Stuff like "stupid, idiot, moron, dumb," you know the ones. If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.
Just saw a thread on here where a user was stubbornly refusing to adjust their language when another user politely pointed out that it was harmful to our comrades as well, and the person refusing was massively upvoted and the comrade trying to explain why it was harmful was downvoted. Thought we were better than that
I'm not calling anyone out, just wanted to make a post explaining my feelings on it and that when stuff like that happens (not the intelligence based insults, I know its hard to switch, but getting insulted for asking people to avoid them) it hurts and makes me feel less welcome here </3
Using words like “You’re being ignorant” or “That’s a cruel belief” is actually more effective than just going “lmao idiot”.
If those are the words you actually mean to convey I'd say use them instead :)
Edit: if the reception this post got isn't a good proof that this is something this community needs to grapple with, I don't know what is.
I was not talking about 'stupid' or 'moron' but about the type of argument you are using which is just terrible.
In addition, 'moron' was historically defined as IQ 50-70 and has some history with eugenics, so like, it is not that harmless.
I've agreed in another comment that, unlike most other similar terms, 'stupid' and 'moron' probably should remain acceptable.
But the way you're trying to argue it here is hopeless and not going to convince anyone.
How cliche are the points I made about the F word? Guess why? Because people actually believe that shit and it lets them rationalize it for years on end.
Defining slurs in terms of 'referring to groups' is dictionary incorrect and useless as an argument.
It’s not incorrect, it’s the only way of meaningfully distinguishing a slur from any old insult, which your dictionary definition fails to do. What to you is the distinction between a slur and an insult then?
Any term we use as insult must refer to a property and all properties define subsets. There is no descriptive word of any kind that would not refer to the group of people having that property.
See examples: 'blue eyed', 'hat wearing', 'lonely', 'impoverished', 'elated', these all refer to groups of people having that property.
I don't know how I would define the difference between slur and insult; but I would have to think about that, and is probably much like the definition of a 'game', I'll know it when I see it.
But more than anything, it is a category not worth rigidly defining. Who cares if it is a slur? What matters is the effect these words have on people.
And even if I managed to change your mind that 'stupid' is in fact a slur by definition, that is likely not enough for you to stop using that word anyway, at least it shouldn't be.
TERF is arguably a slur by your definition, it refers to a specific group of people, am I going to stop using it? fuck no.
Again, my argument here is that this whole line of thinking is unproductive.
People born with below average intelligence are inherently less powerful than people born with above average intelligence. Our society values intelligence highly and people with below average intelligence are often made to feel like shit about it while people with above average intelligence are praised for it, especially as children.
Insulting/attacking/tearing people down for being less powerful than other people, especially when there’s not much they can do about that lack of power, is anti-communist.
Insults like “dumb”, “stupid” and “idiot” are essentially saying “you are lesser because you were born with less power” so they’re gross and anti-communist and we shouldn’t use them.
I’m sorry but trying to conflate “stupid” with the f word or the n word or anything like that by specifically taking my argument, which is true about the word stupid, and saying that some other people might try to make that argument about those other words, for which it would not be true, is ridiculous and idiotic. It’s not logically sound to say that because an argument would be wrong about some completely other thing, that it’s also wrong about this. Like if I said that laws against murder are good because they are essential to upholding social order and you chimed in with “that’s a terrible argument because people said the same thing about Jim Crow laws” that would obviously be ridiculous since the thing I said is true, and the people making the “same argument” in defense of some terrible thing are the ones that are wrong, not me for saying it about something to which it actually applies.
It would be rhetorically a "terrible argument because people said the same thing about Jim Crow laws"...
I certainly would not even try defending laws against murder in terms of public order, there are plenty of other much better reasons.
(but that is entirely besides the point)
Perfectly logical when directed at the form of the argument, but that's... ugh this is getting too abstract and pedantic.
Which just proves my point, you're getting nowhere with this, neither of us have even slightly shifted our position.
These kinds of semantic arguments almost never work in practice.
You have to start from definitions that everyone can agree upon if you want to get anywhere.
Obviously the f-word is bad because it harms LGBT people, no sensible person could dispute that.
That is sufficient. There is no need for a further arguments about whether or not it is technically slur.
It would be wrong to use even if the word 'slur' had not been invented yet.
We can certainly agree that it is a slur. But it not a bad word to use only because it is a slur.
I don't know or care if 'stupid' is a slur, it doesn't matter. Even if 'moron' probably is a slur, I'm far too happy using that word, and I just have not seen sufficient evidence that it really hurts bystanders.
Focusing your argument on what defines a slur, that is what I was opposed to, because it goes nowhere.
The argument, which I only had to clarify because somebody was misrepresenting what another user was arguing, was originally made in response to somebody claiming that these words are in fact slurs, which is when you then jumped in with your logically fallacious “that argument is bad because other people say it about things that are slurs!”
Slurs are bad because the reproduce systems of oppression against marginalized groups of people, it’s a useful distinction and I don’t agree with you that it’s unimportant whether a word is a slur or not.
That's a much better definition, and a distinction worth making; although different from what you had mentioned previously.
And it just doesn't exclude words like 'moron', it just doesn't. It was specifically used in relation to eugenics; how could it get more "reproducing systems of oppression" than that?
That wasn't me (edit: or maybe it was, is ambiguous which comment you refer to); and I don't entirely agree about that, but ugh... I'm tired of this whole thread so...
You two play nice or something, cause I'm out.
I’m feeling the same way about this whole thread tbh I regret even reading and commenting in it lol
yeah well...