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ccc  ·  3359 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dealing with the euphemism treadmill?

Yeah, 'faggot' was a side point saying that I may have a bit of an edge perspective on this, being a gay guy who's fine with a gay slur -- just not used as such. It was never really okay, but some people are on board with the idea of intent vs. words, some gays have taken hold of the word for themselves, etc.

One better example is that it used to be normal to say someone was retarded, and later, or to differentiate from the insult that had developed, mentally retarded -- and then, alongside physical handicap, this developed to disabled, challenged, special needs, and I don't know what else. Is it because people adapt and use them as insults too? It's not like it's going to stop. Changing the words is never going to keep people who want to hurt others from doing so, so why are we making the effort on that front? I don't know if there's anything else to be done about that though.