consider the words idiot, imbecile, moron. These words had similar origins as technical designations for mental disabilities, they have similar meanings and serve the same role as insults that aren't that offensive. The current meaning & usage crowded out the historical one enough that it's effectively forgotten.

The word we're discussing could have taken the same course & was on track to do that until some well-meaning activists intervened. What good does changing a word objectively do for the subjects they're trying to support? If anything, it reinforces taboo. And it introduces a new, easy button to provoke moral outrage: if you don't agree this word in particular is very offensive (unlike before), then you hate people with mental disabilities. Seems like a disservice.

This moralizing conflict over words gives demagogues easy ammo to exploit. Was there a better way to support people that doesn't do that?