Haha yeah I only heard about in the last couple years. It’s wild what hierarchies are built into this language I mostly agree with you by the way - I think I use “moron” and “idiot” sometimes because they seem antiquated enough? They are “spazz” and r- adjacent though, so it’s good to hear your pov
so yeah those particular words (+my OP)= unchanged from their worst [eugenicist] meaning, in fact they go together in a literal eugenicist way of signifying degrees of 'low intel' +for ppl genx/younger we learned em as slurs bc we learned racism +ableism (the idea of ranking intellect=super both) 1/
'IQ' as a concept is a nightmare whose intent +use is about delineating 'human/subhuman/superhuman' and every slur we know based on the 'smart/stupid' scale is inextricable from the eugenicists who deliberately shaped a ytsupremacist/ableist/etc society! which ofc is very much not, alas, archaic 2/
3/3 anyway here's a couple of links re that enduring history, just scratching surface but i hope decent entry to rethink how u/we handle this kinda language :) link #1 (
*brace for pretty shocking deployment of r-words in that article, but it's educational as a recentish history doc link #2
finally tbh a LOT of even *current* framing of intellect relies on whether ppl have a 'high' enough one to be 'useful' so it's my pet peeve bc there is 0 way u can be placing less value on 'lower' intellect without aligning with nazideology. it just feels 'normal' bc culture is full of those ideas😭
*don't get me started on where ideas about "normal" come from/go to lol