Or homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. Then they get banned and complain about being censored.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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I still have such dissonance about this. I want to say "Look at this idiot" and point out something unintelligent that an objectively evil person does. But because intelligence is an inherited trait, we can only use negative language when referring to a person for evil that they do by choice? Or something? So, evil people bumbling can only be mocked for the evil intent and not for their inability to be evil with skill and intelligence?
I dunno. Trump is a numpty and if that offends the numps or whatever group that term was originally a slur for then I apologize.
edit: to be clear, the r word seems objectively shitty to use and I don't. I just have yet to find an objective litmus test for where the line is between that and "silly" cuz I swear there's always someone there to explain the etymology of "silly" and how it's origins were shitty in some way
Intelligence is an inherited trait?
But because intelligence is an inherited trait
I don't think this is true, practically speaking. Intelligence is like endurance running speed in that there are heritable components to it, but at the end of the day environmental factors dominate on who is or isn't faster than another.
I can make fun of someone for being dumb in the same way that I can make fun of someone for being a slow runner. It's only problematic when their slowness is actually caused by something out of their control, like some kind of health issue.
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The ableism is coming from inside the house - it's not a bad thing to be intellectually disabled. The problem with Trump is not that he's stupid, it's that he's a selfish, careless, thoughtless, cruel, ignorant asshole.
Using words like "stupid" as an insult implies that all people lacking in intellect or wisdom are also bad people.
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Maybe an unpopular opinion:
It would be nice if the r word was not a medical condition and just a word, the word has a good sound to it in my language. I would trade easily the r word for dumb or something like that. Dumb in Portuguese is awful
No i feel you. Honestly we do need a woke slur that isn't homophobic, racist, sexist, ableist, etc.
Piece of shit. Simple and to the point. Shit's pretty gross and it's universal human instinct to avoid it. Maybe even shithead if you want a single word.
Asshole. Gender neutral and not tied to ethnicity since we all have one. Maybe even going further and calling someone an asshole related condition like prolapsed rectum or hemorrhoid, things that can happen to anyone, are pretty painful and definitely to be avoided, but AFAIK were never conditions that were heavily marginalized or shamed.
Clown or fool. Clowns/fools are types of characters people played historically (and still do?), IMO it doesn't imply anything about a person's actual intelligence or mental state, only their actions. You're not born a clown or fool, but you can definitely act like one. Also lends itself to a snarky 🤡 emoji I've seen some people here use instead of typing out an insult.
Though there could be additional context or history to any of these terms I'm not aware of that push them into one of the -ist categories, IDK I'm not a linguist.
Sycophant, rogue, reactionary, deeply userious, ghoul, vampire, all seem to be pretty good.
Ghoul is the only really good one in the list. Its a generic feind thats in no way cool.
Rogues and vampires are cool.
Sycophant is good when someone's being a sycophant. But you can be independently ghoulish.
I'd argue it depends on how you use it. Calling Bezos a blood-sucking vampire of a man that lives more the more he feasts on others is pretty insulting, I'd say.
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Many of the bad words have that nice ring in my language, if only they weren't offensive... I would totally trade 'em
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was not a medical condition and just a word
It is just a word. It means to delay or the opposite of "advance" and is still used like that in industries like aviation and terms like fire removedant.
But when you use it to call someone stupid, that's when you're using it in the context of ablism and as a slur.
Similar to the term for a female dog, which is still used in veterinary medicine and research to mean an actual dog that is female. Though like the R word, the context as a slur is gradually discouraging its use even as its original meaning because people don't want to risk having it misunderstood.
Lemmy has a weird issue with being super restrictive of ableist language, beyond reasonable, in some spaces and completely ambivalent in others.
I had someone say I was as useless as accessibility kitchen items, which mostly just means I'm extremely useful to specific people and viewed as a joke by intolerant people who don't care about others...
Weirdly good compliment. Really telling in the idiot using it.
Lemmy in general is divided into 3 major subsections: liberals, Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists. The Marxist-Leninists and anarchists tend to be far stricter about ableism than the liberals.
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I don't really understand this meme. If I wanna insult someone, obviously I'm gonna use insulting language. At least that's the easiest of a thousands possible ways to insult someone. What's your point?
My point is that it's not necessary to use language that puts down entire groups of people in order to offend someone. The phrase, "bigoted piece of shit," is obviously 'insulting language,' but it is categorically different from calling someone a slur.
I see people going around saying that the only way they can possibly offend people with their insults is by calling them slurs. That's nonsense. And it's very ironic that these same people get really, really mad at me when I call them something like "bigoted piece of shit," which just proves my point - if it were actually true that slurs are necessary to get that 'sting,' then they wouldn't get so upset when I call them out for being the bigoted pieces of shit they are.
Saying that you need slurs in order to insult people is basically an invitation for people to lay into you as harshly as they like, short of using slurs. And I am more than happy to accept that invitation by calling such people what they are.
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