How do you keep up with the 'correct' terms and how do you deal with how they keep changing? Can't call people retarded anymore, even in a non-insulting way. It was common but on the way out when I was growing up, to use it in a sincere way, but people also used it as an insult unrelated to real mental issues, and now it's not okay to use at all anymore. There has, of course, been a line of acceptable-but-then-not terms for black people. Janitor, which was itself a euphemism, is now bad for some reason (???) and we have further abstracted it to "custodian".
"Gay" remains acceptable (as far as I can tell -- but I'm gay myself and I like to throw 'faggot' around so it could just be my perception) in spite of its copious use as an insult.
I certainly don't want to actually hurt anyone, but this whole thing comes off to me like we all can't figure out what we even want, but insist on still getting pissy about it in the meantime. I'm having trouble understanding why I should continue catering to this.
Do you have any thoughts on:
- What causes one term to require a new euphemism while another under similar treatment doesn't?
- Is there really any point in trying to keep up with this ridiculous fickle changing of euphemisms?
- What is the point in making new euphemisms if someone is just going to use that as an insult too, and then we'll have to move to a new one? Different usages of words normally coexist quite nicely anyway.
- It appears that there is a strange time in which a term is no longer acceptable for its clinical usage (retard) but has not yet become acceptable to use purely as insult (moron, cretin, lunatic). Any thoughts about this?