What is going on with personal attacks/disablist language being left to stand?!

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I've just seen that the term 'fucking retarded' was left to stand, and the poster who reported it was told it shouldn't be deleted.

That really shocks me and I think it's a real shame coming from MNHQ.

I saw this because the person reporting started a thread asking whether the term were acceptable or not, and it's been deleted with no explanation except that it was 'against talk guidelines'.

I know it was a TAAT (as is this), but generally, threads asking reasonable questions are left to stand for a little, with an explanation from HQ on them. I'm hoping for a better result here in Site Stuff, as it seems to me it's a pretty important question.

Are you defending a policy of not deleting insults like 'fucking retarded'? Is it now unacceptable to question that sort of thing? And does it have to do with this ongoing issue with threads about feminism - which is where the term was used, and in the context of some very nasty (undeleted) attacks on feminist posters.

I find the use of the present tense extremely odd in Stay's post. If I were reviewing a letter or an article which used "is" in that context it would be handed back for rewriting.

It's good that this is an Internet forum and that Stay doesn't work for you then, isn't it?

And if I were reviewing a letter or article that failed to penetrate beyond the top result on google, it would be handed back for rather more than cosmetic changes.

But, as yonic says, this is an internet forum.

Yes Jeanneit would be really useful if I told a client that what the law "is" is really what the law used to be.

Perhaps you should Google verbs and tenses? You seem to be having difficulty with them.

Oddly I Googled several things and didn't find any results which supported the suggestion imbecile "is' used now in the sense quoted. I did find several saying it was part of a disused classification system.

I wonder do you call anyone an "imbecile "?

Oh Jeanne did you bother reading the wiki link explaining the usage of the word? That was one of the results of "is imbecile an acceptable term?"

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbecile

Or were you just trying to be patronising and meaning I didn't know what it meant at all?

Wow, Lass, that's pretty offensive.

That post was up for a few days. Many people with day to day experience of having an SN child did not interpret it as you did. Many people posting on MN are doing so while the kettle boils, from their phones, whilst keeping half an eye on a child or a baby monitor. If you are going to mark posters out of ten for spelling and grammar and insist that your interpretation is correct in the face of general bafflement from other posters, then it's going to be really hard to engage with you.

OMG.

No one doubts you know what the word means. People are questioning your interpretation of Stay's post of four days and five pages ago.

Imbecile is a really offensive word. I was shocked by the statement, genuinely shocked. There is a world of difference between 'is" and "was"

So given the context of the post, you didn't think that a quick "just to check, Stay, did you mean...?"

I don't really know what Jeanne's suggestion I use Google was supposed to mean.

This is going well

Predictable, I guess

I thought that maybe, instead of asking people to explain something that they find upsetting, you might have gone and educated yourself. You're clearly a much brighter woman than me - you could have done that.

The reason I think it matters is that there are women on this thread who are ground down by seemingly innocent (or genuinely innocent) 'just a question' type posts about these words. They've had to justify over and over again why they would like these words not to be used as insults because it insults their children.

There is always someone around to say 'ooh, I don't think so'. It must get incredibly tiring and frustrating.

Oh, and lass? It wasn't me who commented on tense.

So I am not clear why you needed to take me to task over that. Maybe you misread something.

Sorry, Maggie. I'm going to disengage now.

Everyone putting up with MNHQ inaction on disablist language

It would be just spiffy if Lass would 'disengage' from the hair-splitting

No Jeanne your reply about why you referred me to Google makes no sense. What is there to be educated about àUnless you are suggesting I was supposed to find a meaning of imbecile where it is still acceptable usage.

Yes, I thought you might google until you found people explaining that the term has still been used, in the present day, to insult them and their children.

It shouldn't surprise you if you have to look beyond the first google result - you might even search MN, since these debates have happened a lot before. It's unfair on people who have explained that they are upset, to start nitpicking and pretending you're marking people on how they express themselves. You are the one asking questions. The onus is on you, not them.

I wasn't in the slightest doubt the term is used as an insult. Where did you get that from? You really think I need to be educated that it's an offensive word?

A poster wrote that it is a term being used in a medical sense. No it isn't. Is and was are very simple words with very different meanings.

Lass, do you accept yet that, given the context of the post, Stay did not mean what you decided she meant, (even if her post wouldn't have made it to print without a copy editor giving it a tweak)?

I think MNHQ were really busy over the weekend. I reported several posts and they've upheld all the reports and apologised for the delay in getting back to me.

Well, clearly, you do need to be educated, yes.

What she actually wrote was 'Imbecile is a term used to describe persons with learning difficulties'

Unfortunately, this is the case.

You may have lived a sheltered life and not heard it, but she clearly has heard it.

Ffs Lass, did I piss on your chips or something? I did use the word 'is' rather than was. Perhaps my use of the English language wasn't to your liking but since I've got a lot going on my life and am running on empty I didn't think to get someone to proof read it. Thank you to the lovely posters who understood what I meant. The term may no longer be used in the medical sense, however it is still used, in an insulting way, to describe people with SNs. I hate the term and have already had to pull someone up on it when they used the term in front of me to describe an older man, with SN, that they know. I pointed out that my wee girl has SN and asked if they would use that to describe her? Their answer, "but that's different, she's only a wee girl, you know what I mean". Ffs there's no hope with some people.

I won't pretend to know all the terms that some people find offensive but love learning from others who have more experience. However in your case Lass you can keep your nitpicking to yourself, as it doesn't come from a good place.

"hate the term and have already had to pull someone up on it when they used the term in front of me to describe an older man, with SN, that they know."

Ugh, how crap

Thank you Yonic. It was all the more shocking because my wee girl thinks the world of him and he is always delighted to see her. I remember a poster on mn, some time ago, saying that while their little boy was small and cute people were accepting of him but she was worried about when he becomes an adult and isn't so cute. The person who used that term just brought it home to me how true that was. My girl is very cute and looks about 13, she's 20. Every one that meets her finds her adorable. My older boy has Aspergers but people just treat him as if he's odd, lazy or selfish. It's very bloody depressing.