Mother-to-be deemed 'too stupid' to raise child or marry fiance

Concerning the article: is she learning-disabled or developmentally disabled? Because they're two different things. A learning disability is something like dyslexia or discalculia, where the brain is wired funny and consequently cannot process letters or numbers. Their raw capacity for education is undiminished, but there's a bottleneck caused by their difficulty processing.

Developmentally disabled is what used to be called "retarded" or "mongoloid" before a bunch of clever people realized there were too many different kinds of developmental disability to lump into on category. That is an actual diminished capacity to learn, i.e. "being stupid," if you insist on being a rude little motherfucker about it. I can understand not wanting to give a severely developmentally disabled woman custody of her child.

Either way, I'm disinclined to take the article at face value because I do recall seeing this a few months ago, and the story was broken by the Daily fucking Mail.

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Concerning the article: is she learning-disabled or developmentally disabled? Because they're two different things.

And right there, we have the problem with euphemisms: The whole point is to disguise the real meaning, and they often disguise it right out of existence.

By the way, I'm starting to wonder whose posts a couple of people (most notably Cyberwulf) read with my name attached, because they certainly don't seem to be responding to mine.

First of all, I'm not "all upset"; I'm discussing semantics, social attitudes, and the euphemism treadmill. So I'm not sure where you got that from.

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and yet you can't see why he uses the euphemisms instead of saying "Oh yeah I stuffed your dad's corpse with sawdust so he won't rot before we throw him in the hole"

I understand that they do it because there are people who think something is different if you use pretty words. What I don't understand is why those people think that way. Calling squid "calamari" doesn't make it into a less creepy-looking animal, and calling calamari "squid" doesn't make it any less delicious. You can consider it my personal learning disability if you want, but I have never been able to understand how people can change a word and believe that anything other than the sounds or the letters is different. It's like painting "sugar" on the salt shaker and expecting the contents to become sweet.

Yes, I use the socially-approved euphemisms when necessary (which is, um, everywhere but here) for the same reason I follow other arbitrary social rules: it saves hassles. I know what the rules are. I just don't understand, on a gut level, why they should be that way. I do it all by rote.

Euphemisms are often a way of avoiding dealing with an issue. If the problem is that there is a social stigma to not having enough money, or being unintelligent, or having legs that don't work, changing the labels we use won't fix it. Nobody is any richer if you call them underprivileged, smarter if you call them developmentally disabled (I thought we weren't supposed to say disabled), or more able to walk if you call them physically challenged. It's the attitude that needs to be changed, and if anything, the euphemisms hinder that change. Hiding it behind one euphemism after another only confirms that there is something wrong with being poor, stupid, or crippled, because if there wasn't, we wouldn't have to keep making up new words to hide it behind. The solution is to work for greater social acceptance of (or improvement of, in the case of those that can be changed) those conditions, not to pretend they don't exist.

What's interesting is that we mock other types of hiding from reality, like not keeping score because the losing team might feel bad, or doctors being told not to use the word "obese" to the parents of children that look like beachballs with eyes. It's been said here, often, that people should learn to face reality: Dude, your team lost. You failed the midterm. Your 10th-walker slash AU mpreg vampire Sue RPF lemon story is crap. So why is there this defense of euphemisms that mean "not smart" when we condemn ones that mean "not good"?

Maybe I've got some obscure condition that some enterprising researcher could get a paper out of: "TDLTHE Syndrome" -- Too Damned Literal To Handle Euphemisms. Other symptoms include not getting the joke, driving bosses crazy by doing exactly what they say, and an irrepressible urge to snark badfic. Or, yeah, maybe I'm just an asshole. (though honestly, I don't try to be)

Learning-disabled and developmentally disabled are not euphemisms. They describe two completely different things.

