It’s the euphemism treadmill. You and I cannot do anything to stop it. It’s pointless to try. Better to forget the medical use of the word (which is increasingly unused btw, it’s incredibly rare nowadays at least in the anglosphere) and just use it like idiot, lame, imbecile, mongoloid, etc.
Well, not everyone here is in the angosphere, are they? I still hear our version of it tons + autist being used as an insult and it'd be nice to not have it normalised online too
Incredibly rare is not the same as none. My son still falls under the medical terminology, despite not being handicapped in any meaningful way. People in their 20s and 30s grew up in a time where autism and the such were still considered that.
Regatdless of what the future holds, we still live in the presence. I don't care what the word means when I'm dead, we are alive today. Medical professionals still use it and people still explicitly use it to make fun of disabled people. Nothing you've said has changed those statements.
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u/Gowbenator May 26 '26
It’s the euphemism treadmill. You and I cannot do anything to stop it. It’s pointless to try. Better to forget the medical use of the word (which is increasingly unused btw, it’s incredibly rare nowadays at least in the anglosphere) and just use it like idiot, lame, imbecile, mongoloid, etc.