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Elon Musk keeps tweeting the 'R-word.' Disability advocates say he needs to stop.
(www.usatoday.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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You can both give someone armor to fend off blows, and also raise people to understand you shouldn't inflict those blows, both help. But calling someone "retarded" is not something a good person does.
Nobody is making the word bad. The word is intrinsically bad because it inflicts unfair and callous pain on others. A person's right to inflict that pain is debatable, but is also immaterial, because what we're saying here is that using those words without regard to the other person and causing that pain recklessly, makes one in some real sense a bad person. They can say the pain inflicted is "not their intention," but that's also immaterial if they are recklessly disregarding that pain. And accountability for being a bad person is just a natural result.
While I agree words can offend, I challenge your understanding of linguistics: no word is intrinsically bad. They're signs & symbols with arbitrary, often conventional meaning.
Usage & context matter. Take any euphemism & say it in a hateful manner: now it's offensive. Lifewise, take any offensive word & speak of it in an inoffensive manner: not offensive. Language is flexible.
I agree with your criticism of "intrinsic." "Intrinsically" as I thought of it means that there's been a consolidation step that builds in all of the cultural baggage into the "carried" meaning of the word. I think even if there's no absolute "intrinsic" meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word. But of course every word can change its meaning, no debate there.
I think it's a little academic to say "any offensive word" can be said in an "inoffensive manner" - yes, words in a theatrical play do not convey an offensive meaning against the audience; words said ironically as a criticism of the word and user of the word can be used satirically, but we'd then need to debate what it means to "use" a word in an offensive context versus another. (In any case, "inoffensive" use is not what Elon is doing. He's following adolescent edgelord troll rules, which is using it unironically while exulting in other people's offense, and playing the victim of woke culture when called on it.)
I'm not sure of a succinct way to say that, so I see why intrinsic may have felt right. Maybe firmly established meaning?
Technically correct best kind of correct? 😄
I point it out because some people get carried away with bizarrely simplistic claims that make the rest of their argument hard to follow. The best way to interpret their argument is unclear.
I think it could suffice to state it was used in a conventional sense as an insult or to stir animosity. Musk clearly is using it in the conventional, offensive sense to outrage progressive & elicit right-wing support of outraging progressives: classic demagogy.
Back to your contention, yes, he's using the firmly established meaning to offend & be bad, which bad people do. People criticize him to try to hold him accountable, which he is exploiting to advance his agenda.
While I can't see the comment you're responding to, I'm going to guess it concerns the question why do words offend & do we need to let them offend us that much? You wrote
This is the crux of the matter. Conventions change, words change meaning. It's not instant & uniform: various people influence & promote changes that not everyone agrees with, leading to contention. Some people do make words bad. This case had a campaign to do specifically that when the word was uncontroversial until then. People had to choose to make that word more offensive than it conventionally was, and not everyone was onboard with that with many still holding out.
To see that choice, consider the words idiot, imbecile, moron. These words had similar origins as technical designations for mental disabilities, they have similar meanings and serve the same role as insults that aren't that offensive. The current meaning & usage crowded out the historical one enough that it's effectively forgotten.
The word we're discussing could have taken the same course & was on track to do that until some well-meaning activists intervened. What good does changing a word objectively do for the subjects they're trying to support? If anything, it reinforces taboo. And it introduces a new, easy button to provoke moral outrage: if you don't agree this word in particular is very offensive (unlike before), then you hate people with mental disabilities. Seems like a disservice.
This moralizing conflict over words gives demagogues easy ammo to exploit. Was there a better way to support people that doesn't do that?
No armor required as no blows are being thrown my friend.
Not a physical attack. It's literally just a word.
I think you're being intentionally reductive, and you think that that reductionism is appropriate (i.e., only physical pain is valid pain). But I don't agree, and most people wouldn't in 2025. Psychological pain is pain, and you can likewise inflict it in a morally culpable way. You probably agree with that premise - you wouldn't defend someone being actively abusive, like a psychopathic partner - but we're just debating where the line is.
There's still a valid debate about the limits of freedom from mental pain in the public sphere and our corollary duties to each other - I get that, it's not "any pain is too much," nobody reasonable thinks that - but this is entirely foreseeable, preventable and to doggedly insist that you have a right to inflict it doesn't mean that it's right to inflict it.