Who comes up with this stuff anyway? There are a half dozen old terms for people with an intellectual disability. Most of them are still common and accepted in speech, (dumb, idiot, fool, stupid, imbecile). How did this one word get elevated to such triggering heights? It means the same thing and has the same connotation as those other words! I swear we are entering a neovictorian age.
> How did this one word get elevated to such triggering heights?
Those are actually great questions! Have you considered, instead of shouting rhetorically into the ether, actually looking for the answers? Maybe reading editorials from people in the autism community about why there's a renewed focus on eliminating use of some especially harmful words but not others?
This kind of behaviour is what I think of when I see all these comments about the recent enshittification of discourse on HN. For a community that's supposed to be for the intelligent and innately curious, there seems to be a growing deficit of people actually looking to seek out, learn from and appreciate other perspectives.
> It [...] has the same connotation as those other words!
No, it doesn't. Maybe it does to some of the people who choose to use it, but certainly not to the people it describes or are affected by the use of it. Again, maybe you could look into it, but that would depend you actually being willing to learn from the answers you'd find.
> I swear we are entering a neovictorian age.
I also worry that we're regressing socially and intellectually, but I suspect you and I have very different concerns in this regard.
Linguistic locusts. In ten years, when the newly adopted euphemism for a word today deemed a slur has itself been deemed a slur, the locusts will be onto the next term to denounce.
