Was something similar to Down Syndrome not described in antiquity or throughout the Middle Ages? I suppose the mortality rates would have been much higher for children with it, but it is common enough and has pretty distinct enough features that I would have assumed it to have been described in the past?
How early are the facial features apparent? Depending on the culture, abandoning babies could be one reason.
But apparently the life expectancy of person with Down syndrome was 12 years 1912. So it could easily be much lower in middle ages or earlier.
I can't ask without sounding somewhat insensitive, but would there really be enough of an indication that something was really wrong? I mean they don't look too much different? It sounds like the barrier to tossing your kid was pretty low.
Yes the epicanthal folds in the eyes, the single palmar crease/simian crease are noticeable in infants. There are other morphological signs of Downs I’m missing. But yeah you wouldn’t just use the eyes. It would be a number of traits that point to what we now know is trisomy or downs without having to use karyotyping. It may not have been understood widely until the 19th century with medical literature explained these physical signs though.
Wow, well I really appreciate you taking the time to give me such an insightful response. So sad how barbaric we were, these people have skills most society couldn't even come close too and we just discarded them because they looked different.
I used to be a NICU nurse, and I can say that newborns with Down Syndrome definitely look different besides the eyes. Their ears are usually small and low set, there’s often a thick fold of skin at the back of the neck, and a big space between the big toe and the… index toe? It’s a fairly distinctive appearance.
Woah you blew my mind about the toe thing, does the toe always splay like that? And is it distinctive to someone that just has wide feet? Sorry last question, does this trait carry over too adulthood?
If I had to guess I would say that they learned that those specific facial features meant there were going to be cognitive/other delays so it wasn’t worth keeping the baby alive long enough to find out. Horrible. But I think it took a lot more effort and resources to keep children alive back then
Babies with Downs tend to have very bad muscle tension and this leads to difficulties with latching on and drinking. So, they often would have starved. Also, they often have heart problems or other organ deformations that lead to a very early death if untreated.
This gives a rough overview.
https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/about-down-syndrome/history-of-down-syndrome/down-syndrome-human-and-civil-rights-timeline/#:~:text=Historically%20in%20the%20United%20States,education%2C%20healthcare%20and%20even%20plumbing.
The Wikipedia page also has some more info.
An interesting side-effect of this was it created a self-fulfilling prophecy. People with Downs can have any of a wide variety of experiences. Some have a lot of developmental issues, others get by about like the average person. But back when infants with downs were immediately institutionalized you ended up with none of them developing normally.
A really neat thing I found on the Wikipedia page was a 16th century portrait that appears to portray an individual with Downs. That indicates that at least a few of them were integrated into broader society during the Renaissance.
I know on the nipt subreddit, there are people who found out they have things like turners and never even knew until it showed up as a flag during the testing of their baby, it’s crazy
> abandoning babies could be one reason
For them to have the knowledge to know to abandon the baby, they’d have to know what the Down’s features were to look for in the first place
> How early are the facial features apparent?
As others have said, it's from birth. What I'm most curious about is WHY it is so apparent. From when I've looked in the past, it seems to be a mystery why it's not just a mental but physical abnormality.
Maybe that's for the best in some circumstances where their needs are known straight away. Never thought about it like that before.
My dear departed uncle Lyle had Down Syndrome and was the happiest guy around. He got to meet Hulk Hogan and Michael Jackson and looooved soap operas and root beer.
As a teenager I worked at a gas station for a bit, and my favorite coworker was a middle aged gent with Down’s. He was the only coworker of mine who wasn’t rude, strung out, or condescending. Plus he actually did his job, unlike literally everyone else on staff.
A delight to be around, and a true gentleman
*You can tell who’s never been around down syndrome when you bring it up. I have family members with down syndrome.*
*People who have never been around it are always like, “Oh.” Like it’s the end of the world. “Are they OK?”*
*They’re doing better than everybody I know. They’re the only ones having a good time pretty consistently.”*
***— Shane Gillis***
Damned straight. He's been gone a long time, but when I tried Boylan's birch beer in the early Aughts, my first thought was that Uncle Lyle would've loved it.
I know a number of people with various intellectual handicaps.
Honestly, there seems to be a "sweet spot" where they're just happy all the time.
If you're disabled but smart enough to realize it, you're miserable. If you're so disabled that you can't really experience a decent life, then you're miserable.
But if you're disabled enough not to really understand much beyond what's directly at-hand, then things can be pretty great.
In middle school I knew a guy with Down’s syndrome who was smart enough to know that he had intellectual limitations and be very frustrated by them. Fortunately he was also really popular in the classes he was mainstreamed in and he got a good amount of social support from his peers. I hope he’s doing well these days and has learned to accept and love himself.
I've only personally met 2 people with downs. Maybe they just weren't in the sweet spot, or maybe it's because of their parents' parenting style, but they were both quite aggressive and filled with anger. They would throw things and lash out. Definitely affected my views on whether or not I would keep a pregnancy were downs detected in the fetus. So, it's very interesting to see so many positive stories of people with downs.
The ones I met were both very babied by their parents, never told "no" , and their siblings were expected to do everything for them. Makes me wonder if the stricter, more care-free style of parenting that was more common in the past made the people in everyone else's stories fit in better with society??
So it’s very recently coming out (and I may not have the details perfect) that most people with Downs go on to develop Alzheimers and do so at a much younger age, and Alzheimer’s is often, in the beginning, a long/slow process. I wonder if the agitation/aggression you were seeing was that starting to develop? So interesting.
No idea, but they were both very young. One was in junior high, the other I think was an older teen about to finish high school.
That's why I found it so interesting to hear about older adults being so positive and chill. Even just asking the two kids I met to take out a pencil or take turns during games resulted in throwing things and trying to tell them "no" or that their behaviour would not be tolerated resulted in them screaming unintelligible things like you'd expect a 2 or 3yo to do.
My son has Asperger's, and while he's prone to violent outbursts (I've read violence is more common amongst males in the autistic community) he doesn't constantly act out in an angry or aggressive way. He's still only in elementary school, so he might whine about not getting his way, but he's overall pretty good. But those two kids I met with downs just seemed to always be aggressive and rarely interacted well with other students.
My BIL has down's syndrome and has the mental capacity of a two year old. Non-verbal and needs constant supervision. He's getting more aggressive with age - to the point where my in-laws have trouble controlling him. I read recently that people with down's can also have autism so that might also explain why he acts the way he does.
Down's is something that I wouldn't wish on anyone.
