It used to be a very common insult along with the f-slur, when I, an elder millennial, was growing up. Then there was a concerted push to get it out public discourse on the basis that comparing someone or something to a person with an intellectual disability negatively is offensive and unfair. If you think about it disabled people being the go to comparison every time something sucks is pretty nasty. And for a long time, if you heard someone saying this they were either ignorant and uncouth or being deliberately edgy.

Now it seems like it's making comeback sadly. I've definitely noticed an uptick in it's usage lately

If you believe broadly that people should be given dignity regardless of gender, sexuality, race, disability, appearance, etc. etc. etc., it should be clear that using a descriptor of those things to mean something generally negative deprives them of that dignity. You're saying they're lesser, inferior, below you, purely because they don't fit into the status quo.

I'm not from the global north either, and where I come from we have a very loose attitude towards insults and stuff.

Growing up I didn't think much of it, but now that I'm older and I've interacted with more people, I realize that sometimes using words that refer to a certain category of people as an insult can be very hurtful.

Of course, insulting the person in front of you is hurtful to them, specially if you're implying there's something wrong with them that they can't change or that they might feel self conscious about (like calling them fatty or ugly), but we all know that, I hope. Much more importantly, there's the people who have nothing to do with it, but who "catch strays", when other people use something about them as an insult. It implies there's something wrong with being who they are, like using gay to mean uncool, or the r-word to mean dumb, or using an ethnicity's stereotype to imply someone is being like what people think about this ethnicity. This does two things: it is violence against someone who's part of that community who might overhear, and more insidiously, reinforces the belief that being x=bad, justifying their oppression and current condition.

We must work to break down these systems of oppression, and the first step is to break them down within our minds, such that we're not perpetuating them unconsciously. When we talk, we must be mindful of people who by just being who they are, already are oppressed by a system that has no place for them, and that wastes no opportunity in reminding them of that fact. This includes, but is not limited to, not using slurs, even when we're being jerks to each other for the fun of it, which I really understand.

Dunno if this rambling helps clear it out.

without the feeling I'm being deprived of free speech

fart noise

There are uses of it that are not necessarily ableist (or even referring to humans at all such as fire removedant) but the word itself has roots in eugenics and exterminationist policies and Nazi shit so that is why it's on the slur blacklist on the site.

In the US (and probably other english speaking western countries) it's used to insult people with mental disabilities

The slur filter exists for a reason please dont bypass it

Also, free speech is bad

There's kind of a treadmill of linguistic acceptability going where the technical term for something slowly, by misuse, becomes a slur. The R word is the latest of these, and I think the best comparison for it is the word de-generate (verb, not noun). They're both t e c h n i c a l l y scientific terms, one means to slow and the other means to decay or worsen. But in the context of early 20th century US medicine, when abuse, lobotomization and even sterilization were go-to treatments for all kinds of mental illness, such words became weapons used by the medical establishment to dehumanize "undesirables" and justify their forced "correction". Many such words in the field have run this course: originally intended as neutral descriptors, but their repeated invoking for fascist purposes leaves a stink of nazi on them.

Then there's the whole trickle down cultural aspect of the R word, everyone using it casually for decades (my partner is watching Dexter for the first time and they drop like 3 per episode, it was unavoidable in the US from like 1980 to 2015). But that's more broad, and I'm sure people have written it up already. I just wanted to try and shed some light on the word's more sinister historical use by those with actual power. If you're a G*mer, the word is how you express acute dissatisfaction. But if you're an unempathetic doctor in a capitalist regime, especially back in the day, it's the word you can use to ruin someone's life.

The r word, idiot, stupid, and lame are all ableist insults we should remove from our speech.

Words like thug and loot are also colonialist and should also be removed.

radical politics was abolished in the anglosphere by relegating it to the symbolic.

of course symbols matter, but it is notable that the crusade against political obscenity has not been accompanied by a war against the violent medical system that it crudely invokes.

As buh said. Please also be aware of other words which use the suffix of the last four letters of the word which may also be considered derivative slurs and may be removed

I understand what you mean,as a fellow Balkaner,but this is an international forum and we need to conduct ourselves appropriately

Still,the normalization of slurs here is something I deeply disagree with,as I believe all humans deserve to be treated with the appropriate respect

I live my life just fine without making use of this word,and I haven't felt like my speech was limited in any significant manner. I do admit I use dumb or stupid on occasion,but I've been trying to limit those as well. Anyway, insult-wise there are plenty of other words to use without the negative connotation.

I don't really have an issue with not saying certain words, because,let's be honest,their non demeaning use is marginal. I can live my life just fine without saying them and I wouldn't feel stifled.

It usually refers to people with genetic conditions. So it feels mean to them. Worse constantly associating bad things you don't like with genetic conditions is like eugenics language. Further it isn't actually descriptive or useful in discourse so it is intellectually lazy.

The normalizing eugenics language thing seems like a bit of a stretch I am sure. However, almost everyone here on this form started making jokes about comunism ironically. Then they got comfortable with it. Then they read some theory. It turns out our brains are really bad at keeping stuff out so you should make an effort not not say things that you don't want to effect you. We don't have free will. We are salty bags of goo. Brains don't work as well as we'd like, mental hygiene is important.

It gets more complicated as this has happened with every use of the word. Fool, was a diagnosis. It referred to someone intellectually disabled back in the renesance days. Then it became an insult. Then we stop using it and forgot the context. Now it is a regular word. We can see people in this cycle with special and disabled currently.

As a semi-relevant bit of trivia regarding slurs and how they manifest across different languages, the antiquated medical jargon to grave slur pipeline isn't solely an English thing - There's similarly loaded phrases in other languages. I know for sure that there's a close analogue in Japanese, mostly since a early iteration of Celeste's Japanese script ended up using it inappropriately in a particular piece of character dialogue as a translation for the English phrase "Crazy".

I don't have any more to add than what's already been said.

Just want to say it's good of you to be interested in growing and being able to so humbly ask for assistance to do it. Thanks for being so open.

It's not just English. In French and German, you are going to find a similar word with the use case.

If 2 people insult each other, they're usually on an even level. If a bully hits a weaker person, that's bad because they're (literally) punching down. If an able-bodied person punches someone in a wheelchair, that's even worse. Same concept for other disabilities...