The increasing use of 'Autistic' as an insult

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I thought Mongoloid was a term for people from Mongolia. I just looked up both those words on google & I'm rite. I wonder why/how Mongoloid became a term for Down's Syndrome



I like how you think. I think words like ret*d have become slang words & do not have people with diagnosed things like Down Syndrome in mind. The meaning of ret*d has changed & some could apply it to Down Syndrome but it no longer means a person with Down Syndrome. In fact I also think a lot of the people who use the word ret*d would not apply it to someone who they knew had Down Syndrome. I call myself ret*d sometimes but I am NOT thinking or comparing myself to someone with Down Syndrome when I do it. I just looked the word up on google & it says
adjective: ret*d

dated•offensive
less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age.
"the child is badly ret*d"
informal•offensive
very foolish or stupid.
"in retrospect, it was a totally ret*d idea"

& I am using it to mean I'm not grasping things my peers are. I'm NOT saying people with Down Syndrome don't grasp things & I'm being like them, I just mean I personally do not grasp things & I do NOT have Down Syndrome in mind or am comparing myself to people who do in any way. I actually did not know till recently that the word ret*d used to be a diagnostic label for people with Down Syndrome. How could I know that I'm being offensive to people with Down Syndrome when I had no clue that the disorder had anything to do with them other than that they may both have problems grasping things but I was NOT thinking about them when I used it.

I do not have a clue why the word Autistic means Troll now & think the only thing we can really do as a community about this is to push to change the word Autistic to a different word. Everyone will get a new diagnostic term to use & the word Autistic will be used only as a slang term.

Kayla Harper is the wife of star baseball player Bryce Harper. Bryce Harper played a number of years for the Washington D.C. team The Nationals or "Nats". He left Washington and signed with the Philadelphia team that is why Washington fans are mad at him.
Kayla Harper, Bryce’s Wife, Reveals Some Nationals Fans Wished Their Son Was Born With Autism

I can see the absurdity of some of my own behaviors, I don't mind autistic being used as an insult. It can be funny sometimes.
If someone else takes offense I wouldn't use it but I would probably say to an aspie 'what you did was really autistic' as a friendly joke

This seems to be the trend. And yes my first instinct was to feel hurt by it, but I find it helps to 'own' one's shortcomings. By 'autistic', are they implying I have social difficulties, odd behavioral patterns, and general clumsiness? Guilty as charged.

Arguments like this leave me confused. It makes sense, don't get me wrong. But, when one person says that slurs and discriminatory language shouldn't be used, and another says that we should just ignore it and move on, it leaves me struggling to understand which is the "better" or "right" answer.

^ I hear you, and it's a matter of opinion, something you have to decide for yourself. I've been on gaming forums where the overwhelming majority think it's an okay insult to throw at people. And when you're grossly outnumbered, sometimes the choice comes down to martyring yourself as the unpopular 'keyboard warrior', or just keeping quiet.

Not exactly.

A "mongrel" is the opposite of "purebred". A mixed breed.

A street would tend to also be a mongrel though.

Alf Stewart in home and away is referring to a no-good person so like a street mongrel (as opposed to a dog breed)

In an article for the conservative publication National Review Kevin Williamson said of Senator Rick Scott he is "the demon lovechild of Senator Ted Cruz and Dr. Sheldon Cooper — one part nasty and one part aspy."

”This man gets a shocking and disgusting amount of hatred" - Fans express anger over French commentator calling Lance Stroll 'autistic' at 2022 F1 Austrian GP

The original post, 2013

It is now 2022

Plenty of precious lil "people" have had the nerve to insult me a wide variety of ways

Thus far zero times, someone called me "autistic"

Even when I told someone I was autistic, by far the most frequent answer:. "you are not autistic"

But maybe different countries, cities and states use different insults