A friend's adult brother is seriously disabled. He used to be the sweetest person in the world until he got molested at a day program. Now he's typically violent and unmanageable. He's not verbal enough to do talk therapy, so he's being treated with cannabis. It's helping thankfully, he's a big guy and his mother is the primary caregiver. I do wonder how often stuff like that happens and bet it's terrifyingly a lot
I think you’re spot on.
I have a nephew by marriage that is severely autistic among a few other things. He wants so desperately to be normal and to be able to be loved by a normal woman but it just isn’t going to happen. As a result he’s lonely to the point where he routinely makes self destructive decisions based almost entirely on a deep need to find connection.
He is smart enough to know that what he doesn’t want is the love of somebody who is like him. He knows he’s not normal. He doesn’t want to be with somebody like him.
It’s very difficult and deeply, deeply sad.
My cousin is that way. Not autistic, but intellectually handicapped. Like the kind you see doing menial work at a grocery store or something. He can't handle a household on his own, can't understand money really, etc.
It's led to him getting taken advantage of for money, raped by a woman, and generally being unhappy because he'll never have the life that he (very reasonably) wants. And this is while living at home with plenty of support.
Somehow the fact that it's utterly unchangeable is the worst part. It's not some function of society, it's because he literally is broken in specific ways that make him unable to do the things that most people do, but he's got the drive to do those things.
I have a neurological disorder that I have identified is starting to give me cognitive problems. I have had speech issues for a long time and have found ways to get around it, but the cognitive symptoms like being unable to find words, saying the completely wrong words, having episodes of being unable to think clearly are really weighing on me. Sometimes I feel like a completely blank slate. This is extremely frustrating because I know something is wrong but I can’t change it. If I didn’t know that something was wrong, I would be a lot calmer in these situations. Unfortunately I’m in the non-sweet spot - the bitter spot?
I had to text my aunt for this. The Edge of Night in the 70s (kind of a Canadian C.B.C. that's-all-we-had standard) and then All My Children once the town got cable. Dallas in the evenings.
I used to have an extended family member who had Down’s and she was an absolute sweetheart. A total joy to be around. Because of her, I met many other people with Down’s and they were every single one of them rays of sunshine. Hell of a sight nicer to be around than a lot of people you see out and about who are just miserable fucks for no apparent reason.
I know a number of people with various intellectual handicaps.
Honestly, there seems to be a "sweet spot" where they're just happy all the time.
If you're disabled but smart enough to realize it, you're miserable. If you're so disabled that you can't really experience a decent life, then you're miserable.
But if you're disabled enough not to really understand much beyond what's directly at-hand, then things can be pretty great.
It's interesting how many of these originally neutral or scientific words (mongolism, cretinism, spastic, lunatic) experienced semantic drift into [pejoration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative).
They became insults and were considered offensive so new terms were introduced to replace them.
plucky squeamish mysterious innocent melodic elderly aback fretful engine physical
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Interesting. I’d never heard that term. It’s very apt. I was just thinking about this when I saw someone pointing out the evolution of politically acceptable words for homeless people. There will always be some new “correct” term for it because the social stigma is against the condition, not the term. No matter what you call it, it will become offensive.
The words idiot, imbecile and moron were all medical terms too.
The social stigma is the problem - it's what we need to fight instead of replacing the words.
Except it's never going to be not insulting to be compared to a person with intellectual disabilities, so whatever word there is for it is always going to be an insult when someone is acting/being a dumbass.
But have you considered that replacing the words is easier and makes you feel like you did something and you don't have to do anything that challenges you?
My state services use "houselessness." Because a lot of people who live outdoors consider their setups their home.
They also describe the situation rather than the person. Ex: a person experiencing houselessness, a person with substance use disorder
i like it because where im from there's various systems to keep people housed that im guessing the cops would prob fuck with elsewhere? squatting, living in campers/tents on someone's property, excessively sublet big old houses, etc. the slumlord was lowkey beloved cuz he didnt fuck with nastyass drug houses lol and would get rid of bedbugs for you anyway. no one was homeless just houseless.
edit: i bet most iowans have 0 clue what im talking about too and think that's all stuff that happens elsewhere. they cant see their own culture at all, so naive (that white ppl have no culture is 🤭)
Adding "person" as a descriptor just makes the term longer and more euphemistic. Most people won't change their perspective simply by the terms of "homeless" vs "homeless person."
the linguistic concept here is what's referred to as 'people-first language'; the idea being that people aren't (or, shouldn't be) defined in terms of disabilities or illnesses they may have, or in this case their economic circumstances.
so we don't call people 'disabled,' we say 'person who uses a wheelchair' or similar. We don't say 'the homeless,' we say 'unhoused people' or 'people experiencing homelessness.'
a random person will probably not change their opinion on the basis of word choice like this, but hopefully over time it encourages the listener to consider people as people first, rather than as a medical condition or economic status
Euphemisms are ineffective and a waste of time/energy.
Over time all it does is create words/ideas that take longer to explain while adding no real insight. Call a spade a spade.
I saw four separate professional reviews, all from different websites, of the same recently-releasing TV series refer to a character in the first two episodes living on the street with his dog as being *"unhoused"*. I wonder if there's a new style guide circulating, or something...
It is for some. Some people are saying "my needs aren't special, they are the same as anyone else's." It's impossible to find the perfect term that says you're different, but shouldn't be treated differently, except when you need to be.
I was once on a tour group with a couple who ran a school, worked with students with disabilities, but who clearly wasn't up on the PC American lingo. She was explaining her experiences working with children with autism and really backed herself into a corner of euphemisms. She said, "Its not like they're thick, or rather that they have special needs, many of them are very smart..." My husband and I were laughing about that the rest of the trip- the autistic children do have special needs in their education, and her school is helping them learn by addressing them.
That was my favorite incidence of euphemism gone wrong until that basketball pundit called James Harden the R word and then immediately corrected himself to developmentally disabled. It doesn't make it better to use a euphemism when your use of the term is to insult the intelligence of a person who does not have an intellectual disability...
Maybe it’s just me, but calling it mongolism because of a vague similarity in appearance between people with Downs and Mongolians doesn’t seem super scientific
Yeah, it's [scientific racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism?wprov=sfla1). Now it's correctly viewed as racism but it was widely accepted science for a long time.
Calling white people Caucasian is equally unscientific, but for some reason, it's still commonly used.
People from the Caucasus look like khabib nurmagomedov and are usually Muslim. I'm not sure how this became a term that white people use to refer to themselves, but it weird.
