Discussion/Off-Topic Post #2

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For things that are neither prompts nor questions for the mod. Talk about the show, ask for help finding lost prompts, organise fic fests or whatever else you want. Discuss away!

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Comments

Re: The word "crazy" is offensive?

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't said so elsewhere on the meme, and I'm only saying so because you explicitly asked, but I do consider "crazy" to be an ableist slur. I have three diagnosed mental illnesses. I have been briefly, unnecessarily (I was there voluntarily to seek help), forcibly hospitalized for my mental illnesses. And I now work in the mental health field.

The word originally meant "full of cracks" and within a century it evolved to mean "of unsound mind", with the obvious connotation that the "crazy" person was broken. Certainly, the word has continued to evolve, but so have many other slurs.

Practically no one who says "gypped" these days is talking about the Roma, but that doesn't make the word any less a slur. If I say that my lender really jewed me over by talking me out of the fixed-rate mortgage, my lender doesn't have to be Jewish for that to be a horrible thing to say.

Re: The word "crazy" is offensive?

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the reply, this makes perfect sense to me.

So, what about the other words and phrases metioned? Is referring to someone as "going nuts" or "going bonkers" also offensive? Based on your response, my tentative guess would be yes, because those words are basically standins for the word "crazy."

I'm just trying to figure out where the line is here. I'm a writer, and I don't want to offend someone by writing something like "he was going out of his mind with worry" or "he went nuts looking for his keys" if those are offensive terms.