Germany set to oust 'stigmatizing' terms around disability from penal code

Deutsche Welle ^ | 03.11.2020 | Elliot Douglas

[Olog-hai]

The German Cabinet met on Wednesday to discuss the removal of terms like “mentally perverted” and “weak in the mind” from the criminal code, where they are used to refer to disabled people

The government’s commissioner for people with disabilities, Jürgen Dusel, welcomed the possible change, saying such terms were “stigmatizing, discriminatory and dehumanizing.”

“Terms like ‘mental perversion’ [seelische Abartigkeit] and ‘mentally weak’ [schwachsinnig] are simply crude,” he told DW.

“People outside of legal and political circles often don’t know that these terms exist in the criminal code,” he added.

Since his appointment to the office in May 2018, he has petitioned to have the offensive terms changed, stressing the importance of this issue because “language shapes our thoughts and the way we think.” …

[real saxophonist]

/a>

'Stigmatising', huh-huh-... Stimulating... huh huh...

Yeah... Penal.. heh-heh...

[pepsionice]

I used to live in a German village that had what you’d refer to as the ‘village-idiot’....it was a guy whose IQ level was probably in the 60-to-70 range. He worked as the bottle-return guy for the grocery. He was never given any responsibility other than racking and stacking bottles. Maybe they can write some code so ‘idiot’ doesn’t exist, but they will simply invent a new word out of thin air to describe the situation.

[dljordan]

“I used to live in a German village that had what you’d refer to as the ‘village-idiot’....it was a guy whose IQ level was probably in the 60-to-70 range.”

We’re importing millions of those but we call them ‘refugees’.

[Olog-hai]

Since his appointment to the office in May 2018, he (Jürgen Dusel) has petitioned to have the offensive terms changed, stressing the importance of this issue because “language shapes our thoughts and the way we think.” …

Another politician attempting to take control of the language to take control of thought? How much of a leap from that to „Volksgenoße, das ist auch dein Geld‟?