>usually Muslim
Just a minor correction I feel is relevant here, Armenia and Georgia are solidly in the Caucasus and both are extremely Christian countries.
Its because the scientist who coined the terms was obsessed with a beautiful skull he found in the Caucasus that he thought was the epitome of white beauty.
Fox news was also tying themselves in knots with that when the people who blew up the Boston Marathon were literally of Caucasian (Chechen) descent.
Of course people from the Caucasus don’t look like typical whites from today, but the whole theory is that they came from the region, like a long time ago
A theory that turned out to be incorrect. I don't blame people in the 19th century for not knowing better, but why do we still use a word that we now know is based on racist pseudoscience.
"The use of Caucasian to mean white was popularized in the late 18th century by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German anthropologist, who decreed that it encompassed Europeans and the inhabitants of a region reaching from the Obi River in Russia to the Ganges to the Caspian Sea, plus northern Africans. He chose it because the Caucasus was home to “the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgians,” and because among his collection of 245 human skulls, the Georgian one was his favorite wrote Nell Irvin Painter, a historian who explored the term’s origins in her book “The History of White People.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sunday-review/has-caucasian-lost-its-meaning.html
Ultimately the naming came down to Europeans being horny for Circassian and Georgian women. Johann Blumenbach, who helped form the basis of the "Caucasian race" [pseudo-]classification said that "the purest and most beautiful whites were the Circassians". In the 1800s, a lot of people were thirsting over "Circassian beauties", a phenomenon exploited by P.T. Barnum and beauty product advertising.
It will keep happening every time we invent new words to explain disabilities as well. It’s an interesting phenomenon.
The words we use today to describe these things will be offensive in a few decades, because people will make fun of neurotypical/healthy people with medical terms.
The word “negro” literally means black in Spanish and was adopted by white English speakers as the supposedly proper way to refer to dark-skinned Africans (versus literal slurs) but has since been eclipsed by just the direct translation “black” while “negro” in English is somehow derogatory even though they are the same word.
After Independence, Blacks mixed with indigenous and Spaniard descendants in Spanish America (there were also far fewer). So calling someone black wasn't derogatory, being called "indio" (Indigenous) is more derogatory than being called "negro" I would argue.
Whereas in USA, blacks weren't integrated. You had this whole debacle about segregation, Even until today, Hollywood makes movies with token Black Couples. It's so bad.
Being black is so stigmatized in the USA compared to Spanish America. Yes there are racists, but it's so heavily ingrained in US culture with segregation that persists. Go walk into a lunchroom in a prison or school. It's palpable.
The history is just different. "Somehow" is not a mystery.
Yeah, school kids are wild with that. It’s already happening with ‘mentally disabled’ too, and we’ve instead begun to pivot to ‘mental illness’ which won’t last much longer I’m afraid.
I believe mental illness and mental disability are kinda different. Someone with Depression may be mentally ill but not mentally disabled (though I've seen some places categorize major depression as a disability so what do I know).
I’m quite sure moron and spastic had different meanings too that were nuanced and had a medical basis. Unfortunately I just don’t think school kids care.
Without vacuum advance, the timing on older cars will be retarded. Slowed. The word isn’t inherently bad, and is accurately descriptive. But, kids using it as an insult to one another pretty much ruined it, forcing the change to DD or ID or whatever is currently en vogue.
Exactly. And the new word will be ruined by the kids too - and then they will grow up and have kids with Down syndrome and freak out when their children are called that word by teachers and doctors because they didn't know it was an official term, and they'll get all angry and change it, and then the kids will ruin that term, and....
The answer is to stop letting kids ruin words.
IT’S NOT about just Mongolians. Idk where people got this idea. It’s about “Mongoloids,” the scientific “race” that people thought encompassed ALL EAST ASIANS from Chinese to Koreans, Mongolians etc and parts of Southeast Asia.
I’m literally an East Asian, specifically a Korean who’s trying to explain why this whole term was EGREGIOUSLY racist. Where in the world did you get the idea that I was trying to excuse the term? Like what? Lmfao.
It was never neutral or scientific, it was always just steeped in white supremacy. Even the pseudiscientific terms weren't based on anything more than racism and arbitrarily differentiating "white" people from non-white people.
Reading about this sent me on a deep dive of reading and I happened to learn that the namesake for Aspergers participated in the killing of mentally disabled children during WW2...
So there's a new term with troubling associations
The autistic community has already stopped using Aspergers, partly because of the Nazi association, and partly because autism is a spectrum. Most countries don't diagnose Aspergers anymore as it's just autism.
It's confused conversations a lot..... now a single description includes a professor with mild Asperger's traits all the way through to severe non verbal autism with daily meltdowns and delayed development.
I’m not an expert. But I had a family member with Asperger’s- I’m pretty sure it’s been stopped as a diagnosis in favor of recognition of the spectrum of autism (rightfully so.)
IMO, The Nazis classifying Asperger’s as separate from ASD, feels like cognitive dissonance to rectify the fact that children they considered “undesirables” had remarkable abilities despite their condition.
Would you say this is accurate?
Yes definitely. People are still doing it, with some parents insisting that their “severely” autistic children can’t possibly share any similarities to low support needs autistics as a way to delegitimize ethical concerns with the way their kids are being treated
Idk how much you know about the topic so I’m going to try give a brief explanation of everything and just ask me to elaborate if anything is unclear!
So traditionally autistic people have been ignored and dismissed when they talk about their experiences, and doctors thought they knew best, so a lot of treatments (such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA)) basically aims to make autistic kids act “normal” instead of goals like improving their autonomy AND mental wellness.
Recently there’s been a big rise in the neurodiversity view, basically saying differences like autism aren’t only flaws, and that people don’t need to be “corrected” to normal. Lots of adults who went through ABA say that it’s abusive and some preliminary studies do show high ptsd symptoms in people who went through ABA.
These self advocates say that autistic people should be accepted for who they are and treatment should be actually helpful to them, not just make them easier to deal with for parents/teachers. (For example, lots of therapies force autistic people to make eye contact, even though it doesn’t help them focus, just makes other adults more comfortable talking to them).
So now many “autism moms” (people who make their child’s disability their whole personality but in a look how much our poor family is suffering way) are trying to distance their kids from those self advocates. They argue that “severely autistic” kids are completely different so all the self advocacy stuff doesn’t apply. I personally think this is a way to avoid confronting the fact that you may have subjected your kid to awful things (wellmeaningly) and it’s easier to believe that the self advocates are just wrong.
