I think we should ban British “academics” instead of harmless words.
An academic in the UK says that the insults “geek” and “nerd” should be criminalized as hate crimes because they cause distress to people with high IQs.
No, you’re not reading the Onion.
Psychology lecturer and psychotherapist Dr Sonja Falck says that “anti-IQ” insults are hate crime’s last “taboo” and that they should be legally treated the same way as homophobic and racist slurs.
During her research, Falck says that people being called “nerd” or “egghead” or “brainiac” contributed to them “being set apart as being different to others and feeling like they’re a misfit and they don’t belong.”
So in other words, these individuals developed high IQs partly as a result of being taunted as “nerds,” suggesting the insults actually helped them in life.
However, Falck claims that such terms cause emotional trauma and is calling for “legislative action” to treat the insults ‘nerd’, ‘brainbox’, ‘geek’, ‘egg-head’, ‘smart-arse’, ‘dweeb’ and ‘smarty-pants’ as hate crimes.
“The N-word was common parlance in the UK until at least the 1960s. Other insulting slurs about age, disability, religion and gender identity remained in widespread use until relatively recently,” said Falck.
“Society at the time turned a blind eye to their impact by passing them off as harmless banter,” she added.
Presumably, once “nerd” and “geek” are banned, “dumb” and “stupid” will have to be banned too.
In fact, all insults of any nature that may hurt someone’s feelings should naturally result in the person who used them being locked up in a cage.
That sounds like progress to me!