i do not believe these words should be abandoned!
in this post i hope to call attention to the same destructive processes happening to “neurodiverse” as to all the other terms. particularly i want to call out the ableist motivations behind it. my intent is to critique society’s weaponization of words, not the words themselves.
Idk im Autistic and I use “regarded”, neurotypicals can fuck off if they feel offended
i’m not against you reclaiming slurs!, if that language is accepted in your communities and you aren’t using it to do value judgments or insult, this is totally slay and acceptable 🙂
So brave
The r-slur is targeted at intellectually disabled people. It’s not something for you to reclaim. When people call non-intellectually disabled autistic people that, the insult is that they’re comparing them to intellectually disabed people.
Why “regarded”? I don’t get it tbh. To me it just says that you want to call someone “retarded” but you’re just too much of a coward to commit. Like, it communicates the exact same contempt for someone’s cognitive abilities but also an aversion to using a proper No-No Word™ because you don’t wanna transgress some sorta social taboo against them while doing so. Cuck behaviour, ngl chief.