These are mostly from
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/pol ... ty-related, the New York Times and Wikipedia.
RedGlitter;485631 wrote: A couple times today I've had cause to wonder about this.
When I said "mentally retarded" another member pointed out that "special needs" was more appropriate. Some people say "mentally disabled." Some say "slow." What the heck is the right and decent term to use when you are describing this condition? Not the people, as they are people. Just the condition or disability they may have.Backward, imbecile, moron, and idiot became mentally retarded, which in turn became slow, then mentally handicapped, to mentally disabled, on to mentally challenged, and now developmentally disabled. Modern terms used by health and social care professionals include special needs and learning difficulties, although both of those terms are more general than mentally retarded.RedGlitter;485631 wrote: Also today another one came up. What is the acceptable term to describe one who is homosexual? I cringe at the word "queer" although I hear it being used in the gay crowd; I don't really care for the word gay and when you're describing a hetero person, why do we say "straight?" To me that infers that a homosexual person is somehow "crooked" and that makes me uncomfortable.Up until the sexual revolution of the 1960s there were no widely known terms for describing the people in these groups other than the derogatory terms used by the straight community; third gender, in use before the second world war, fell out of use after it. As people began organizing for their sexual rights they needed a term that would say who they were in a positive way. (Compare heteronormativity)
The first term used, homosexual, carried too much negative baggage and was replaced by gay. As lesbians forged their own identity, the term gay and lesbian became more common. This was soon followed by bisexual and transgender people also asking for recognition as legitimate categories within the larger community. However, after the initial euphoria of the beginnings of the Stonewall Rebellion wore off, starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a change in perception and some gay men and lesbian women were not very accepting of bisexual or transgender people, and disparaged them.
They accused transsexual people of as acting out stereotypes; and bisexual people of actually being gay men or lesbian women who were simply too afraid to "come out".
Not until the 1990s did it become common for people to speak of "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people" with equal respect within the movement.
LGBT became increasingly common from the mid 1990s and as of 2005, LGBT has become so mainstream that it has been adopted by the majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community centers and the LGBT press in most English-speaking countries.RedGlitter;485631 wrote: Fat. I am large and I can call myself fat if I want to or a myriad of things to describe my weight. But if someone else uses fat toward me, that's a fighting word.
I prefer plump, big, heavy, voluptuous, etc. Overweight is okay but not that great. Do we even have a socially acceptable word for this?A fat person became a heavyset, large or a person of substance. Some of these replacements have fallen out of favour, replaced by overweight or obese. However, with the rise of body-positivity and 'fat-positivity,' the simple term 'fat' has been reclaimed. 'Overweight' and 'obese' have connotations of disorder, sickness or disease; fat-positive theory states that people are of all different sizes and size is never an absolute indication of health or wellness.RedGlitter;485631 wrote: Do American Indians generally prefer to be Amer. Indian...Indian...Native American or something else? Our local tribe hates being called Native American an dthey use Indian exclusively. So who's to know??Indians became Native Americans or Indigenous People in the United States. American Indians and Amerindians are also gaining popularity. Similarly, they became known in Canada as First Nations or aboriginal peoples.RedGlitter;485631 wrote: I could stretch the ethnic origin questions farther but maybe someone could just throw in what they think the right words are for any ethnicity. Should we say Hispanic, Mexican, Latino? What is preferred?Hispanic, which was previously the politically correct term, has largely been replaced by Latino or, in some cases, Chicano.RedGlitter;485631 wrote: Are white people white or Caucasian? I prefer white but that's just me.
And theres kind of a point in there- with everyone being different in the world, how can we decide on terms that offend no one or at least few??
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. ... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. ... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else."
That's Theodore Roosevelt speaking in 1915. It still looks OK to me.
