I’m trans and I really don’t want to federated with these people if their mods are defending the -tard suffix and they aren’t getting de-modded and banned. I also don’t want to be federated with them if they ban critiquing western chauvinism.
Someone who is an admin and with more of a level head than me RN please talk to their admins about it.
That’s a
from me.
Also, I have a family member with an intellectual disability, so it sticks in my craw when someone tries to defend it as innocent. It’s fine if someone throws it out and then gets corrected (think of the Chapos, they quit using it after all), since for a long time it was “acceptable.” But to try and defend yourself after correction…
Not just people with intellectual disabilities either, plenty of nuerospicy people and people with mental illnesses are also called the R slur.
Given how many trans people are autistic(as am I) they really should know better.
Yeah it’s really fucked up. I love the mod, after they drop it, is like “(I am a vocal socialist and very far left).” WHERES YOUR SENSE OF HUMANITY TOWARDS THOSE WHO ARE DISABLED/NEUROATYPICAL MFER. Really enrages me. Like, the idea that you shouldn’t apologize and do better about this, that’s fascist thinking rather than leftist.
Anyone who claims to be socialist and is viewing people as intellectually inferior needs a thorough and stern talking to and to not be let anywhere near power at minimum
no more half measures walter
It’s also like, mfer, there’s plenty of other ways to dunk on
mfers. You can talk about their 
, the 
demon energy of their party, the 
hypocrisy.
But instead, they add a really gross suffix. And for what? It doesn’t pack any punch except to those of us sensitive to these kinds of issues. It’s not like a
is going to get offended by it! They are 
underneath, as we all know, so they’re probably fine with deleting or confining the “surplus population” of disabled along with the homeless.
Doesn’t help it’s a mod too, so it’s like, this is someone with power and sanction.
If you say you’re a socialist you don’t need to add “far left” lol. This is, at best, a baby leftist and more likely just a confused reactionary.
“I’m an old lefty, from way back”
Read that in the Trump voice and improv from there, v funny.
“I am very far left - I even frowned while I was voting for Joe Biden in the last election.”
they are a socialist, the national kind.
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Oh that’s a good term. I like that
Is there any argument to using **tard and *spie in a reclamatory sense? I have a few autistic friends and I have absolutely heard them calling each other such terms.
I mean, what’s the project there, I think, is the question. In the same way that the f-slur can be used in person by people who are LGBTQ, I suppose people who are neurodivergent/disabled might use that term amongst themselves.
The issue is that you have people with intellectual disabilities under that umbrella along with the nerudivergent. So while the neurodivergent person has the agency, perhaps, to be reclamatory like your friends, I feel like the intellectually disabled don’t really have the same agency. Like, there’s diminished capacity there that I think makes it a lot more complicated than other oppressed groups. I’m being somewhat paternalistic here, perhaps (in part because I have a family member who is disabled and I have a paternalistic role to a degree due to their capacities), and obviously there’s a huge spectrum. But I think that’s actually an important distinction between it and other slurs that can be reclaimed.
Again though, I say this as someone who isn’t disabled/neurodivergent, so I’ll say that all of this is very much just my personal take and not programmatic.
I don’t think this is what’s happening here though, it’s not just ND people using it (if the mod’s saying it, I assume it’s considered acceptable language there), and that would be pretty impossible to enforce in an anonymous online space. Plus they didn’t just use it but removed criticism with no explanation beyond calling our guy “braindead.”
[as a neurospicy person] I’ve certainly heard other neurospicy people use it to refer to themselves. It still hurts me when they say it and I see nothing of value to be “reclaimed” by saying it but if they really want to I’m not going to stop them
My question here is:
How are these terms being reclaimed?
If we looked at the reclamation of the word “queer”, we have a perfect example. Queer used to mean bad, perverted, unacceptable, and too feminine/too masculine for the hegemonic gender norms etc. It still gets used as a slur in this sort of way, although much less frequently.
Nowadays, queer has been reclaimed as a term that is used as a positive description and it’s used with pride to define individuals by their sexual and/or gender identities and to foster solidarity.
With that in context, how are these so-called “reclaimers” of the R-slur reclaiming this term?
When someone like Keffals (🤢🤮) uses the word or a portmanteau of -tard, is she using this term to create solidarity and as a term of pride?
Or is she using it to regurgitate the current discourse which uses the term to perpetuate stereotypes, as a way to use the term to denigrate and dehumanize, in just the way that the R-slur became a slur in the first place when it was originally taken from medical discourse and brought into mainstream slang usage?
If it the latter case, and it is in Keffals’ case, then there is no reclamation of the term taking place and the person doing it is misusing the term “reclamation” as a rhetorical shield to hide behind, like the intellectual coward they are, by draping their bigotry in some self-aggrandizing notion of activism while they are simply perpetuating the prevailing hateful discourse of the term’s usage.
Your friends may be using it differently however and I can’t say because I’m not privy to the context in which they are using those terms, although I’m extremely skeptical about people who do not have intellectual disability using the R-slur and claiming that it’s used in a reclamatory fashion. That’s a bit like myself, being a white person, and having had people use the N-word against me (rarely, but still…) and then deciding that it’s my prerogative to reclaim the term since I’ve been on the receiving end of it being used as a slur against me; it’s not my term to reclaim.
So I’d need a pretty damn good justification for why a person without intellectual disability is reclaiming the R-slur and tbh I haven’t come across it yet.
these are exactly my feelings about femboys trying to reclaim trap. it’s a slur denigrating trans women - you don’t get to make the call that it’s a positive term applied to you that means exactly the thing it was used to brutalize us with.
Yeahhh I’m generally pro-federation but going so far as to not only use ableist language but to remove criticism of it is a big yikes. I think blahaj’s admin and our admins are trying to work together and make it work, but 196’s mods are actively opposed and trying to burn the bridge. Blahaj was there before and accepted a 196 lifeboat, possibly without knowing too much about them.
I’m still in favor of federation but if we’re expected to tone it down then we need it to go both ways. Otherwise we’re not losing much.
I’m really hoping this is the case
I’m sick of feeling like I need to tiptoe around people who are acting like shitheads lest I offend them and ruin it for everyone
I do find it unsurprising that despite all the bluster about how Hexbear is the one ruining everyone’s community we have largely been the nicest and most restrained.
Amazing how we get shit for calling out class positions and calling for some hot
action. That’s authoritarian, but dehumanizing people with disabilities/neurodivergent is somehow
Ah but you forget, you guys don’t tolerate their bigotry, which means that you’re just as bad bothsides horseshoe.
Yeah, cause we are a hostile community to specifically the kind of whiny asshole who gets all indignant about freedom whenever someone takes away their slurs