They are slurs, but there’s so much distance between today and the original medical usage of these terms that people have forgotten. Both are still terms with a history based in describing someone with an intellectual or developmental disability

Words like moron and idiot can be used as generalized insult. They can be offensive, but it doesn’t refer to a certain person or people. Moron and idiot are both defined as being stupid and stupid is defined of lack of intelligence or common sense. The word “retard” refers to people that have mental retardations. The individual person can control being stupid, but they can’t control being mentally retarded.

Lol show me any example of some one using the n word then getting mad about the r word

Youre right that irony doesnt stopbit being a slur, but usage absolutely matters. Unless you think its inexcusable black people using the n word with each other? Context is incredibly important.

• nothing. I have autism. There’s nothing wrong with me, but I’m obviously a little bit different like other people, which in itself is neither good nor bad.

• because we need a descriptor and that’s just what my friends use; we know what we mean with it and what we don’t.

Also I’m gonna take those questions at face value, but I’m just gonna note the first question is a bit out out of left field, as no one implied that something’s wrong with that.

But I don’t wanna assume you are an asshole, so I’m gonna take it as a misunderstanding.

No it’s because they’re demeaned using it.

They’re not properly referred to by that word. They USED to be referred to by that word back when they (falsely) believed that such disorders made them inferior.

Classifying those who were mentally less-developed as “retarded” became the excuse for a world that would try all types of monstrous experiments, ostensibly in an attempt to “heal them” because this was they only way “those people” could be a use to society; as lab rats for things like lobotomies, electro-shock therapy and any other wacky insanity that the early 20th century had dreamed up.

In effect, while “retarded” was once the so-called medical terminology it very quickly became shorthand for an entire group of people that could be dismissed and used because they’d serve no other purpose otherwise.

Can you imagine walking up to a stranger in a wheel chair and saying something like; “Hey cripple, your legs don’t work?”

Is cripple a slur? Not really (imo) but you dehumanise someone with words and reduce them to only be their affliction. Eliminating everything about them that might be special and individual.

People never use the N word, especially black people… NEVER. They would never make YOU uncomfortable when they chat privately 🤡

People can say whatever they want, no one can stop you. But people still have every right to judge your character. Being in a free society works both ways, you can say mean shit and I can think you’re mean.

People use “retard” to compare others or themselves to people they deem lesser than. It doesn’t work as an insult if you don’t look down on cognitively disabled people. You don’t have to use it on someone cognitively disabled, the implication is already there whether you have intend it or not.

For me, I think there are much worse words. While I don’t use it, I don’t waste my brain space judging people who do.

As it happens, it organically goes down to who owns the platform. In our conversation if it could’ve happened IRL, there could be two parties of equal rights (to just leave?). In a context of, say, a D&D party or a small gathering\chat, roles are equal with some privilege to the one who collected people together. In the case of some public space on the internet, like a US-based Facebook (as per the article about eating cats), we have Meta’s oversight, then government’s oversight, then community’s admins oversight, then users’ own shit filter. And in the later case, it gets a bit more complicated because it’s established that we let that state use our agency for our own good, then we let a corporation take our agency in their own hands to dictate what it should be by registering on that platform, and then we participate in some community with it’s own rules and mods, and only then other people who can report one’s post to one of these previous ones. That’s how the delegation of opinion to other parties usually works.

But your question is not about how it is, but how it should be. And for that I’d prefer to go down to the second level, when a club and it’s admins set up rules for communication of individuals on their platform, like a Lemmy instance, and users have a saying about how they see the future of their instance and a liberty to quit it. If that doesn’t fit you, you skip town and join another one, or create one yourself. That level of agency has it’s flaws, probably, but it’s better because less parties with different privileges are involved there, and you communicate with only admins and other users without that becoming too complicated.

On the side note though, I need to note, that I as a foreigner from an absurdly conservative country started to refuse myself from using the f@g90t slur that is set deep inside my language to describe a lot of bad things casually. That is because I want to communicate with people and communities that don’t want it there, and as I don’t see any value in this particular slur, therefore I just adapt. I find that a couple of guys I work with wouldn’t like that either, because they are called that by people I despise and don’t want to be associated with. I don’t feel like researching the cases when I or them can call someone a f@g9ot, I just dropmit because people I personally care about find it uncomfrotable. And our language, just like a snake, keeps cliding on top of a dune changing it’s direction whenever most people of it’s users gets some new catchy word or retire an old word as unacceptable.