to expect my well educated friends to realise the derogatory nature of their language?

[auntyspan]

i have a very dear friend who I have known for years. Last week she described someone (some hoodlum in Asda) as a 'mong'. I was utterly shocked that someone so educated and cultured as her could use such a term.

I discussed it with my DH and he said there was a couple of blokes in his office that used the term too - and suggested I might be a little over sensitive as my nephew has Downs Syndrome.

AIBU to expect this term to have died last century?

I think it's more important to use the 'person with x condition' in media reports rather than in everyday speech, and I suppose I am thinking particularly of mental health and mobility problems.

The BBC gradually shifted its description of the Suffolk murder victims from prostitutes to women, with 'women who worked as prostitutes' where necessary and it does feel more sensitive and tactful and respectful doesn't it?

The 'Ouch' section of the BBC has a big long discussion on this very topic. The consensus seems to be that 'disabled person' is ok, 'person with a disability' isnt. Buggered if I know why. Handicapped is definately out although a person will say they are 'disabled by their condition' but 'handicapped by a non-accessible society'.
Disablist is like racist or sexist, only towards disabled people.
I'm disabled myself and involved in disability rights and have a disabled daughter (she has cerebral palsy) and it is a right old minefield. especially as among ourselves we use some very non-PC words in humour but if a walie-talkie used the same words they'd be run over in a wheelchair stampede!
The labguage is changing and evolving just like it did for race in the 60's and gender during the feminist times so the disability movement is still finding its feet I think, now that we actually have equal rights to an aducation (before the Warnock report disabled children were not allowed to go to school!), employment rights (still neglected) access rights (still not done). Its a real fizzing pot trying to dispel disablist attitudes and discussions about language among disabled poeple are heated and on-going.
But definite no-nos are 'mong, retard, psazz and handicapped' and apparently 'window-licker' which I've never ever heard.
We also hate the word 'sufferers' 'inspiring' and 'brave'

I hate the 'suffers from' thing too - and 'battling against' and anything in that vein.

good thread

I have to be completely honest and say that I hear people (grown up, respectable people) use words like 'a bit special', 'spastic', 'mong' etc all the time. I don't think these words have died out, to be honest, and I don't think the people who use them necessarily think about what the words really mean (especially 'spaz / mong').They have almost become shorthand for 'stupid' (which is wrong, I know - I'm not defending it, just observing...).

Well I think it's just a case of educating people - I spoke to my friend this morning and explained the background of the word - she was utterly horrified and couldn't stop apologising. She said she had never even thought about where the name had derived from.

Well done auntyspan - I guess that's the trouble with slang words people pick up without thinking

now - this is very interesting to me. I think these kinds of words are wrong. However I have a disabled friend who calls herself a Crip. She says she is entitled to as she is liberating the word.

I think she is wrong.

I must admit to completly overusing the word numpty - without actually knowing its meaning. During a lightbulb moment, I did suddenly think 'what if it's a derogatory term for a disabled person'.... panic

One quick trawl through the internet and the generally accepted meaning is 'big fool' (or similar) which is the context in which I'd always used it but for a while there I felt a bit of a numpty !!

beaniesteve, your friend is not wrong. This kind of thing happens with most or all minorities, doesn't it? Words that are used in a derogatory sense by the majority become unacceptable over time and, at the same time, some of them are adopted by members of the group (but only by members of the group) almost as a way of turning the insult around and using it as a badge of belonging and/or as a weapon against the discrimination. Or something like that.

Thus, as needmorecoffee observed, the term "crip" or "cripple" is used by some people with disabilities to refer to themselves but is strictly off limits for others.

Ds has just got a book which starts by saying that John is intellectually handicapped.

I have told him that his book was published in 1983 and things have changed.

I suspect that if you are not a member of the group that has been discriminated you just cannot be a part of rehabilitating a term of abuse. Once words have entered the mainstream as acceptable (like gay) anyone can use them - until they get turned back around to abuse again, when you need to be very careful once more. I think the onus is on the person from the mainstream to be careful and to think about the language they use, and I don't see that as a bad thing - so what if the laddish banter culture has to adjust a bit - there are plenty of abusive things you can call someone that don't involve insulting groups of people that you've probably thought very little about. Hoodlum is a good word though, as is numpty

i would describe my son as disabled because hes disablies do stop him from doing things butlast person that used the word reatrd about him , dont think they recovered from tounge lashing yet !!

I always loved my boss saying 'don't have an epi' when she meant don't get stressed/annoyed/have a screaming row.

I'm epileptic and she very well knew it. She could even spot them coming. Gee thanks for the sensitivity boss.

I'm having sort of the same problem with -'A friend'- Can't tell you how I know her just encase she's on this. She is a teacher and says the most dreadful things about people in council Estates, every nationality of the kids that attend her school and most of her colleagues, her DH and loves gossip (even celebrity rubbish!). Her group of friends have children that are close friends with my LO.
The other day I got so tired of her comments I had to say to her. 'I'm only agreeing with you because I want to be your friend!!!' I even ended up gossiping about her to another group of friends because she is so annoying.
I need to keep my distance from her but still let LO have play dates with this group.
I'm stuck! What should I do? (Sorry to hijack this thread)

Why doesn't the machine underline for me????

you have to stick the round each individual word. so --

On a similar note, what do we all think of 'flid'. I come from a north midlands town and in my youth it was a common word for getting angry as in "don't have/throw a flid" and everyone I know and knew back then would say that it derives from 'flipping one's lid' - i.e. boiling over and getting angry. It had no other connotation whatsoever, for me or anyone around me anyway, at the time or even now, quite frankly. I rarely use it now anyway (it's very much a childhood thing), but recently said it in conversation with a friend from the south who was appalled. She thought I'd said 'thalid' as in thalidomide, and was being insulting. She was only partly mollified when I explained it's history. Of course I'll never use it in front of her again, and probably not with anyone else either, but I was also left feeling slightly bothered that she thought I the type of person who would say and think things like that.

Madamez - cross posts - hadn't clocked your first line properly! But how interesting that it does seem to have another derivation too.

SParkle 'flid' was a hugely popular insult when I was a teenager (but we used it to mean 'stupid' or 'inadequate') - I think in south London in the early 80s it was, unfortunately, derived from 'thalidomide' (though most of us who used the word din't know that, it was just the insult of the time).

What I think is interesting is that often groups have to stop using perfectly acceptable scientific terms because society as started using than as a term of abuse.
For example, with regard to people with learning disabilities, in the past terms like idiot, imbecile, moron, mentally retarded, were technical terms that were entirely neutral, and had no negative connotations.
Then as a result of these words becoming terms of abuse, the technical words are changed, to be more acceptable to people.

What I am trying to say is that these words were not offensive at the time. At the time they were used they were neutral. It is the later adoption of these words by society as a term of insult that makes them look unacceptable.

Yes, "flid" was v big where I grew up in the 70s and early 80s - definitely from thalidomide .

Auntyspan - I don't think you are being unreasonable at all - I would just point out to your friend that she is using language that is offensive to those with Downs Syndrome. There are plenty of great words and phrases in the English language that you can use to be rude about someone without being offensive (except to the person you are being rude about...) Thankfully, for most people, times have changed - when I was doing the Duke of Edinburgh scheme in the 80s, I worked at a riding school for children with special needs, but the women who ran it was a terrible old bigot, despite running this lovely activity. She once introduced me to a little boy by saying "Now here is Fred... we are not handicapped, but we are an [spells out word] em oh en gee oh el."

yanbu, I wouldn't be freinds with isiots like that