what's up suckers

i'm Tex | they/them | 23 y/o | go follow my brother for his sick art (@bignerd27) | occasional NSFW minors be warned

[oh-boof]

05/28/2023

am i new here? no. i've been using tumblr since like 2016, but i wanted a clean slate on my blog.

other things to note:

-i am mostly a Transformers blog

-i use different heart emojis for different things

❤️ = romantic/flirting

💛 = platonic

💚 = friendly

[animentality]

[depsidase]

[depsidase]

[oh-boof]

really happy to be seeing so much more aro/ace recognition posts this pride after having gone so long feeling like i'd never be truly seen

[mattpresents]

How do you know you're not Asexual? Maybe you just haven't met the right nobody.

[starsandscars81]

“Love is love” okay but can we talk about people whose identities don’t focus on feelings for another person? Pretty please???

[theloverislost]

as we are rapidly approaching pride month, here’s an obligatory reminder!

AROMANTIC PEOPLE

ASEXUAL PEOPLE

AND AROACE PEOPLE

ALL BELONG IN THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY

I WILL REMOVE EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE

[oh-boof]

it's that time of year to remind everyone what Optimus Prime said

[assignedmale]

[official-linguistics-post]

uh oh

"etymologynerd" is at it again and this time i do feel i have to say something. the disability advocates have it covered on addressing the impact, but there's also a serious problem with the linguistics.

in a video shared on may 16, adam aleksic begins by saying: "i think we have to accept the fact that the 'r-word' [retard/retarded] is permanently coming back and it's functionally changed meanings to no longer directly refer to disabled people."

this first sentence alone betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of language change in several points.

this word never went away. what we're seeing now is an attempt at re-normalization by people who sense that they will not be socially punished by openly using this term.

we actually don't have to "accept" its return to mainstream use. for decades, disability advocates have worked to inform the public of the harm caused by casual use of this term. the harm has not disappeared, and neither will this advocacy and its impacts.

now i'm just mad. how tf does it NOT refer to disabled people? the entire point of a pejorative term is that it negatively invokes comparison to a person, group, etc. the assertion that the r-word has changed meanings is categorically false. at most, its primary context has changed from clinical to casually pejorative, but the insult fundamentally rests upon the original reference.

he goes on to refer to the "euphemism treadmill," another concept he misrepresents by extending the metaphor to say that terms which have been sufficiently distanced from their original reference are no longer pejorative. to quote: "...once we sufficiently distance a word from its historical usage, it stops taking on the same offensive power and just becomes colloquial instead."

which... what? what the fuck is he talking about? the words he uses as examples – idiot, imbecile, and moron – are definitely still offensive, if perhaps less impactful. "just becomes colloquial instead" is a nonsense phrase. are offensive words not colloquial? the only english word that comes to mind as having changed so much in definition as to no longer be offensive is "nice," which has been shifting in meaning for more than 700 years and was never a weaponized clinical term.

he ends by saying, "it is undeniably true that the people who are afraid to say the r-word right now are going to get old and die out, while younger generations keep saying it with no knowledge of where it came from." again, fundamentally misunderstanding language change in society over time. it rests on the assumption that we're all going to start or re-start using this slur and never have a conversation about its harms, which just completely ignores both the abovementioned disability advocacy and the fact that people tell each other not to use offensive words. you think i'm just not gonna teach my kids that using slurs is bad??

the whole video is devoid of both empathy and an understanding of long-term semantic change.

tl;dr etymologynerd is wrong, we do NOT "have to accept that the 'r-word' is coming back," and we all need to read more crip linguistics.

[solarifle]

"we have to accept the fact that the r word is coming back" NO WE DONTTTT NO WE DONT

[vash-the-trans-catboy]

Cute little rainbow heart for pride month tumblr but how about you stop disproportionally banning trans women and marking sfw queer posts as mature

[eptck]

you have to be kinder to people with memory issues.

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.

you have to be kind. you have to be kind.

[manuciruja]

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

[uncertainlys]

MY FINGERS BARELY EVEN TOUCHED YOUR STUPID FUCKING AD STOP REDIRECTING ME TO THE APP STORE

[theconcealedweapon]