Stuff like "stupid, idiot, moron, dumb," you know the ones. If you’re insulting someone for their shitty garbage beliefs and all you can manage to come up with is ways to insult their intelligence, appearance, or other aspect about them that has nothing to do with their cruelty and shittyness, you should maybe reevaluate.

Just saw a thread on here where a user was stubbornly refusing to adjust their language when another user politely pointed out that it was harmful to our comrades as well, and the person refusing was massively upvoted and the comrade trying to explain why it was harmful was downvoted. Thought we were better than that

I'm not calling anyone out, just wanted to make a post explaining my feelings on it and that when stuff like that happens (not the intelligence based insults, I know its hard to switch, but getting insulted for asking people to avoid them) it hurts and makes me feel less welcome here </3

Using words like “You’re being ignorant” or “That’s a cruel belief” is actually more effective than just going “lmao idiot”.

If those are the words you actually mean to convey I'd say use them instead :)

Edit: if the reception this post got isn't a good proof that this is something this community needs to grapple with, I don't know what is.

  • RedDawn [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    Also nice use of free dictionary.com, a truly authoritative voice on what constitutes a slur, so according to you it doesn’t need to refer to a group of people but merely be a “disparaging remark” since that’s what your dictionary says. You realize that would be indistinguishable from an insult? So you’re effectively saying all insults are slurs and therefore to never insult anybody again. Sorry, that’s ludicrously idiotic.

    • qublic69 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      freedictionary.com listed three different sources.
      it's not in https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slur either or https://www.dictionary.com/browse/slur or https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/slur or https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slur
      please, do show me the way to this great great woke dictionary that you would prefer.

    • Civility [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      People born with below average intelligence are inherently less powerful than people born with above average intelligence. Our society values intelligence highly and people with below average intelligence are often made to feel like shit about it while people with above average intelligence are praised for it, especially as children.

      Insulting/attacking/tearing people down for being less powerful than other people, especially when there’s not much they can do about that lack of power, is anti-communist.

      Insults like “dumb”, “stupid” and “idiot” are essentially saying “you are lesser because you were born with less power” so they’re gross and anti-communist and we shouldn’t use them.