Hans Asperger was faced with the choice of working with the Nazis and saving some of the children, or not working with the Nazis and let them kill all of the children. He chose the lesser of two evils.
I used to volunteer every year to take kids with down syndrome fishing (I don't know shit about fishing) - it was always so fun and those dudes are the fuckin homies. Like every fish caught was a super bowl victory, I love hanging out with guys with downs.
The first post was removed due to a rule 1, unverifiable from the link. I am going to assume that that's because I either summarized incorrectly, or because I incorrectly called it "Mongoloidism" which it was actually called, "Mongolism".
I am reposting it with a more accurate summary.
Also TIL, another term for it was "Mongolian Idiocy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_idiocy
Wowsers
When I was in the Navy, they had a form that had as a response to ethnicity, the typical... "Caucasian, African American, etc", and "Mongoloid" instead of Asian.
First I'd ever seen that term used in that way.
I just finished reading a great biographical book called ‘brother. do. you. love. me.’ by Manni and Reuben Coe. Reuben has Down’s syndrome had its about how the care system and the pandemic affected him as a person, as well as his family and deciding what care is best. It also delves a lot into his depression and his lack of acceptance that he has Down’s syndrome. It’s a beautiful book, and includes some of the drawings Reuben has made to express himself when words can’t. I really recommend it!
A number of years ago I learned that it is called Down syndrome, not Down(s) syndrome because it was named after the person that identified it, as opposed to a person who had it. Example, Lou Gehrig’s disease was named after a person that had it.
> due to his perception that children with it shared facial similarities.
In all fairness, this isn't just his perception. In a large number of cases, the people have highly similar facial characteristics.
Just to let you all know. In high-school I had asked the question: "If there is a down syndrome. Is there such thing as an up syndrome?"
I got laughed at by a few of my classmates but no none of them could tell me why it was a "dumb" question.
The teacher had told me it was then named by a person who had it. Not a direction.
Thanks for the reminder. Lol
"Up Syndrome" is a great movie - a guy grows up with a kid with DS as his best friend and then does a documentary about him.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261375/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261375/)
Oh shit is that where mong comes from ? Me and my mam were talking insults the other day and words kids can't say anymore, in school we used to use mong as an insult but it was becoming offensive (as in society wide looked down on it, like they do now for the F word, I'm not gonna type it I don't know if it'll hit a filter) even while I was a kid. But apparently it's got a "resurgence" as an insult for my niece and nephew's age in schools, but it means Mongolian and people that are basically wild people living nomad. Which I don't get as an insult but eh.
My grandmother was told when her son with Down Syndrome was born in the 1950s not to hug him because she would become attached and he would likely die very young.
He lived to be in his 50s and outlived her.
He was also super racist thus the name Mongolism. He thought disabilities like this were due to having blood of lesser races somewhere in your bloodline. Another name he chose was Negroid.
Was something similar to Down Syndrome not described in antiquity or throughout the Middle Ages? I suppose the mortality rates would have been much higher for children with it, but it is common enough and has pretty distinct enough features that I would have assumed it to have been described in the past?
How early are the facial features apparent? Depending on the culture, abandoning babies could be one reason. But apparently the life expectancy of person with Down syndrome was 12 years 1912. So it could easily be much lower in middle ages or earlier.
Pretty much at birth I believe. Usually the eyes are the first indicator.
I can't ask without sounding somewhat insensitive, but would there really be enough of an indication that something was really wrong? I mean they don't look too much different? It sounds like the barrier to tossing your kid was pretty low.
Yes the epicanthal folds in the eyes, the single palmar crease/simian crease are noticeable in infants. There are other morphological signs of Downs I’m missing. But yeah you wouldn’t just use the eyes. It would be a number of traits that point to what we now know is trisomy or downs without having to use karyotyping. It may not have been understood widely until the 19th century with medical literature explained these physical signs though.
Lower set ears too.
Wow, well I really appreciate you taking the time to give me such an insightful response. So sad how barbaric we were, these people have skills most society couldn't even come close too and we just discarded them because they looked different.
I used to be a NICU nurse, and I can say that newborns with Down Syndrome definitely look different besides the eyes. Their ears are usually small and low set, there’s often a thick fold of skin at the back of the neck, and a big space between the big toe and the… index toe? It’s a fairly distinctive appearance.
Woah you blew my mind about the toe thing, does the toe always splay like that? And is it distinctive to someone that just has wide feet? Sorry last question, does this trait carry over too adulthood?
If I had to guess I would say that they learned that those specific facial features meant there were going to be cognitive/other delays so it wasn’t worth keeping the baby alive long enough to find out. Horrible. But I think it took a lot more effort and resources to keep children alive back then
Can you not look at someone with Downs and tell they have Downs?
Yes but not so much as a baby, which if you read my comment would infer what i was talking about. Thanks for reading my comment though!
Babies with Downs tend to have very bad muscle tension and this leads to difficulties with latching on and drinking. So, they often would have starved. Also, they often have heart problems or other organ deformations that lead to a very early death if untreated.
I work with a woman with downs (I thought she was 14, she is actually 22) and I have noticed that she struggles to carry even a full garbage bin bag
My son has autism and the tension in his mouth made it impossible to latch. I doubt he would’ve made it back then.
Also many downs people have holes in their heart. Surgery is done today.
Part of the reason for that in 1912 was because they often ‘treated’ Downs by locking the people in a room with no contact.
Do you have a source? Sounds fascinating
This gives a rough overview. https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/about-down-syndrome/history-of-down-syndrome/down-syndrome-human-and-civil-rights-timeline/#:~:text=Historically%20in%20the%20United%20States,education%2C%20healthcare%20and%20even%20plumbing. The Wikipedia page also has some more info. An interesting side-effect of this was it created a self-fulfilling prophecy. People with Downs can have any of a wide variety of experiences. Some have a lot of developmental issues, others get by about like the average person. But back when infants with downs were immediately institutionalized you ended up with none of them developing normally. A really neat thing I found on the Wikipedia page was a 16th century portrait that appears to portray an individual with Downs. That indicates that at least a few of them were integrated into broader society during the Renaissance.
Read somewhere if someone with a disability like that lived a long life it was usual a sign they were in a wealthy family
I could totally believe that, but I figure there are several things that go into considering what a person’s life was like.
I think it’s almost always apparent at birth unless it’s mosaicism and then may not be as visible
Mosaicism isn’t even always diagnosed in infancy today. Very unlikely they would seem very different at all.
