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?
I don't think it's necessarily a matter of "keeping up" with the latest in appropriate language.
The basic premise of your post is this :
"As a human, I don't like being wrong about stuff, especially when it makes other people mad at me because when they get mad i get defensive. The problem is that I can't seem to keep up with the things that make people mad, and trying to is exhausting. What do I do?"
That might sound insulting, but I don't mean it that way. Stay with me here.
The straight answer is that you're going to mess up. A lot, because you're a human. And there's not a whole lot you can do about it. It's impossible to know what everyone deems acceptable, and some people go too far (and others don't go far enough) in their requests.
With this information in mind, the question arises: What do you do? There are generally to categories of choices.
1.) Stop changing, and get upset when someone corrects your language. You're not getting mad because of their choice of language, you're getting mad because no one likes to be wrong and it's not a part of your daily life so you can't keep up.
Basically what you're saying when you do this is "I can't keep up because it's tiring to me, and instead of letting you control your own message, I'm just going to call you what's easiest for me."
I don't know about you, but I don't like option 1.
2.) Change when you're told a new term, and don't get mad when you're corrected. You don't live the life of a person of colour, or a trans person, or someone with a developmental disorder. That makes it hard to keep up, because you're not steeped in it, all day every day. Also, lots of people have different reactions to different words.
This might mean that, for people whom you interact with a lot, you're gonna have to remember some shit. And when they change, you're gonna have to keep up.
"yo, Ken. I know you've been calling me Todd since grade school, but my full name's Theodore, and I want to go by Theo now. Cool?"
^^ that's basically all you're doing.
My strategy is thus:
1.) have some general cultural terms which were okay last time I used them (though I don't generalize much) such as GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities, because it's faster than LGBTQIA and so on, and more inclusive anyways) or Developmentally Disabled.
2.) have a general sense of the terms that the people in my peer group are using, such as Trans Woman of Colour (TWoC), or Trans and Cis.
3.) Have an intimate sense of what terms my close friends are using. They're my friends, after all, and I want to treat them with respect. I call my friend Greyson "Grey", because that is the short form they chose when they transitioned and changed their name. I call my friend Patrick "Kirby" or "Kirbo", because that's his last name and that's what he was known by in the army.
4.) When I get informed about a change in any of the above categories, I do my best to adopt it. For category 1 I'll probably fuck up more than others, but that's because its the one I'm least connected to, and as such the one that I use the least.
Let's take the word you use - Faggot. This video shows 30 different gay men's reaction to that word. Some own it, some take it as a slap in the face, some are just made sad.
I don't know about you, but my goal in life, generally, is to get along. I won't agree with everyone, and I won't be perfect, but when I mess up, i'll do my best to improve .