DaasYochid, I’ll try to answer your recent posts in order.
Re: My charge towards you of disingenuousness:
In response to a request for a source showing that “polite society” is an offensive term, you gave one of its Wiktionary definitions – but not the one Ubiquitin was using it for.
(“Upper crust,” an exclusionary and thus potentially hurtful definition, as opposed to “people who care about politeness,” with no such implication.)
Would it not be disingenuous if, say, when asked to show that
“retarded” is not an offensive word, one were to give its definition as “Designating a parameter of an electromagnetic field which is adjusted to account for the finite speed of radiation”?
People have the same “right to be offended” by the use of “polite society” with the definition I provided as they do towards the definition of “retarded” above. (To be offended is not a matter of one’s right, in any case – it is more a question of whether one must reasonably expect people to be offended by his words.)
I stand by my charge. Perhaps we can commute the charge to facetiousness, given the ease with which it’s possible to see through this nonsense.
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Re: “Intention to offend”
DY: Your (Ubiquitin’s) words, copied and pasted: “This whole discussion is about the use of the word “retarded” with offensive intent!”
He meant the intention to use “retarded” as an insult, not an intention to offend the developmentally disabled with the use of “retarded” as an insult.
(New: He could also be taken to mean that this intention/use is offensive to the developmentally disabled.)
(My earlier words, CxP’d: He means that he never meant to accuse you of trying to hurt the feelings of the developmentally disabled with your use of “retarded” as an insult.)
Ubiquitin confirmed my explanation:
“(DY:)’What did you mean by “intend”?’
All I meant was what Randomex said.
That being said, it could alos be understood the way you seem to have understood that I am not accusing anypne of INTENDING to insult the developmentaly delayed. They are however (generally speaking) insulted by usage of the term even if the intent is not
to offend THEM.)
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Re:
Randomex, DaasYochid meant “Why can’t popa and I [who are developmentally disabled/w-e] use ‘retarded’?
My question was: “The only way you can attempt to draw a parallel between
A) black people using the N-word with each other
and
B) you and popa using “retarded” as a negative adjective for stupid things/people
is if you and popa are “legitimate” targets of “retarded,”
just as black people are “legitimate” targets of the N-word.
Is that what you mean?”
Your answer above seems to be “Yes.” Correct me if I’m wrong.
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Re: “What?”
Here’s the conversational sequence that seems to be puzzling you:
Ubiquitin: DY. I didnt mean intend to offend developmentally delayed people.
DY: What did you mean by “intend”?
Ubiquitin: rebyid, I have mentioned a couple times you are free to be offensive, if you dont care to be polite by all means use any word you feel like. I never assmued everybody wants to be polite, I am well aware that many don’t care.
DY, we arent discussing how term originated. We are discussing thow they are percieved today in 2014. In fact “retarded” originated as a polite way to replace the term “imbecile” that in no way changes the way it is percieved today.
DY: That doesn’t answer my question.
Randomex: That post was written before he saw your question.
(I saw that the post time on his post was only 3 minutes after your post with the question. He obviously had not seen the question before that response, so pointing out that he had not addressed your question was an oversight.)
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As for this “how do you define intent” business, I think it’s certainly facetious.
I came into this undecided, you know – I read all the posts and came to my conclusion.