One that sometimes gives me pause is Spaz.
For a generation of UK people Spaz or Spastic was an incredibly offensive term of abuse based on the once common description of someone with Cerebral Palsy.
But it’s a harmless term of general clumsiness in America.
I would watch shows like Buffy which were for their time quite progressive and then they would use the term Spaz and I would feel weirdly uncomfortable.
From the same epoch was Mong (an offensive term for someone with Downs Syndrome) or Joey (Origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Deacon). I recently caught someone my age using Mr Deacon’s name as nostalgic term of abuse in one of his youtube videos, the bloke may have been dead since the 1980s but it still feels wrong to me.
Post #918986
- Author
- Bingowings
- Parent topic
- Offensive Words
- Link to post in topic
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/918986/action/topic#918986
- Date created
- 20-Mar-2016, 1:42 PM