Re: sturdy old apple

["Bill Garber" <willy46pa@comcast DOT net>]

"Gregory L. Hansen" <glhansen@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote in
message news:ce5oku$g09$1@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
:
: "Retarded" didn't used to be a slur, it was
: a clinical term.  E.g. from www.dictionary.com,

The total phrase, "mentally retarded", refers to
their condition, not their being. Just as I have
Bipolar Disorder, it is a condition I possess,
not who I am. I am not Bipolar. Once in public
a guy leaned over to me and started to refer to
the people working in the establishment, it was
a restaurant, as mental. I leaned in more and
simply said that I took offense to it and had
I not been medicated, he may have been in for
more than he had bargained for.  :o)

: "slow or limited in intellectual or emotional
: development characterized by mental retardation".
: And that is completely accurate.

Yes, that is correct.

: But words get used up and need to be changed
: now and then.

Need to be, I hardly agree. People just get tired
of using the same words to express themselves, and
it is usually under the age of 30 that change them.
It's a rebellion thing. BTW, I'm 50.

: I have a sister who works in a group home, and
: a friend that had worked in a different home for
: several years.  And the "tards" were called
: residents.  Until it got changed to customers.
: And then to consumers. And I haven't been
: keeping track of all of them, but it keeps
: changing in the interest of being sensitive.

Many of them are not so badly infirmed, how's that
for a term, that they actually live in the public
eye. I have a niece who is MR and she lives at home
with her mother. She works, pays taxes, and becomes
involved in many of the same activities as you or
I do. You think MR are bad, try autistic. They most
of the time have no clue which end is up, and if you
change one thing about their lives, they lash out.

: At my sister's home the staff just calls them kids.

"Kids" are baby goats. Unruly creatures that get into
things they shouldn't and have no idea that it's wrong.
If that's what you want your child to be, go ahead and
call them "kids".  :o)

: At the home my friend worked at, they didn't even
: have the language skills, or in many cases the ability
: to hear, such that it would ever have been possible for
: them to take offense-- they didn't have the level of
: mental development required to wipe their own butts,
: so the workers wiped butts for them.

Many deaf children were misdiagnosed as MR, when they
weren't at all. But they learned to be MR to please
the people who thought that they were. Of course now
they have more extensive tests that reveal the truth.

: It would only be a matter of time.  "Special" is
: already a slur, e.g. the article in The Onion about
: "the very Special Forces" in Iraq.

Special means having higher ability, or extraodinary
skills. Hardly meets the criteria of the MR. Unless
they are deaf or near deaf, then they do, sign language!

Bill @ GarberStreet Enterprizez };-)
Web Site - http://garberstreet.netfirms.com
Email - willy46pa @ comcast DOT net
Change DOT to a dot to contact me



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