I can understand people who are dealing with mental illness and/or mental retardation in their own family/friend/life situations wanting to remove words from the public usage of insult.... it doesn't mean I am PC, or that I don't frequently over-use those terms..
I don't believe I stated otherwise? Did I? No, my point was that the context the word is being used is important. Often an un-careful reader will misinterpret context, or all they will see is the word itself and not the context at all.
The internet unfortunately has a lot of people on it who have poor reading comprehension skills. They read too fast, or just skip over sentences...sort of like:
Buffy appears to be acting bi-polar in this instance, by that I mean her emotions are at polar opposites or different extremes.
A person skimming or with poor reading comprehension skills sees:
Buffy .....acting BIPOLAR.
And they are offended. But they did NOT comprehend the sentence.
Its not the same as someone saying...Buffy appears to be acting like a complete dork. Or Buffy is totally bipolar, that's the only thing that would explain her nasty behavior towards Spike. (Which is offensive, because that attributes the term to "mean" behavior and insults people with the disorder.)
Context is EVERYTHING. Another better example?
My writing style changes constantly, it is noir one minute, and literary the next. Yes, I'm a bit "schizophrenic". (The writer of the sentence is using the term to describe contradictory behavior which is a meaning of the term schizophrenic - see the dictionary entries above. Why would you be offended by that?) If however she said, Charlie is so schizophrenic...he beats his wife one day then embraces her the next - then yes, in that context it may well be a bit insulting. Yet still using that meaning. Another better example of how schizophrenic is used in insulting way? You are schizophrenic, I can't trust you at all.
It depends on how it is used. Removing the word or banning it - is silly. That's a bit like throwing the baby out with the proverbial bath water - and it is extreme behavior. (sigh, People are such extremists...drives me nuts. And yes, nuts is considered offensive by some - but we should be allowed to say we feel crazy, without insulting someone who is mentally ill. ) Besides how many words are we going to ban? Rape? Rape apologist? Rape sympathizer? Misogynist? Racist? Fuck? Shit? Suck? Dick? I can go on...you begin to see the slippery slope that banning or removing a word from the lexicon or a site or discourse represents? You are infringing on someone else's right to communicate their views - to what degree can you infringe, without shutting them up and making it so they can't explain?
The problem with life is you will always offend someone. It's impossible not to. People are wonky about things. What upsets one person, won't upset another.
I have a lot of friends and family members who are bi-polar or the term I prefer is manic-depressive. More precise. I'm dyslexic, people use that term in insulting ways all the time - I shrug it off. It's a word. Banning it would lead down a slope that I don't want to go down.
no subject
I don't believe I stated otherwise? Did I? No, my point was that the context the word is being used is important. Often an un-careful reader will misinterpret context, or all they will see is the word itself and not the context at all.
The internet unfortunately has a lot of people on it who have poor reading comprehension skills. They read too fast, or just skip over sentences...sort of like:
Buffy appears to be acting bi-polar in this instance, by that I mean her emotions are at polar opposites or different extremes.
A person skimming or with poor reading comprehension skills sees:
Buffy .....acting BIPOLAR.
And they are offended. But they did NOT comprehend the sentence.
Its not the same as someone saying...Buffy appears to be acting like a complete dork. Or Buffy is totally bipolar, that's the only thing that would explain her nasty behavior towards Spike. (Which is offensive, because that attributes the term to "mean" behavior and insults people with the disorder.)
Context is EVERYTHING. Another better example?
My writing style changes constantly, it is noir one minute, and literary the next. Yes, I'm a bit "schizophrenic". (The writer of the sentence is using the term to describe contradictory behavior which is a meaning of the term schizophrenic - see the dictionary entries above. Why would you be offended by that?) If however she said, Charlie is so schizophrenic...he beats his wife one day then embraces her the next - then yes, in that context it may well be a bit insulting. Yet still using that meaning. Another better example of how schizophrenic is used in insulting way? You are schizophrenic, I can't trust you at all.
It depends on how it is used. Removing the word or banning it - is silly. That's a bit like throwing the baby out with the proverbial bath water - and it is extreme behavior. (sigh, People are such extremists...drives me nuts. And yes, nuts is considered offensive by some - but we should be allowed to say we feel crazy, without insulting someone who is mentally ill. ) Besides how many words are we going to ban? Rape? Rape apologist? Rape sympathizer? Misogynist?
Racist? Fuck? Shit? Suck? Dick? I can go on...you begin to see the slippery slope that banning or removing a word from the lexicon or a site or discourse represents? You are infringing on someone else's right to communicate their views - to what degree can you infringe, without shutting them up and making it so they can't explain?
The problem with life is you will always offend someone. It's impossible not to. People are wonky about things. What upsets one person, won't upset another.
I have a lot of friends and family members who are bi-polar or the term I prefer is manic-depressive. More precise. I'm dyslexic, people use that term in insulting ways all the time - I shrug it off. It's a word. Banning it would lead down a slope that I don't want to go down.