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i used to think it was okay for me to say as i'm disabled. what i noticed, though, is that my doing so 1) communicated to my abled peers that it's okay for them to say as well & 2) made me appear as a pick-me; i was perceived as "one of the good ones."

the r-slur has been causing a very visceral reaction in me for years & i will continue to report each & every instance of it.

based and i adore people who are like you

it does tend to be a good litmus test for disempathy, sadly. obviously there are outliers, but if one can’t take a tiny correction to like 0.01% of their vocabulary, color me not surprised when that same person starts talking about the immigrant problem or women’s place in the home or something :(

Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.

I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.

I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.

Genuinely curious if this applies to moron and idiot, since they have basically the same origin story.

thank you ada 🩷🩷🩷 sorry about this post i didn’t know it was going to get so awful

Just... don't use anything one can't control as an insult.

Imagine calling the difference between people who do stupid things and people who are born with diagnosed mental illnesses "splitting hairs".

It's very, very simple. In one case, you are attacking someone who is completely in control of their mental facilities. In the other, you are attacking people who are literally incapable of defending themselves, from birth. They are not synonymous. If you think that level of punching down is okay, then be as indignant and self-righteous about it as you want, but you deserve to be told.

entirely different word and we both know it

It's quite obvious that it's very different to use it as a verb and as a noun to refer to someone.

i miss old school r/murderedbywords

no hate to you but i do hate that this is one of the default responses the internet has chosen when discussing this language (twice now in this thread)

i guess it’s like a growing pains thing, but it strikes me as very middle schooler, kind of like bringing up that one word that means unwilling to share with others.

one is a noun/adjective, the other is a verb. entirely different words that simply have the same Latin root. one is used in a professional context in an industry nearly none of us are familiar with, the other i come across as a derogatory on this site pretty much hourly. please let’s grow up a bit about this.

(again no hate to you specifically commenter, it was a funny joke and i just want to call out the broader trend)

Just don't use it to refer to people and you're golden. There are many slurs that are also legitimate scientific terms, like how fag(g)ot is a bundle of sticks, or how in physics you have the Advanced and the Retarded Green's functions.

To be fair to Airbus,

1. They probably chose the language for that call-out way before 2009. Airplanes can live for thirty years, and type designs can keep going several decades longer

2. The designers were also likely to be French, but they selected English call-outs. This seems to me like a case where they picked a word that's technically in the OED l, but is actually much more common in French.

This is the argument I see to defend use of the word and I've never understood it. Where I am (west coast-ish of the US), the word is used very specifically to mean autistic. If you ask someone not to say retard, they say autistic instead. If you ask them not to say autistic, they say special education. If not that, slow. If not that, someone who takes the short bus. Unambiguously the people here use the r slur as a slur against autistic people. They use it as an insult towards allistic people to degrade them as lesser. Same as calling a straight person the f slur. Maybe it's different in other parts of the country, but the r slur is absolutely used as a slur against autistic people where I am.

hi back, i’m ‘09 how ya doin buddy

this post is literally the definition of me opening my mouth and having a civilized discussion about it. pls respect that. :)