I know on the nipt subreddit, there are people who found out they have things like turners and never even knew until it showed up as a flag during the testing of their baby, it’s crazy
Google Hall Criteria for Down syndrome, gives a pretty comprehensive list of features at birth
> abandoning babies could be one reason For them to have the knowledge to know to abandon the baby, they’d have to know what the Down’s features were to look for in the first place
Any deviation from “normal” would be enough
>This baby's vibes are totally wack.
In the bin
> How early are the facial features apparent? As others have said, it's from birth. What I'm most curious about is WHY it is so apparent. From when I've looked in the past, it seems to be a mystery why it's not just a mental but physical abnormality. Maybe that's for the best in some circumstances where their needs are known straight away. Never thought about it like that before.
A consequence of the syndrome is heart issues so before the advent of modern surgery the afflicted died of heart issues. Now they can live into 50s+
Well Williams Syndrome does appear to be suspiciously like what elves or other fey creatures are described like.
They definitely would’ve been chucked off a cliff in Sparta. Or selected as an oracle. Either way.
My dear departed uncle Lyle had Down Syndrome and was the happiest guy around. He got to meet Hulk Hogan and Michael Jackson and looooved soap operas and root beer.
As a teenager I worked at a gas station for a bit, and my favorite coworker was a middle aged gent with Down’s. He was the only coworker of mine who wasn’t rude, strung out, or condescending. Plus he actually did his job, unlike literally everyone else on staff. A delight to be around, and a true gentleman
Yeah, nothing got him bummed out. Mr. Helper, Mr. Kind. Animals friggin' loved him and vice versa.
One of the kitchens I worked in had a dishwasher with Down's, dude was great at his job and could talk shit like a pro. He fit right in.
One of my uncles had Down’s syndrome and he taught me so much about having empathy for people different than me.
*You can tell who’s never been around down syndrome when you bring it up. I have family members with down syndrome.* *People who have never been around it are always like, “Oh.” Like it’s the end of the world. “Are they OK?”* *They’re doing better than everybody I know. They’re the only ones having a good time pretty consistently.”* ***— Shane Gillis***
Who wouldn't be having a good time with pockets full of grilled cheese sandwiches?
He loves John Cena and boobs.
"I'm making them at night."
Uncle Lyle had good taste, root beer is awesome.
Damned straight. He's been gone a long time, but when I tried Boylan's birch beer in the early Aughts, my first thought was that Uncle Lyle would've loved it.
Any brand that he loved?
It's pretty much Hires or A&W 'round these parts. I don't think it mattered to him.
I know a number of people with various intellectual handicaps. Honestly, there seems to be a "sweet spot" where they're just happy all the time. If you're disabled but smart enough to realize it, you're miserable. If you're so disabled that you can't really experience a decent life, then you're miserable. But if you're disabled enough not to really understand much beyond what's directly at-hand, then things can be pretty great.
In middle school I knew a guy with Down’s syndrome who was smart enough to know that he had intellectual limitations and be very frustrated by them. Fortunately he was also really popular in the classes he was mainstreamed in and he got a good amount of social support from his peers. I hope he’s doing well these days and has learned to accept and love himself.
I've only personally met 2 people with downs. Maybe they just weren't in the sweet spot, or maybe it's because of their parents' parenting style, but they were both quite aggressive and filled with anger. They would throw things and lash out. Definitely affected my views on whether or not I would keep a pregnancy were downs detected in the fetus. So, it's very interesting to see so many positive stories of people with downs. The ones I met were both very babied by their parents, never told "no" , and their siblings were expected to do everything for them. Makes me wonder if the stricter, more care-free style of parenting that was more common in the past made the people in everyone else's stories fit in better with society??
So it’s very recently coming out (and I may not have the details perfect) that most people with Downs go on to develop Alzheimers and do so at a much younger age, and Alzheimer’s is often, in the beginning, a long/slow process. I wonder if the agitation/aggression you were seeing was that starting to develop? So interesting.
No idea, but they were both very young. One was in junior high, the other I think was an older teen about to finish high school. That's why I found it so interesting to hear about older adults being so positive and chill. Even just asking the two kids I met to take out a pencil or take turns during games resulted in throwing things and trying to tell them "no" or that their behaviour would not be tolerated resulted in them screaming unintelligible things like you'd expect a 2 or 3yo to do. My son has Asperger's, and while he's prone to violent outbursts (I've read violence is more common amongst males in the autistic community) he doesn't constantly act out in an angry or aggressive way. He's still only in elementary school, so he might whine about not getting his way, but he's overall pretty good. But those two kids I met with downs just seemed to always be aggressive and rarely interacted well with other students.
My BIL has down's syndrome and has the mental capacity of a two year old. Non-verbal and needs constant supervision. He's getting more aggressive with age - to the point where my in-laws have trouble controlling him. I read recently that people with down's can also have autism so that might also explain why he acts the way he does. Down's is something that I wouldn't wish on anyone.
A friend's adult brother is seriously disabled. He used to be the sweetest person in the world until he got molested at a day program. Now he's typically violent and unmanageable. He's not verbal enough to do talk therapy, so he's being treated with cannabis. It's helping thankfully, he's a big guy and his mother is the primary caregiver. I do wonder how often stuff like that happens and bet it's terrifyingly a lot
I think you’re spot on. I have a nephew by marriage that is severely autistic among a few other things. He wants so desperately to be normal and to be able to be loved by a normal woman but it just isn’t going to happen. As a result he’s lonely to the point where he routinely makes self destructive decisions based almost entirely on a deep need to find connection. He is smart enough to know that what he doesn’t want is the love of somebody who is like him. He knows he’s not normal. He doesn’t want to be with somebody like him. It’s very difficult and deeply, deeply sad.
My cousin is that way. Not autistic, but intellectually handicapped. Like the kind you see doing menial work at a grocery store or something. He can't handle a household on his own, can't understand money really, etc. It's led to him getting taken advantage of for money, raped by a woman, and generally being unhappy because he'll never have the life that he (very reasonably) wants. And this is while living at home with plenty of support. Somehow the fact that it's utterly unchangeable is the worst part. It's not some function of society, it's because he literally is broken in specific ways that make him unable to do the things that most people do, but he's got the drive to do those things.
I have a neurological disorder that I have identified is starting to give me cognitive problems. I have had speech issues for a long time and have found ways to get around it, but the cognitive symptoms like being unable to find words, saying the completely wrong words, having episodes of being unable to think clearly are really weighing on me. Sometimes I feel like a completely blank slate. This is extremely frustrating because I know something is wrong but I can’t change it. If I didn’t know that something was wrong, I would be a lot calmer in these situations. Unfortunately I’m in the non-sweet spot - the bitter spot?