Once the block on a learning-disabled individual is compensated for, they are of average or above-average intelligence. Their capacity for knowledge is not reduced, only their ability to acquire that knowledge. They are not "stupid," but they may appear so until their block is identified and dealt with. They must learn in a nonstandard way, but they are capable of learning.

Someone who is developmentally disabled actually has a physically reduced capacity for knowledge. They cannot, ever, progress beyond a certain point. Someone who is developmentally disabled is what you call "stupid," in that they are actually incapable of learning past a certain point, i.e., "lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind," as the dictionary tells me.



...God, how I've missed the flame wars.

Wandering Critic, my whole point (and the point of others on here) is not that 'stupid' is or is not a more concise or accurate word instead of some fluffy euphemism, it's that saying someone is stupid, to the vast majority of English-speaking people, is not a simple statement of saying that their IQ is X number of points, it's a personal insult (or being used to say that the person is acting disagreeably or nonsensically).

So, no, the paper saying that she had been deemed 'too stupid' to raise a child or marry was NOT being technically accurate. It was an insult.

Just out of curiosity, do you still use the terms "moron", "imbecile", and "idiot" for people with Downs or other mental disabilities? They were once used as terms for categories/degrees of mental impairment, yet hardly anyone uses them for those purposes anymore. And no, I'm not being sarcastic when I ask that. Well, maybe a little, but not mostly.

I didn't mean to imply that they were both euphemisms for the same condition. I was trying to point out that using "developmentally disabled" as a euphemism for stupid/retarded/slow/special/exceptional/mentally-challenged/whatever can lead to confusion -- as it clearly has in this case. If you don't use the real word, and instead try to make it look like something else, it shouldn't be unexpected when people mistake it for that something else.

And we still have no more information about just what the actual issue with the mother's suitability is, only something that's looking disturbingly like it came out of the mind of George Orwell -- or a social services jobsworth. Some people just need to be taken out and flogged.

And no, Mal, I don't, except once or twice when appropriate in historical fiction. I don't use stupid, either, outside of WGW, though I always seem to be one euphemism behind the current fashion. *looks at clothes* Hm, maybe it's not just euphemisms....

People are mistaking what I think makes sense, and should be done, for what I actually do. I wear pants when they're socially required even when I think they're unnecessary, too.

Wandering Critic wrote:

I didn't mean to imply that they were both euphemisms for the same condition. I was trying to point out that using "developmentally disabled" as a euphemism for stupid/retarded/slow/special/exceptional/mentally-challenged/whatever can lead to confusion -- as it clearly has in this case.

You not knowing what "learning disabled" means--and apparently now thinking that it's also interchangable with "developmentally disabled"--does not qualify as "confusion." It means you don't know what it means. I am not confused. I think you're an idiot. How's that for not euphemistic?

Wandering Critic wrote:

If you don't use the real word, and instead try to make it look like something else, it shouldn't be unexpected when people mistake it for that something else.

"Learning disabled" is the real word. Clearly, you have no idea what you're trying to talk about. I recommend Wikipedia.

Wandering Critic, dyslexia runs in my family. I have quite a few cousins with that learning disability, but somehow one of them is a head mechanic, another is an accountant, and yet another is breezing through school as if it's nothing. She's downright bored. Stupid, they are not. They just had a bit of trouble starting out because of the way people with dyslexia process information and have to find their own way of understanding something.

Remember that time we argued about petty semantics and projected our own personal insecurities onto a thread where everyone pretended they were the absolute expert on stupidity and disabilities?

Yeah, that was great.

Maybe we could quit using this poor woman and her child as a pedestal to whine and sob about how hard life is with a learning disorder and how meeeeeeeeaaaan and unfair those dastardly social workers are because this one time something bad happened to me and mememememememe.

And for a bunch of people getting worked up over the word "stupid" you all seemed to fail to realize the phrase in the headline "Social workers 'to take baby from teenager deemed too stupid to marry'" was in fact in quotes. I'm assuming that meant that someone actually said that statement and I'm willing to bet it was the mother describing her situation. So before you go off HRRRNG THE WORD STUPID IS SO STUPID maybe you should, I dunno, actually glance at the article and think about it or something.

