51 Comments
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Karen Lynch's avatar

Wow, what a refreshing essay. I just gave a big sigh, relaxed, and I’m going to start using the language I want to. Thank you to the author!!

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

You're welcome and thank you! More power to you. Be blessed.

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Deep Turning's avatar

And thanks to Kimberly for freeing our private parts of speech.

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Irene The Insomniac's avatar

Bang on about the humour (and everything else)! We need to be able to laugh at each other and ourselves about our differences in order to see we are all human. Great essay! Thank you!

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Thanks Irene!

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ArtemisForestFairy's avatar

I never stopped using the word retarded. I used twice today.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Good for you! I was shamed into not using it for awhile. Then I realized I was causing more damage by avoiding the word than just using it.

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ArtemisForestFairy's avatar

if it is an accurate description, it should be used. nothing wrong in speaking with precision.

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Ahmed’s Stack of Subs's avatar

beans and franks! o7

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Teri ORourke's avatar

I loved this!

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Thank you!

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CStone's avatar

Great post!! I fully agree.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Thank you! I think this post's time has come.

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Edmund Muller's avatar

I'm autistic and I have called people retarded many times in the past.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

I believe myself to be autistic. Undiagnosed, plus I'm an excellent masker as girls/women often are. I have an essay on autism and the perception of the subtle planes you might find interesting: https://kimberlysteele.substack.com/p/autism-and-the-subtle-planes

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DEK's avatar

Don’t pave the world; put on a pair of boots.

(Not sure where I got this from, but I like it.)

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Love it. Thank you.

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Brawndo's avatar

Woke isn’t going anywhere. It’s always 3 steps forward one set back. Rinse and repeat. The racial aspects of wokism isn’t even the worst part, all people are inclined to in group preferences and othering. The sexual deviancy and corruption of our kids are far and above worse than racial segregation of culture.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

It will always be around, but it is already getting less traction than it did a couple of years ago. I agree that sexualizing children is the absolute worst. Personally, I would decapitate pedos as I mention in this essay: https://kimberlysteele.substack.com/p/pornography-pound-town-and-the-pursuit but I am not Queen of the World and that is probably for the best.

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Freeq O’Nature's avatar

I like how you go back to pronouns we learned in school: if it’s not male or female, it’s an it. And yeah, that gets me in hot water sometimes but who cares.

Thank you for this! I refuse to give up my language.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

I love your handle, it made me chuckle. Exactly -- I did not sit through hours of English or what we used to call Reading class for no reason. He, she, or it: those are the choices.

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C. H. Smiles's avatar

Shane Gillis used the retard word on SNL last night. The tide is definitely shifting

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Wow. Thank you for the report -- I don't own a TV so I never would have known. It's no small thing.

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C. H. Smiles's avatar

I don’t own one either, watched it on my computer. Haven’t watched it in many years, and it’s not very funny but does suggest a change in the right direction.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

I randomly caught an SNL skit being pushed via social media about "big dumb cups" with Dakota Johnson coming off as an awkward and vacuous blow up doll among the cringe, D-list SNL wannabe comediennes. I believe it was supposed to rally outrage about the Stanley Cup trend. Isn't that show still on for an hour and a half a week? They should just throw in the towel already.... actually they should have quit thirty years ago!

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Scott's avatar

The Jerk was from the era where you either saw a movie in the theatre or waited until it come on network TV.

And movies were edited for TV. Caddyshack’s final line “hey, everybody, let’s all go get laid!!” became “hey, let’s all go take a shower!”

And Navin R. Johnson’s dog, Shithead, became “Stupid”.

It’s like decreeing that calling him”Shithead” is too funny so we have to dial the Laff meter back a bit so it’s just a chuckle.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

That is funny! I wonder if the DVDs have the original stuff or if they are the TV versions?

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jacob silverman's avatar

Dear Kimberly Steele: I am pretty much 100% in agreement with this post. I seem to have felt that way before reading even one sentence. I like Steve Martin so that helped me. Now I have read over a FULL paragraph. One of the most confusing things to me, ever, was to keep hearing our Afro-American brothers and sisters calling they selves "niggers," esp. in rap music but also in real life.

After an extremely long time I have decided I think I am beginning to better understand it. Everyone looks at them that way and, since they are not as "political-minded" as woke whites are, they clearly understand they are not the dominant persons out there.

Well those are some of my struggles to understand life. I got to your "blog" (please! What do you call substack newsletters becase those two words do not work well for me) through Amy Sukwan whose posting I like and whom I just done subscribed to. I "subscribed" means something like I "submitted" to her and I let her dominate my life from this time forwrads. She now has my email address, and I do not use fake email addresses so Amy Sukwan could actually email me. I voluntarily supplied her with my email so she can force her newsletters into my box but ya gotta read something, don't one?

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Thanks Jacob! Anyone who remembers The Jerk, Spaceballs, Airplane, Blazing Saddles, and the like remembers an era where people did not have poles up their behinds about poking fun at various races. The Jerk makes fun of every race depicted in it: fair is fair and nobody is “safe” or off-limits. It was a much healthier way to be. As for Amy’s blog being spammed into your inbox, that is very much a Substack problem and not anything Amy can control. No matter what my settings are, Substack spams me with at least a dozen unwanted emails a day. I like Substack because it does allow people to subscribe — unlike Dreamwidth (the blog you most likely surfed to in order to read my duplicated posts) which gives people no way of finding out I made a new blog entry. Both Substack and Dreamwidth have their benefits… and drawbacks!

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this little authoritarian's avatar

On the use of the word "retarded", I 'd recommend a clip of comedian Doug Stanhope about the "euphemism treadmill."

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Hot History's avatar

Yes, bring back the early 2000s! Better days, which weren't so rigidly woke and politically correct, hahaha.

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

We swung from one end of a pendulum to the other and only stayed in the middle the tiniest interval.

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Hot History's avatar

Social media is to blame. That's when everything went super woke. Groupthink at its finest.

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blackcatnamedOlivia's avatar

I wish you could come to the school where I sub/teach. There are young women there (13-17-ish) who think claiming their pronouns is an act of rebellion, & I am a fuddy duddy old lady because I forget sometimes & call them "she" instead of "they." The joke on them is I am post-post-modern & spent more years doing Left political analysis than they've been alive. I think Judith Butler is an elitist b****. I do wish I had the guts to call them "it," but they'd interpret it as meanness on my part, not subverting the idiocracy. But you they wouldn't dare mess with ...

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

My sympathies to you! I don't think I could do your job; I would be too angry. I can be as mean as cat dirt, as you can probably tell, but being mean to a young girl by calling her "it" would just make her meaner. That said, I can see myself getting fired over a refusal to call a young woman "them" regardless of how many personalities she was channelling at once.

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I am not your Other's avatar

Mean as cat dirt. Haha

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Kimberly Steele's avatar

Also, love the photo of your kitty! Your kitty reminds me of the love of my life, my black cat Kiki who was with me from 2007-2021.

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