(June 12, 2017 at 12:08 pm)Brian37 Wrote:My dictionary does not say that fly can be about someone's "fly" clothing, and I think this makes you a hypocrite. "Nigger" to me has many meanings, and to me it isn't even necessarily referring to black people. Language has evolved and the word nigger can be used in many different ways, kind of like the word fuck. I use nigger as a term of endearment for my white best friend, so the word doesn't even necessarily mean "black person". It can just mean any person, and you can't tell me that I'm wrong about that definition because you brought slang into this with the word "fly". When I say "that's so gay" or "stop being such a fag", in slang that means "that's so lame" or "stop being so annoying". Why can you use the slang version of fly but I can't use the slang version of gay? Homosexuals do not own that word. Some words in the english language have over 400 definitions, so why can't the word gay have more than two definitions (homosexual and happy)? Language evolves, as you obviously understand with your use of the slang term fly.(June 12, 2017 at 11:17 am)Tizheruk Wrote: Accept it has nothing to do with insulting the mentally challenged . It's an attack on people who say stupid things or believe stupid things. Not a reference to anyone suffering a legitimate mental issue .
I agree, in the context of saying "retard" to someone merely saying something that is bullshit and factless, it is saying you are resistant to facts, much like if you are fireman wearing flame resistant cloths, you are retarding the fire. We are not equating the person to being mentally challenged, we are saying your desire dreamy eyed delusion is causing one to retard facts in favor of naked assertions.
"retard" also has the definition of deflecting something, and that definition has nothing to do with stigmatizing the mentally challenged.
Just like the word "fly" can refer to an insect, but also can mean "that person is sexy, or is wearing something amazing, or owns something amazing."
"I am going to kill that fly"
"That women is fly"
"That suit the guy is wearing is fly"
Just like the word "gay" can be used as a slur. Long before it was, it merely meant happy. And even today gay can be used as merely meaning happy, or it can also be used as a slur, or it also can be used to refer to someones sexuality.
CONTEXT matters. I really do get down on the all or nothing attitude. If you don't know how someone is using a word, ask, don't assume.
And about the Hitler thing, Christians do not equate us to Hitler. They use Hitler and others as a response to our claim that religion causes a lot of death/ poisons everything. They are just making the point that atheists do bad things too. It's no different than if I were to point out that Hitler was a vegetarian. By doing that I wouldn't be trying to say that all vegetarians are as bad as Hitler.