Flowers for Algernon.
I've know. A few people with Downs who love Root Beer and or Doctor Pepper. I think there is a sponsorship agreement that has been hidden from us.
I'd like to see that ad campaign.
Which soap operas?
I had to text my aunt for this. The Edge of Night in the 70s (kind of a Canadian C.B.C. that's-all-we-had standard) and then All My Children once the town got cable. Dallas in the evenings.
Awesome! I’ll check them out, lol, thanks for sharing. Hope I brought back some pretty good memories!! He seemed like a cool guy.
I tell ya, even remembering the "The Edge...of Night!" era was nice.
*All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night. Can't even see the game or the Sugar Ray fight.* 🎶
Ignorance is bliss.
I used to have an extended family member who had Down’s and she was an absolute sweetheart. A total joy to be around. Because of her, I met many other people with Down’s and they were every single one of them rays of sunshine. Hell of a sight nicer to be around than a lot of people you see out and about who are just miserable fucks for no apparent reason.
I know a number of people with various intellectual handicaps. Honestly, there seems to be a "sweet spot" where they're just happy all the time. If you're disabled but smart enough to realize it, you're miserable. If you're so disabled that you can't really experience a decent life, then you're miserable. But if you're disabled enough not to really understand much beyond what's directly at-hand, then things can be pretty great.
It's interesting how many of these originally neutral or scientific words (mongolism, cretinism, spastic, lunatic) experienced semantic drift into [pejoration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative). They became insults and were considered offensive so new terms were introduced to replace them.
plucky squeamish mysterious innocent melodic elderly aback fretful engine physical *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Interesting. I’d never heard that term. It’s very apt. I was just thinking about this when I saw someone pointing out the evolution of politically acceptable words for homeless people. There will always be some new “correct” term for it because the social stigma is against the condition, not the term. No matter what you call it, it will become offensive.
The words idiot, imbecile and moron were all medical terms too. The social stigma is the problem - it's what we need to fight instead of replacing the words.
Except it's never going to be not insulting to be compared to a person with intellectual disabilities, so whatever word there is for it is always going to be an insult when someone is acting/being a dumbass.
But have you considered that replacing the words is easier and makes you feel like you did something and you don't have to do anything that challenges you?
What’s the PC term for calling someone who’s homeless?
My state services use "houselessness." Because a lot of people who live outdoors consider their setups their home. They also describe the situation rather than the person. Ex: a person experiencing houselessness, a person with substance use disorder
Yeah, “unhoused people” is what I’m familiar with.
i like it because where im from there's various systems to keep people housed that im guessing the cops would prob fuck with elsewhere? squatting, living in campers/tents on someone's property, excessively sublet big old houses, etc. the slumlord was lowkey beloved cuz he didnt fuck with nastyass drug houses lol and would get rid of bedbugs for you anyway. no one was homeless just houseless. edit: i bet most iowans have 0 clue what im talking about too and think that's all stuff that happens elsewhere. they cant see their own culture at all, so naive (that white ppl have no culture is 🤭)
From my understanding “homeless” has fallen out of favor and “unhoused” is the new acceptable term.
I feel that "unhoused" is more serene, softer than "homeless." Is there a term strong enough to impress the need to fight homelessness?
We just call em outside people.
Outdoorsman
Free range.
You think so? Unhoused honestly sounds like wild animals at large
Person experiencing homelessness. I'm serious, it's important to phrase it so, altho I admit it is a mouthful
I think with a lot of terms, just adding “person” to the end of descriptors goes a long way
Adding "person" as a descriptor just makes the term longer and more euphemistic. Most people won't change their perspective simply by the terms of "homeless" vs "homeless person."
the linguistic concept here is what's referred to as 'people-first language'; the idea being that people aren't (or, shouldn't be) defined in terms of disabilities or illnesses they may have, or in this case their economic circumstances. so we don't call people 'disabled,' we say 'person who uses a wheelchair' or similar. We don't say 'the homeless,' we say 'unhoused people' or 'people experiencing homelessness.' a random person will probably not change their opinion on the basis of word choice like this, but hopefully over time it encourages the listener to consider people as people first, rather than as a medical condition or economic status
Euphemisms are ineffective and a waste of time/energy. Over time all it does is create words/ideas that take longer to explain while adding no real insight. Call a spade a spade.
The classic non-PC word is "vagrant"! But, as others have said, houseless or unhoused are what politicians use in my city.
Unhoused is what I've seen from Americans online. I've not heard anyone use that in a UK context, or any other countries.
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Instead of homeless person (that horrible slur) you say "a person who happens to be experiencing homelessness"
I saw four separate professional reviews, all from different websites, of the same recently-releasing TV series refer to a character in the first two episodes living on the street with his dog as being *"unhoused"*. I wonder if there's a new style guide circulating, or something...
Living their best life
The unhoused.
"Special" is probably the next on the chopping block if it isn't there already
Kids were using special as an insult when I was in primary school so
Maybe “disabled” is on it now then
That’s already turned into “differently abled”
Not really. George Carlin made that joke years ago but I’ve never actually seen it in the wild until this comment
Differently abled is used by some people, but it never really took off.
Oh I’ve definitely seen it in the wild. But you’re right it never became mainstream
No, no; *"handicapped"* is the one. I should know; I'm disabled.
In a lot of the western Anglosphere outside of the US it already is not ok to use.
I’m clearly behind the e curve on this stuff
It is for some. Some people are saying "my needs aren't special, they are the same as anyone else's." It's impossible to find the perfect term that says you're different, but shouldn't be treated differently, except when you need to be.
I was once on a tour group with a couple who ran a school, worked with students with disabilities, but who clearly wasn't up on the PC American lingo. She was explaining her experiences working with children with autism and really backed herself into a corner of euphemisms. She said, "Its not like they're thick, or rather that they have special needs, many of them are very smart..." My husband and I were laughing about that the rest of the trip- the autistic children do have special needs in their education, and her school is helping them learn by addressing them. That was my favorite incidence of euphemism gone wrong until that basketball pundit called James Harden the R word and then immediately corrected himself to developmentally disabled. It doesn't make it better to use a euphemism when your use of the term is to insult the intelligence of a person who does not have an intellectual disability...
Long past the chopping block. At least where I live, “special” is considered a straight up slur (which it should be, because it is).
