perivoidant-deactivated20170525 asked:

okay, no, sorry, this is one I really can’t get on board with. slurs are words that denigrate a social category, and “stupid people” is not a social category. there is no medical, legal, or socially accepted definition of what “stupid” is, and to my knowledge there never has been. “retard”, in contrast, is considered a slur because its meaning is equivalent to “mentally disabled person”, and “mentally disabled people” is a social category. it is a group which has both official and commonly understood definitions and membership, and which faces stereotyping, prejudice, and mistreatment.

if a person is mistreated by someone who believes them to be mentally disabled, that mistreatment is probably the result of the aggressor having certain beliefs about what mental disability is and what mentally disabled people are like. calling someone a “retard” is an example of such mistreatment. on the other hand, if a person is treated badly by someone who considers them “stupid”, that treatment is almost certainly based on an individual assessment. if I call a person “stupid”, it’s not because I think they belong to some vast category of stupid people, it’s because I’ve interacted with them and they’ve proven themselves ignorant or irrational. it’s not wrong for me to judge or dislike them based on that, and frankly, it’s not wrong for me to insult them. even if you think I should be kinder, that doesn’t make the word a slur.

you could make an argument that “idiot” is a slur, since it did, in the past, have a legal definition encompassing mental disability and psychological health issues. personally, I would argue that that meaning has been out of use for so long, and we have for so many years recognized “idiot” as an individual assessment of a person, that it can’t be consider a slur anymore; but I can at least see why people would disagree with me on that one. but there are no grounds for considering “stupid” or “dumbass” a slur because they simply don’t apply to groups or categories at all.

tl;dr: not all insults are slurs. an adjective can be unfavorable without being an affront to social justice.