Halls of the Dark Muse

As an artist, as well as a person who is just generally liberal minded and think most people are just over sensitive about things, I strongly loathe censorship most particularly censorship of artistic works, that chooses its use of words or imagery to make a particular point.

I belong to a poetry forum where I post pretty much all of my poetic works, and generally they don't censor things. So called fowl language is permissible when used in a poetic sense and there are certain forums that can only be accessed by adults for material that is not appropriate for all ages.

But I had recently written a poem that is one of my angst at humanity works, it was meant to be hard hitting and very cynical, and I used the word "retardation" and I used it to make an intentional overall point, and it wasn't directed at any individual but rather it was used as a way to refer to humanity in general but the word retard was censored I guess for not being "politically correct" and I was just really annoyed by that. Because while any human being might be generally offended by the overall work, there is no way that a person with any common sense could be offended by the context of my use of that particular word as it was not directed at anyone, and it was clear and obvious the way in which I was intending the use of the word.

My use of the word had nothing to do with mental disabilities or people who have mental disabilities. The dictionary definition of the word is:

"to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment"

And that is exactly how I intended the use of the word, to suggest that humanities progress has been hindered and as a species we haven't really advanced or progressed.