300
Elon Musk keeps tweeting the 'R-word.' Disability advocates say he needs to stop.
(www.usatoday.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
300 points (93.4% liked)
News
25415 readers
4187 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You can both give someone armor to fend off blows, and also raise people to understand you shouldn't inflict those blows, both help. But calling someone "removed" is not something a good person does.
Nobody is making the word bad. The word is intrinsically bad because it inflicts unfair and callous pain on others. A person's right to inflict that pain is debatable, but is also immaterial, because what we're saying here is that using those words without regard to the other person and causing that pain recklessly, makes one in some real sense a bad person. They can say the pain inflicted is "not their intention," but that's also immaterial if they are recklessly disregarding that pain. And accountability for being a bad person is just a natural result.
While I agree words can offend, I challenge your understanding of linguistics: no word is intrinsically bad. They're signs & symbols with arbitrary, often conventional meaning.
Usage & context matter. Take any euphemism & say it in a hateful manner: now it's offensive. Lifewise, take any offensive word & speak of it in an inoffensive manner: not offensive. Language is flexible.
I agree with your criticism of "intrinsic." "Intrinsically" as I thought of it means that there's been a consolidation step that builds in all of the cultural baggage into the "carried" meaning of the word. I think even if there's no absolute "intrinsic" meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word. But of course every word can change its meaning, no debate there.
I think it's a little academic to say "any offensive word" can be said in an "inoffensive manner" - yes, words in a theatrical play do not convey an offensive meaning against the audience; words said ironically as a criticism of the word and user of the word can be used satirically, but we'd then need to debate what it means to "use" a word in an offensive context versus another. (In any case, "inoffensive" use is not what Elon is doing. He's following adolescent edgelord troll rules, which is using it unironically while exulting in other people's offense, and playing the victim of woke culture when called on it.)
No armor required as no blows are being thrown my friend.
Not a physical attack. It's literally just a word.
I think you're being intentionally reductive, and you think that that reductionism is appropriate (i.e., only physical pain is valid pain). But I don't agree, and most people wouldn't in 2025. Psychological pain is pain, and you can likewise inflict it in a morally culpable way. You probably agree with that premise - you wouldn't defend someone being actively abusive, like a psychopathic partner - but we're just debating where the line is.
There's still a valid debate about the limits of freedom from mental pain in the public sphere and our corollary duties to each other - I get that, it's not "any pain is too much," nobody reasonable thinks that - but this is entirely foreseeable, preventable and to doggedly insist that you have a right to inflict it doesn't mean that it's right to inflict it.