R****d fell out of favor probably close to 15 years ago at this point. Developmentally disabled/intellectual disability has replaced it.

I am retarded and I agree. The word has never left my vocabulary. People have been calling me retarded as long as I can remember. I've got the pass and I give all of you the pass. It's just word. People have called me far worse and many of my closest friends and family who would take a bullet for me call me retarded all the time. Just like I call all of them retarded whenever they do or say something retarded.

In the wise words of the Black Eyed Peas: "let's get retarded in here."

I don't know where we got this idea that "retarded" was as vile and pernicious as The Hard R, to the point people don't want to repeat it. Nobody with intellectual disabilities I've heard from has such a visceral reaction to it, anecdotal as that is. The outrage seems completely invented and it gained a momentum of its own.

"Idiot" was also a medical term for cognitive disability, should that go away too?

99% of the time I hear it used, it's interchangeable with "stupid" or "idiot" and not derogatory towards literal disability.

TBH kinda with you here, is it just the relatively recent proximity of the use of the word to refer those with intellectual disabilities?

...

I actually looked this up and found a timeline, which shows the use is much more recent in medical contexts than I thought, Rosa's Law 2010 is where it's use was superceded in federal usage.

I honestly thought it was a kinda 50s to 70s kinda deal, not 70s - 2010; this does change my perspective and opinion a little bit, and I do feel a bit more sympathy as of how it's still very much within living memory for some.

At the same time, I wonder whether those who take issue with it being used casually (not in reference to intellectual disability), take the same issue with the use of idiot, moron or imbecile, as retarded was used because those terms became common place and slang, not exclusively medical words.

I think that once the cat is out of the bag, (and the fact that both the medical society, and general society has moved past a single catch all term for intellectual disability) you can't really keep a word from developing it's own life.

I will note, my opinion doesn't hold any real weight here, as I'm the UK we never had AFAIK a diagnosis of "Mental retardation"

And MAGA as a whole are retarded.