Board Thread:Community Voting/@comment-24561237-20140810223709/@comment-5671588-20140813162337

TheShadowAssassin wrote: LEGOSuperDKong wrote:

Basil Karlo wrote:

Goggles99 wrote:

Basil Karlo wrote:

Goggles99 wrote: No. Why? Because "retard" is not an official term for any form of intellectual disability. It's really only used jokingly (or not jokingly) as an insult these days. It's not like saying "autistic" or "bipolar" or "cancer victim" or "muslim". I assure you there is no doctor in the world that would actually classify anyone as being a "retard". If you forgot your car keys or wore you jacket inside out though, there are many people who will in friendly jest call you retard along with other words like idiot or silly or dumb...these are all harmless words that have the potential to be used wrongly. There is nothing wrong with the words themselves.

Also the last thing this wiki needs is more silly rules that do nothing but create more difficulty for the mods and more drama. I've never seen anyone here called a retard in a literal way that they can take offense to.

Keep it simple. Punish a user for attacking or bullying another user. Don't punish them for the particular words that they may or may not have used in their attack. Bullies will ALWAYS find a way to insult. Blocking a word like that will not help anyone. If it's not an official medical term, that means there is no good context to use it in and just provides more reason for blocking it. Why does it matter if it's an official medical term? People use words like "dumb" and "lame" all the time and those have long been "official medical terms." "Dumb", "lame", and "retard" were all once medical terms used to describe an intellectual disability. This was until people started using the terms in an offensive way, a slur, I suppose you could say. This is why health departments and the like (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) have refrained from using those terms to describe their patients' intellectual health, and so they now use the terms "intellectual disability."

"Dumb" means mute and "lame" means unable to walk. Those aren't intellectual disabilities any more than being blind or paralyzed is an intellectual disability.