Quote:
Originally Posted by graciegirl
I had heard this from JHooman before and she is a real person with real feelings. A wonderfully real person, a brave and funny one who is married to another wonderful soul.
I do feel with great respect to her a lot of people have stopped using that term on this forum but I don't think many really relate it to that awful event anymore.
I hope someday we can find a flip, crazy term that means that we have become intoxicated and swayed into a life changing event.
One that doesn't hurt anyone, but that in itself is very hard with so many, many, many years of life with so many, many circumstances represented by the readers of this forum..
I think we should all try to not take offense if the intent was not ill intended. AND to not GIVE offense if we know that someone would be hurt.
And I know a family that has a good reason to be offended when people casually use the word "retarded" but they also know that most people do NOT intend to hurt. Anyone.
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Gracie, I think the word retarded is extremely offensive and is to most people today. It wasn't for a long, long time and was completely acceptable in social situations. Fortunately, it no longer is even though it is used in legal and psychiatric circles because it has a very specific meaning.
I don't think jhooman nor I take offense when people speak of drinking the Kool Aid, we just feel like we've been punched in the gut. You're right, to most it is an innocent phrase and means nothing. To most from the Bay Area, it is a painful reminder of an obscene event. How it somehow became an acceptable term is beyond me. How any term that relates directly back to a tragedy can become part of common vernacular is well beyond my understanding and, quite honestly, not something I even want to understand.
So, I'm sorry for stepping on someone's fun and not finding any humor in hearing the phrase, but it is what it is to me and to many others. To be told we should grin and bear with it and just accept it is not something I understand. I can't imagine anyone would think it would be acceptable to use a phrase specific to the Holocaust or Lockerbie or 9-11 as a form of humor, yet, drinking the Kool Aid relates to a very specific, tragic event and has become a way to joke about one blindly following and acting without thinking. Maybe we should start speaking of surviving something trivial as hanging in a tree, as several did during the tsunami?