Ask Lemmy

As a millennial, we grew up with the phrases "that's gay" and "that's retarded" (which meant the same thing) and obviously we had to learn to phase those out.

While I never once meant "that's disabled" or "that's homosexual"... We obviously don't say that stuff anymore.

Oh god I've got so many.

My latest one is remembering that you can't really fight fire with fire, unless you're being extraordinarily strategic about it. Attacking bigotry for instance, simply makes it stronger, as it feeds off strife and fear themselves. Remembering why Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high. Not out of any great preference, but out of a lack of viable alternatives in her situation.

You can't actually "fight" it. You can exclude it. You can corral it. You can trick it into running itself off a cliff. But you can't actually destroy it by combating it directly, because it feeds off the combat, just like Trump does. You have to outmaneuver it.

I was totally headed down the alt right pipeline. Throughout highschool I was depressed and lonely. I lost my faith which sent me to the online atheist community which ran out of content, so they started attacking feminists/sjws. I also just distrusted women because I got molested as a child by one and no one took it seriously. This had primed me to just eat up all the content from the MRA/antifeminist crowd. The youtube algorithm, which at the time was absolutely unhinged, pushed me to racist content which I just parroted because I didn't know any better. I didn't understand why things were the way things were, but I was taught who to blame.

What saved me was getting friends. These friends shattered my preconceptions, which sent me to the library, which got me talking to more people, which got me reading more. By the time I finished high school I just became utterly incompatible with the person I used to be. I couldn't take back the things I said to people, but I could join their protests and speak up for them when I heard some heinous shit being said.

I no longer describe anything as 'lame' or 'retarded' or 'spaz' or their variants. It makes me sad ableism is so ingrained in even the most inclusive spaces even though the same argument has removed the use of 'gay' for the same reasons.

I also avoid dark or dry humour unless I'm confident the people I am talking to know it's absurdist and not a serious opinion. I don't always succeed at this.

In the 90s, anything bad was "retarded" or "gay". Those don't really fly anymore.

Gay people. When I was much much younger I remember telling a friend that while I didn't have a problem with people doing their own thing, I still didn't like gay people. My friend said I hope when you have kids they're gay. Guess what happened and how I feel about it now. I was such a dumb ass. When my kid came out to me I wept for joy at their bravery. I don't take hard stances on my opinions now and try to remember that my perspective isn't ultimate or necessarily right. There's always a chance that I'm wrong.

I was raised in a fundamental christian extremest environment and stuck with it for 30 years. I'm now a card carrying atheist.

Used to use the word 'retarded' to describe people doing dumb things. Then I realized that not only was it hurtful to people with Down Syndrome - it was inaccurate ... as a person with Down Syndrome would not do the things I was attributing to the phrase.

I take my coffee black, like my men. A line from the movie Airplane. My wife made me quit saying it, that servers today don't know the movie, and so it's just creepy instead of funny now. :(

Growing up in the 90s, we would always say things were 'gay' even though we had nothing against homosexuals. It was just the thing to say. Yeah, definitely should not have been saying that.

I used to be a full on incel, it's an easy hole to fall into if you hate yourself. I had to take a good look at myself and realize that I was the problem, and now I'm a far happier person

I don't have any regrets about making dead baby jokes when I was much younger, but definitely won't be making them now with an 8 month old daughter.

I've done ny best to shake out ableist, racist, and other harmful speech.

We may be able to speak freely but we are all held accountable for the words we say

I practice meditation quite seriously, but I stopped telling people I'm spiritual. I really am not interested in ghost stories, gods and angels at all.

I used to use “gay “ or “ retarded “ as negative adjectives, I no longer do because using someone’s being in a negative light is really mean, and I try not to be mean.

I used to play extreme music some 15 years ago and by God 80% of our humour was variations of calling each other f*gs. It's quite sad cause we didn't have an ounce of préjudice in us we were just wankers with dead end jobs and shit guitars. We met up with the boys a couple months ago and reminisced there was a lot of cringing...

Racism.

