Defectives was generally the term prior to like 1845, which is when Howe published “on the causes of idiocy”. That led to more classification
Idiot was what we could call severe intellectual disability. Requiring 24 hour care but some muscular control, cognitive, and speech capabilities. Use was phased out in the late 19th century because it had become pejorative
Fool was a subcategory of idiot with more significant impairment of reasoning and speech skills. This became pejorative and was phased out.
Simpleton was moderate intellectual disability. Some degree of functioning, capacity for speech, motor and reasoning skills, but required assistance with tasks. This also become pejorative and was phased out (see a pattern). This was replaced with several terms, including feeble minded, imbecile, and moron, which were also in turn phased out.
at one point in the 19th century there was a distinction when symptoms of dementia set in. If you got what we would now call early onset dementia, it was called “amentia”. By the early 20th century “ament” was kind of a catch all for “idiots, imbeciles, and feeble minded”
There was also “cretin” which was originally supposed to be a kindness for all intellectually disabled people as it means “Christian” in French or something, but it also became pejorative
Another super racist one was mongoloid/mongolism which was specifically for Down’s syndrome. This is because, no joke, John Down thought people with down syndrome looked like Mongolians. His reward for his racism was the condition bears his name forever, apparently. This was only changed because Mongolia had to petition the WHO to change it because it was offensive
Imo instead of policing language we should maybe recognize that the intentionality behind the use of these terms is what the problem is.
Saying the word “retarded” does not have to be inherently offensive. Describing something that is slowed or hindered as retarded is accurate. Using retarded as a pejorative term makes you a dick, sure. But if I go through all the effort to change “retarded” to “intellectually disabled” guess what happens? The same thing that has happened for the past 175+ years. The people who have used the terms in the pejorative sense will quickly adapt, making your efforts to police language pointless unless you intended to enrich their lexicon.
If you consider actions that could actually be meaningful for the individual it would be something that would address the harm caused by pejorative use. That’s a challenging road to go down (imagine criminal penalties: middle schools would be ghost towns!). we want to feel like we do something though so we instead do this, which is pointless.
That said if the disorder was named by an old racist based on his racism then by all means change it up but maybe don’t memorialize him when you do it. That doesn’t come up as much anymore, thankfully
It’s funny because moron used to be a medical term as well.
These actually had distinction:
Defectives was generally the term prior to like 1845, which is when Howe published “on the causes of idiocy”. That led to more classification
Idiot was what we could call severe intellectual disability. Requiring 24 hour care but some muscular control, cognitive, and speech capabilities. Use was phased out in the late 19th century because it had become pejorative
Fool was a subcategory of idiot with more significant impairment of reasoning and speech skills. This became pejorative and was phased out.
Simpleton was moderate intellectual disability. Some degree of functioning, capacity for speech, motor and reasoning skills, but required assistance with tasks. This also become pejorative and was phased out (see a pattern). This was replaced with several terms, including feeble minded, imbecile, and moron, which were also in turn phased out.
at one point in the 19th century there was a distinction when symptoms of dementia set in. If you got what we would now call early onset dementia, it was called “amentia”. By the early 20th century “ament” was kind of a catch all for “idiots, imbeciles, and feeble minded”
There was also “cretin” which was originally supposed to be a kindness for all intellectually disabled people as it means “Christian” in French or something, but it also became pejorative
Another super racist one was mongoloid/mongolism which was specifically for Down’s syndrome. This is because, no joke, John Down thought people with down syndrome looked like Mongolians. His reward for his racism was the condition bears his name forever, apparently. This was only changed because Mongolia had to petition the WHO to change it because it was offensive
Imo instead of policing language we should maybe recognize that the intentionality behind the use of these terms is what the problem is.
Saying the word “retarded” does not have to be inherently offensive. Describing something that is slowed or hindered as retarded is accurate. Using retarded as a pejorative term makes you a dick, sure. But if I go through all the effort to change “retarded” to “intellectually disabled” guess what happens? The same thing that has happened for the past 175+ years. The people who have used the terms in the pejorative sense will quickly adapt, making your efforts to police language pointless unless you intended to enrich their lexicon.
If you consider actions that could actually be meaningful for the individual it would be something that would address the harm caused by pejorative use. That’s a challenging road to go down (imagine criminal penalties: middle schools would be ghost towns!). we want to feel like we do something though so we instead do this, which is pointless.
That said if the disorder was named by an old racist based on his racism then by all means change it up but maybe don’t memorialize him when you do it. That doesn’t come up as much anymore, thankfully