VS DSM-5

—
—
—
—

Why involve people with special needs?

—

Is this form of insult something you’d recommend to others?

—

Retardation is a state of relative slowness. It means that some people’s minds are not as biologically privileged as yours, not even possessing a fraction of such faculties as those enjoyed by this man you wish to verbally assault. Mental retardation fits, especially since in some cases the processing really degrades, grows slower over time, much to the detriment of the person. The category is useful in the sense that it seeks to distinguish various kinds of brain disadvantages: congenital as opposed to damages from accidents or poisoning, or mistakes in rearing, such as misdiagnosing an otherwise normal thinker as delayed when in fact he/she is deaf or dyslexic. The treatments and educational styles differ per case, and so a word like retardation will have to stay. If you call someone with awful manners tagabundok, you’d be contributing to negative attitudes toward certain people whether you intend to or not. Will you consider something like this happening to retard? If I ask you a favor, will you refrain from advancing this unhelpful, insensitive culture of the intelligentsia?

—

Thank you. You’re among the keenest I’ve met, so this counts as a big thing for me. Wish you all the best.

—