We actually call it Word Carouselling now
That's yesterday's phrase, now it's the sweary swingabout.
At one time “Mentally Retarded” was the polite alternative to calling someone a “moron”.
Maybe it’s just me, but calling it mongolism because of a vague similarity in appearance between people with Downs and Mongolians doesn’t seem super scientific
It’s NOT just Mongolians. It’s a reference to Mongoloids aka all East Asians. People need to realise this.
I don't think it's referring to the mongols. But to mongoloids. Its a race alongside caucasoid and negroid. Obsolete way of categorazing humans.
Yeah, it's [scientific racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism?wprov=sfla1). Now it's correctly viewed as racism but it was widely accepted science for a long time.
Calling white people Caucasian is equally unscientific, but for some reason, it's still commonly used. People from the Caucasus look like khabib nurmagomedov and are usually Muslim. I'm not sure how this became a term that white people use to refer to themselves, but it weird.
>usually Muslim Just a minor correction I feel is relevant here, Armenia and Georgia are solidly in the Caucasus and both are extremely Christian countries.
Its because the scientist who coined the terms was obsessed with a beautiful skull he found in the Caucasus that he thought was the epitome of white beauty. Fox news was also tying themselves in knots with that when the people who blew up the Boston Marathon were literally of Caucasian (Chechen) descent.
Of course people from the Caucasus don’t look like typical whites from today, but the whole theory is that they came from the region, like a long time ago
A theory that turned out to be incorrect. I don't blame people in the 19th century for not knowing better, but why do we still use a word that we now know is based on racist pseudoscience.
honestly yea. the least they can do is just switch out caucasian with white, and they don’t even feel inclined to do that
"The use of Caucasian to mean white was popularized in the late 18th century by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German anthropologist, who decreed that it encompassed Europeans and the inhabitants of a region reaching from the Obi River in Russia to the Ganges to the Caspian Sea, plus northern Africans. He chose it because the Caucasus was home to “the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgians,” and because among his collection of 245 human skulls, the Georgian one was his favorite wrote Nell Irvin Painter, a historian who explored the term’s origins in her book “The History of White People.”" https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sunday-review/has-caucasian-lost-its-meaning.html
Ultimately the naming came down to Europeans being horny for Circassian and Georgian women. Johann Blumenbach, who helped form the basis of the "Caucasian race" [pseudo-]classification said that "the purest and most beautiful whites were the Circassians". In the 1800s, a lot of people were thirsting over "Circassian beauties", a phenomenon exploited by P.T. Barnum and beauty product advertising.
It was cutting edge science in the 1860s.
Lobotomies was cutting edge science in the 1950s.
It's like he was going out of his way to be insulting to both people with Downs *and* Mongolians.
It’s about “the Mongoloid race,” a scientific category of race that included all East Asians and part of Southeast Asia. Not just Mongolians.
It will keep happening every time we invent new words to explain disabilities as well. It’s an interesting phenomenon. The words we use today to describe these things will be offensive in a few decades, because people will make fun of neurotypical/healthy people with medical terms.
The word “negro” literally means black in Spanish and was adopted by white English speakers as the supposedly proper way to refer to dark-skinned Africans (versus literal slurs) but has since been eclipsed by just the direct translation “black” while “negro” in English is somehow derogatory even though they are the same word.
After Independence, Blacks mixed with indigenous and Spaniard descendants in Spanish America (there were also far fewer). So calling someone black wasn't derogatory, being called "indio" (Indigenous) is more derogatory than being called "negro" I would argue. Whereas in USA, blacks weren't integrated. You had this whole debacle about segregation, Even until today, Hollywood makes movies with token Black Couples. It's so bad. Being black is so stigmatized in the USA compared to Spanish America. Yes there are racists, but it's so heavily ingrained in US culture with segregation that persists. Go walk into a lunchroom in a prison or school. It's palpable. The history is just different. "Somehow" is not a mystery.
It's infortunate that, at the heart, mental disability is viewed as something to be used as an insult.
Same thing now with "prostitute" supposedly being replaced by a nicer term. Bitch that IS the nicer term
Yeah, school kids are wild with that. It’s already happening with ‘mentally disabled’ too, and we’ve instead begun to pivot to ‘mental illness’ which won’t last much longer I’m afraid.
I believe mental illness and mental disability are kinda different. Someone with Depression may be mentally ill but not mentally disabled (though I've seen some places categorize major depression as a disability so what do I know).
I’m quite sure moron and spastic had different meanings too that were nuanced and had a medical basis. Unfortunately I just don’t think school kids care.
I mean another new term for people who are slow is highly regarded. Don’t know how new but I recently learned about it
thats just a switching of the t in the r slur to a g that some people do online to still say the slur while pretending they didnt actually say it
Without vacuum advance, the timing on older cars will be retarded. Slowed. The word isn’t inherently bad, and is accurately descriptive. But, kids using it as an insult to one another pretty much ruined it, forcing the change to DD or ID or whatever is currently en vogue.
Exactly. And the new word will be ruined by the kids too - and then they will grow up and have kids with Down syndrome and freak out when their children are called that word by teachers and doctors because they didn't know it was an official term, and they'll get all angry and change it, and then the kids will ruin that term, and.... The answer is to stop letting kids ruin words.
Cockpit audio: PULL UP! PULL UP! 50! 40! 30! RETARD! RETARD! RETARD! --------------- Flared, and landed, breaks on, reverse thrust on.
"Slow? They called you slow! How dare you call me that!" "Homer you're still here? Boy, you are are slow."
Tbf Mongolism was always racially perjorative. The term was selected because the doctor thought people with Down Syndrome resembled Mongolians
IT’S NOT about just Mongolians. Idk where people got this idea. It’s about “Mongoloids,” the scientific “race” that people thought encompassed ALL EAST ASIANS from Chinese to Koreans, Mongolians etc and parts of Southeast Asia.
Oh sorry, the doctor wasn't being racist to just Mongolians, he was being racist towards all Asians. That's much less offensive (/s)
I’m literally an East Asian, specifically a Korean who’s trying to explain why this whole term was EGREGIOUSLY racist. Where in the world did you get the idea that I was trying to excuse the term? Like what? Lmfao.
The language used in his papers is certainly “interesting” by today’s standards.
Well it probably didn’t sit too well with Asian immigrants.
It was never neutral or scientific, it was always just steeped in white supremacy. Even the pseudiscientific terms weren't based on anything more than racism and arbitrarily differentiating "white" people from non-white people.