While I was never into it myself thankfully, I let it pass a lot in my family. Being in university changed that though, it just feels too uncomfortable to have my family say racist shit in front of me while I have so many people of color as friends. I still struggle to call out their transphobia though but that is due to my own identity issues.

Something rather cringe and obnoxious in hindsight was the over use of the word "ocd" It was quite common in media and in my circles for somebody to say "I'm so ocd" when referring to some perfectly normal thing they do like tidying bookcases and organising things.

It's pretty cringy now and I'd never say it now. I feel bad for saying it... but hey personal growth I guess. I was in school/college at the time too so it was a long time ago. There were a lot of things that were common at school that I used to say that are definitely not pc nowadays and I accept that. I don't pretend to be a perfect and morally righteous invidual. I have flaws as much as the next person

Grew up in the 80s and 90s. As progressive and openminded as I thought I was then...holy shit there are a lot of words and phrases I won't touch any more because they sound archaic, racist, mysoginistic, or hateful today. Back then they were perfectly acceptable everyday things no one would bat an eye at. It does make me happy that at least in this small arena we seem to have made progress as a society.

(Should add that this is from a US perspective)

I worked with someone who takes care of their older brother.

I don’t use the word “ret*rd” as a dig at someone anymore.

I honestly never used it as anything but playful banter but that word invokes a lot more meaning than I ever intended.

I know that now.

I graduated high school in 2004. So many slurs back then. So uncomfortable with them now. Good riddance.

Nothing. Everything is still funny in the right or wrong context.

smoking. growing up in the 80s, everyone was smoking - in bars, restaurants, airplanes, even hospitals.

everyone I knew, their parents smoked tobacco or chewed tobacco. I started smoking myself, around 16 or so, as did all of my friends & even people I didn't associate with. it was just part of the culture - and yes, I was aware at the time that it was a dangerous activity, but kids are stupid.

and then around 15 years ago or so everyone stopped or switched to vaping. now I really only see homeless people smoking. it's quite the culture shift.

I never realized how frequently I called things “lame” until I said it in front of a coworker paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. Hopefully he understood, but it just took that one glance telling me he heard it for me to stop. To try to stop.

Misogyny in books. I was reading a Morse book. He described the woman of a couple from dyed hair to hammer toes but had no physical description of her husband whatsoever.

Putting people down and using ableism as the punchline in a joke/retort/comment

I played Modern Warfare 2 at 16. That's all I need to say. Not proud of my early internet years

For a brief period in elementary school I used to think that's it's okay to litter - and not by example of my parents (they're fine) but rather because everyone else was doing it.

I'm not proud that I was doing it, but I'm glad that I quickly grew out of it - so much that it now makes my blood boil seeing someone on the street littering (almost to the point of me wanting to slap them across the face).

I know it's controversial, but moving away from "guys" when I address a group and more or less defaulting to "they" when referring to people I don't know.

They was practical, because I deal with so many students exclusively via email, and the majority of them have foreign names where I'd never be able to place a gender anyways if they didn't state pronouns.

Switching away from guys was natural, but I'm in a very male dominated field and I'd heard from women students in my undergrad that they did feel just a bit excluded in a class setting (not as much social settings) when the professor addresses a room of 120 men and 5 women with "Guys", so it just more or less fell to the side in favour of folks/everyone.

I'm not as naive. There usually is no simple solution to complex problems and when someone suggest one it's almost always wrong by definition. It's a messy world and sometimes the right thing to do sounds counter-intuitive

I've become less and less tolerant of antisocial behaviour, like littering or being rude to people at the forefront of businesses (bus drivers, cashiers and the like). It's not easy to step up and publicly shame people but I'm getting there.

Quite a few. I grew up in a conservative, racist family. It took me a long time to unwind the problematic casual phrases I grew up with. I'm not proud of it, and I occasionally cringe looking backwards. I realize now the tremendous weight and damage those phrases could do. Now I just try to be better day by day, and to make sure I don't perpetuate those damaging habits in my own children.