Being a moron, by the clinical definition, is a negative trait. It means you have a very low level of intelligence. I am equating your intelligence to being very low, specifically within the range that would be considered a “moron”. It’s asinine to claim that it’s not a negative quality. Although some people exist that fall within that terminology, that doesn’t make it a non-negative quality, and comparisons to that quality are not immediately an insult toward the groups that possess them.
If you call something stupid, are you insulting stupid people? How about when you say something is dumb?
If someone asks you to repeat yourself 5 times and you say “What are you, deaf?”, are you insulting deaf people?
If a referee at a sports game makes a terrible call and you say “Is the ref blind?!”, are you insulting blind people?
Or maybe these comparisons are simply because we, as a society, recognize these traits as being detrimental. So when someone acts in a manner that calls into question their faculties, we make the comparison that perhaps they possess one of these detrimental qualities. So when you act like a moron, and people call you a moron, it’s not an insult to morons everywhere. It’s just an insult to you.
Compare that to things like racial slurs. Those are different because by using them as an insult, you are insinuating that race itself is a negative trait.
Yes, those things are insulting to the people who belong to that group. There’s an entire style of joke where the setup and punchline is “what are you, ____?” And when the person responds yes, the original speaker is chagrined. Almost like inferring that someone is lesser because they have different capabilities is a shitty thing to do. Who’d’ve guessed?
But really the only difference between these and slurs is impact. Those groups that are impacted are the ones who decide if they’re slurs.
Well… not really. It’s the zeitgeist that really decides the difference between the two. Some group gets a little too shitty with using a word as an insult and it can expand into a cultural slur. I mean, that’s how the Euphemism Treadmill operates. Some word is determined to be naughty by the zeitgeist, so the group that was using the naughty word switches to another word, implying it has the same meaning, which just adds another word to the naughty list. Sometimes words that were naughty stop being naughty because people stopped being shitty with them. It’s the way of living languages, railing against it just makes you seem childish at best.
And I didn’t say shit about “moron”. Keep up, please.
Being a moron, by the clinical definition, is a negative trait. It means you have a very low level of intelligence. I am equating your intelligence to being very low, specifically within the range that would be considered a “moron”. It’s asinine to claim that it’s not a negative quality. Although some people exist that fall within that terminology, that doesn’t make it a non-negative quality, and comparisons to that quality are not immediately an insult toward the groups that possess them.
If you call something stupid, are you insulting stupid people? How about when you say something is dumb?
If someone asks you to repeat yourself 5 times and you say “What are you, deaf?”, are you insulting deaf people?
If a referee at a sports game makes a terrible call and you say “Is the ref blind?!”, are you insulting blind people?
Or maybe these comparisons are simply because we, as a society, recognize these traits as being detrimental. So when someone acts in a manner that calls into question their faculties, we make the comparison that perhaps they possess one of these detrimental qualities. So when you act like a moron, and people call you a moron, it’s not an insult to morons everywhere. It’s just an insult to you.
Compare that to things like racial slurs. Those are different because by using them as an insult, you are insinuating that race itself is a negative trait.
Yes, those things are insulting to the people who belong to that group. There’s an entire style of joke where the setup and punchline is “what are you, ____?” And when the person responds yes, the original speaker is chagrined. Almost like inferring that someone is lesser because they have different capabilities is a shitty thing to do. Who’d’ve guessed?
But really the only difference between these and slurs is impact. Those groups that are impacted are the ones who decide if they’re slurs.
Well… not really. It’s the zeitgeist that really decides the difference between the two. Some group gets a little too shitty with using a word as an insult and it can expand into a cultural slur. I mean, that’s how the Euphemism Treadmill operates. Some word is determined to be naughty by the zeitgeist, so the group that was using the naughty word switches to another word, implying it has the same meaning, which just adds another word to the naughty list. Sometimes words that were naughty stop being naughty because people stopped being shitty with them. It’s the way of living languages, railing against it just makes you seem childish at best.
And I didn’t say shit about “moron”. Keep up, please.