[Grustaf]

And I am saying that in most of these cases it is not that the terms "have become offensive", it's that academics and activists invent and promote, sometimes enforce, new terms, proactively so to speak.

> using gender neutral terms when possible is nice

That's your opinion, and it tends to very strongly correlate with left-wing politics, it's not a consensus opinion.

[mlyle]

> it's not a consensus opinion.

It's been favored in pretty much every style guide for decades at this point. I am presently in the middle of the political spectrum, but I've spent the majority of my life pretty right-leaning. At the same time, I see no reason to choose words that might imply to a lot of people that I'm only talking about men, or to choose other words that might cause people offense.

It's funny how we can so clearly see this in so many domains -- referring to an unintelligent person as a "moron" would pretty clearly be not nice -- but are willing to defend doing it to other disfavored groups so strongly.

[zahlman]

>referring to an unintelligent person as a "moron" would pretty clearly be not nice

- but neither would it be an attempt to demean everyone who suffers from a learning disability. It would, instead, be an affirmation that low intelligence is an undesirable quality. And anyway, in practice, overwhelmingly such language is aimed at people of ordinary or even above average intelligence, with the intent of suggesting that the target is not meeting expectations.

[mlyle]

> but neither would it be an attempt to demean everyone who suffers from a learning disability

No, but it might have that net effect, to whomever is in earshot.

> And anyway, in practice, overwhelmingly such language is aimed at people of ordinary or even above average intelligence

If you don't think the kid who is struggling in school is being called a "retard," I don't know what to tell you.

Another example-- the word "boy." There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the word "boy," but it was used by a lot of people to demean black men. I certainly wouldn't want to say it to a person who would think I'm doing the same thing to that point. And at that point, maybe it's time to prune the word "boy" as a word of address out of my language, and discourage my kids from the "booooiiiiii" that would be interpreted very poorly in the wrong situation.

[zahlman]

>If you don't think the kid who is struggling in school is being called a "retard," I don't know what to tell you.

You could start by giving me a reason to believe it.

[mlyle]

https://meridian.allenpress.com/idd/article-abstract/48/2/12...

36% of youth in 2009 reported having heard the word "retard" directed towards someone with an intellectual disability.

My wife's brother had a birth injury and endured it pretty constantly throughout his school years.

[Grustaf]

That is of course awful in every way, but I really wonder, isn't the real problem that there are bad people? I think we can agree that people who are heartless enough to bully a vulnerable person like that, they will not stop just because a new euphemism is promoted. So how does it actually help? I can understand that if you are being called a slur, you want that slur to go away, but if it's going to be replaced by another slur, what is actually achieved?

[hollerith]

When I was in 6th grade, almost everybody got called a retard.