Morons. :hmm:

WC, do you not understand that the main reason for new terms is totally about supporting a change in attitude? Take the word "retarded." It is such a common and pervasive playground insult that it cannot be entirely separated from its negative connotations.

In some cases, I agree, the point of the euphemism is to obscure meaning or intentionally mislead. But I can't agree that a change of semantics with regard to underprivileged groups has no social effect at all. If language DIDN'T influence people's perceptions, why would anyone bother with euphemisms and new terms at all?

I am NOT going to post in this thread, I am NOT going to post in this thread, I am.... Dammit.

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She is (or may be, since they give us no usable information) stupid

WC's whole point from the beginning was that there isn't enough information here to discern whether the mother is actually stupid or not, because 'mild learning difficulties' (notice they didn't say "learning disability") can encompass anything from dyslexia to actual cognitive impairment. Trying to propagandize him with lectures about very smart dyslexic people you know isn't a good idea because it doesn't address his point.

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"Learning disabled" is the real word.

...Which is irrelevant because the article never used the phrase "learning disabled". It was "learning difficulties", which could be anything. Hence WC's point.

I won't get into the discussion on whether or not euphemisms are a good thing. But some of you are shooting into the wind here.

Sloth wrote:

...Which is irrelevant because the article never used the phrase "learning disabled". It was "learning difficulties", which could be anything. Hence WC's point.

I will conceed that the article didn't say "learning disabled." However, I'm still not at all convinced that WC is actually saying anything worth dignifying with the word "point."

Wandering Critic wrote:

First of all, I'm not "all upset";

Yes, you are.

I'm discussing semantics, social attitudes, and the euphemism treadmill. So I'm not sure where you got that from.

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I understand that they do it because there are people who think something is different if you use pretty words.

Oh, FAIL. Fail hard.

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If the problem is that there is a social stigma to not having enough money, or being unintelligent, or having legs that don't work, changing the labels we use won't fix it. Nobody is any richer if you call them underprivileged, smarter if you call them developmentally disabled (I thought we weren't supposed to say disabled), or more able to walk if you call them physically challenged.

Oh dear Jesus you really think that using different language is an attempt to change the person's physical circumstances.

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The solution is to work for greater social acceptance of (or improvement of, in the case of those that can be changed) those conditions, not to pretend they don't exist.

I can't believe I have to explain this to a supergenius such as yourself. Certain words in the English language - terms for certain groups of people, usually groups who are in the minority or who deviate from the default "Norm" template of straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied, neurotypical, (nominally) Christian male - have become so debased through their use as slurs that their use actually hinders social acceptance of those groups. In fact those groups are usually the ones who request that different, less inflammatory language be used. But maybe they're wrong and think that "pretty words" will make their legs grow back or whatever condescending bullshit you spouted earlier.

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So why is there this defense of euphemisms that mean "not smart" when we condemn ones that mean "not good"?

They don't all mean "not smart". That's your projection.

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Or, yeah, maybe I'm just an asshole. (though honestly, I don't try to be)

Try harder, asshole.

Wandering Critic wrote:

I didn't mean to imply that they were both euphemisms for the same condition. I was trying to point out that using "developmentally disabled" as a euphemism for stupid/retarded/slow/special/exceptional/mentally-challenged/whatever can lead to confusion -- as it clearly has in this case. If you don't use the real word

Developmentally disabled IS the real word. It's a more accurate descriptor than most of the euphemisms you've listed. Slow? Special? Exceptional? They can mean fucking anything.

Good god you're dense.

Don't mind me...
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Theaphelia wrote:

Also, my post was a rant, not made deliberately to attack you, so stop taking it as a personal attack.

Thea, chill. The second post wasn't directed at you.