Words
The word ‘derp’…where did it come from? I looked and the Internet told me (thank you Internet) that it came from South Park, but as far as I can tell it’s considered a very ableist word? I don’t use it, I don’t like it, but I did wonder where it originated.
The word ‘dumb’…When I was little, my mum told me not to use that word as an insult, but being little I ignored her, and I didn’t realise til I was an adult that it was offensive. I’ve stopped using it now, but do other people see it as offensive? Because I’ve seen people who are otherwise anti-discrimination use it, and although I’ve never seen anyone defend their use of it exactly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone just figured it was too late to stop it being used offensively, like when ‘spastic’ was stolen as a word and The Spastics Society had to change its name. (See here.)
The word ‘retard’…I’m going to point you to The R Word.
January 21, 2012 @ 10:30 pm
Derp is an ableist word? My roommate and I are both quite fond of it, especially because we thought it avoided those sorts of connotations.
January 22, 2012 @ 11:52 pm
I’ve heard it was? I’m still not entirely sure…
January 22, 2012 @ 6:38 pm
My understanding was the “derp” was the transliteration of a sound effect, much as Homer Simpson’s “d’oh!” became used … sort of a short-hand to say “I’ve been an idiot.” That’s certainly how I use it. I was raised to understand that the word “dumb” was originally a term meaning “unable to speak” but that it had gradually evolved to add the meaning “someone who has done something stupid.” I use it occasionally in that fashion. I believe that the language needs forceful, poetic, quirkily descriptive or picturesque terms and words with which we can declare our belief that someone has done something stupid, or acted in a stupid manner. “Dumb” is no longer used, so far as I know, in medical terminology or in the general population, to describe someone who is, for whatever reason unable to speak. It hasn’t been used in that fashion – again, so far as I know – for a number of decades. While I don’t tend to use it much because it doesn’t usually fit my bill for heaping opprobrium on stupid actions, I also don’t believe I have seen any backlash against its use in that fashion. I have faced the situation where people I know, who have children with cognitive impairments and challenges, have said they don’t like the word “retarded.” While I initially felt I wanted to balk at seeing another word made off-limits, a little thought on my part made me see that the word has, for too long, been used as a term of contempt for human beings who live with cognitive impairment and challenges, and can be hurtful to them and those who love them, perhaps in a way it wasn’t 25-35 years ago (when a parent could say “my child is mentally retarded” and be using the then-medically used phrase in a neutral fashion.) Because of that, I have stopped using it, even in the extremely occasional manner I might have done. Although, come to think of it, I rarely used it to begin with. I’ve stopped using “spaz”, which was once a mainstay of my teenage and 20’s youth to describe myself or others who were incapable of being graceful, either physically or socially. Although it doesn’t have the negative freight in North America that it apparently has in Britain and the rest of Europe, the arguments against its use, and the knowledge that it did bear that freight elsewhere in the world, convinced me to give it up. I still balk at removing the terms idiot and moron from my verbal bag of insults – largely because their social connection with their original history as words used to describe varying degrees of cognitive impairment has been cut nearly completely. The medical community started abandoning the discredited terms of measurement back when I was in elementary school, more than 45 years ago. Even then, the words were being used so broadly to describe someone without cognitive impairment challenges who has said or done something stupid, that the medical connection was fuzzy. Today, the term “idiot” is, so far as I know, totally divorced from its original meaning. Although I like it, I try not to use the term “moron,” which I once used in an effort to avoid obscenities (i.e. using it to describe the person who just cut me off in traffic, or who turned right from the left hand lane in front of me, or the politician who said the fall of civilization was being caused by Evil Feminists and Homosexual Socialists.) tl;dr – Ultimately, I try to consider the feelings of people who don’t like certain terms, despite balking privately upon occasion when certain words are presented as being off-limits. It may irk me, but it doesn’t hurt me, to limit or abandon certain words, and if it allows me to keep from hurting others, then I should, and generally do, swallow my irk, so to speak.) These days I am trying to use the terms “lackwit” or “fuckwit” (depending on my degree of rage) when I want to describe someone doing something I find reprehensibly ignorant or stupid. I figure these largely archaic terms can be used to vent without hurting people.
January 22, 2012 @ 11:56 pm
I was raised to understand that the word “dumb” was originally a term meaning “unable to speak” but that it had gradually evolved to add the meaning “someone who has done something stupid.” I use it occasionally in that fashion. I guess I wonder how it evolved that way. Someone somewhere way back in the past must have thought that inability to speak made you stupid…(although of course, the ability to speak doesn’t make you intelligent. Gotta quote Star Wars!) I never ever use the word ‘spaz’ but that’s because of a boring and stupid incident years ago which managed to Make Me Into The Person I Am Today.
January 23, 2012 @ 5:05 am
Someone somewhere way back in the past must have thought that inability to speak made you stupid… I think you’ve got it in one. But the use of “dumb” to mean “unable to speak” is now unusual enough (at least in my experience) that I think the general public wouldn’t automatically connect the two concepts.