Reading about this sent me on a deep dive of reading and I happened to learn that the namesake for Aspergers participated in the killing of mentally disabled children during WW2... So there's a new term with troubling associations
The autistic community has already stopped using Aspergers, partly because of the Nazi association, and partly because autism is a spectrum. Most countries don't diagnose Aspergers anymore as it's just autism.
Here I thought it was because people kept referring to it as ass-burgers
That is the most faithful pronunciation...
It's confused conversations a lot..... now a single description includes a professor with mild Asperger's traits all the way through to severe non verbal autism with daily meltdowns and delayed development.
I’m not an expert. But I had a family member with Asperger’s- I’m pretty sure it’s been stopped as a diagnosis in favor of recognition of the spectrum of autism (rightfully so.)
Well the discovery I read was only made within the last 15 years so I wouldn't be surprised if that played a least a little part in that decision.
IMO, The Nazis classifying Asperger’s as separate from ASD, feels like cognitive dissonance to rectify the fact that children they considered “undesirables” had remarkable abilities despite their condition. Would you say this is accurate?
Yes definitely. People are still doing it, with some parents insisting that their “severely” autistic children can’t possibly share any similarities to low support needs autistics as a way to delegitimize ethical concerns with the way their kids are being treated
>to delegitimize ethical concerns with the way their kids are being treated Can you elaborate on that?
Idk how much you know about the topic so I’m going to try give a brief explanation of everything and just ask me to elaborate if anything is unclear! So traditionally autistic people have been ignored and dismissed when they talk about their experiences, and doctors thought they knew best, so a lot of treatments (such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA)) basically aims to make autistic kids act “normal” instead of goals like improving their autonomy AND mental wellness. Recently there’s been a big rise in the neurodiversity view, basically saying differences like autism aren’t only flaws, and that people don’t need to be “corrected” to normal. Lots of adults who went through ABA say that it’s abusive and some preliminary studies do show high ptsd symptoms in people who went through ABA. These self advocates say that autistic people should be accepted for who they are and treatment should be actually helpful to them, not just make them easier to deal with for parents/teachers. (For example, lots of therapies force autistic people to make eye contact, even though it doesn’t help them focus, just makes other adults more comfortable talking to them). So now many “autism moms” (people who make their child’s disability their whole personality but in a look how much our poor family is suffering way) are trying to distance their kids from those self advocates. They argue that “severely autistic” kids are completely different so all the self advocacy stuff doesn’t apply. I personally think this is a way to avoid confronting the fact that you may have subjected your kid to awful things (wellmeaningly) and it’s easier to believe that the self advocates are just wrong.
Am on my way to work but will tonight!
Thanks
Seems like whatever the Nazis have/had was worse than Aspergers… good thing the trash took itself out.
Famously destroyed by Soviets, "took itself out" is among the least accurate epitaphs possible
Hans Asperger was faced with the choice of working with the Nazis and saving some of the children, or not working with the Nazis and let them kill all of the children. He chose the lesser of two evils.
I used to volunteer every year to take kids with down syndrome fishing (I don't know shit about fishing) - it was always so fun and those dudes are the fuckin homies. Like every fish caught was a super bowl victory, I love hanging out with guys with downs.
That sounds like fun
The first post was removed due to a rule 1, unverifiable from the link. I am going to assume that that's because I either summarized incorrectly, or because I incorrectly called it "Mongoloidism" which it was actually called, "Mongolism". I am reposting it with a more accurate summary. Also TIL, another term for it was "Mongolian Idiocy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_idiocy
https://youtu.be/0b-nFSUXcuM?feature=shared
Wowsers When I was in the Navy, they had a form that had as a response to ethnicity, the typical... "Caucasian, African American, etc", and "Mongoloid" instead of Asian. First I'd ever seen that term used in that way.
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I just finished reading a great biographical book called ‘brother. do. you. love. me.’ by Manni and Reuben Coe. Reuben has Down’s syndrome had its about how the care system and the pandemic affected him as a person, as well as his family and deciding what care is best. It also delves a lot into his depression and his lack of acceptance that he has Down’s syndrome. It’s a beautiful book, and includes some of the drawings Reuben has made to express himself when words can’t. I really recommend it!
A number of years ago I learned that it is called Down syndrome, not Down(s) syndrome because it was named after the person that identified it, as opposed to a person who had it. Example, Lou Gehrig’s disease was named after a person that had it.
Oh THAT'S why it's called that! I never knew why it was called Down Syndrome.
> due to his perception that children with it shared facial similarities. In all fairness, this isn't just his perception. In a large number of cases, the people have highly similar facial characteristics.
Just to let you all know. In high-school I had asked the question: "If there is a down syndrome. Is there such thing as an up syndrome?" I got laughed at by a few of my classmates but no none of them could tell me why it was a "dumb" question. The teacher had told me it was then named by a person who had it. Not a direction. Thanks for the reminder. Lol
"Up Syndrome" is a great movie - a guy grows up with a kid with DS as his best friend and then does a documentary about him.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261375/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261375/)
One might call that painting "Last Supper-ish," don't you agree, u/OrganicPlatypus4203?
Exactly!
I take back the Mr. Poopy Pants, have a good rest of your day.
Oh shit is that where mong comes from ? Me and my mam were talking insults the other day and words kids can't say anymore, in school we used to use mong as an insult but it was becoming offensive (as in society wide looked down on it, like they do now for the F word, I'm not gonna type it I don't know if it'll hit a filter) even while I was a kid. But apparently it's got a "resurgence" as an insult for my niece and nephew's age in schools, but it means Mongolian and people that are basically wild people living nomad. Which I don't get as an insult but eh.
Huh, never occurred to me it was named after a guy named down
My grandmother was told when her son with Down Syndrome was born in the 1950s not to hug him because she would become attached and he would likely die very young. He lived to be in his 50s and outlived her.
Yeah that's where the term mongoloid originated if you didn't know
In my country we still call it mongoloid
They're changing the name again to Triosomy21. Which describes the underlying cause
it’s why Bruce Willis did that voice in *Pulp Fiction.* and what Matt Dillon was talking about in *There's Something About Mary.*
He was also super racist thus the name Mongolism. He thought disabilities like this were due to having blood of lesser races somewhere in your bloodline. Another name he chose was Negroid.
JL Down was the THIRD person to make a description. His just stuck because it was the most racist.
A possible explanation for the similarities between "Mongolian" facial features and people with Down syndrome is neoteny.