i can only speak for my experience. growing up autistic, i was targeted due to my different ways of thinking and acting for bullying, using the r-word to belittle and demean me, far too many times, for hearing it used to mean ‘bad’ to feel like anything but an attack on me or those like me. when someone uses the r-word casually, it hurts, and a fully automatic system, borne of hard experience, files that person away as a probable threat. i don’t understand why people want to use the word so badly, knowing it hurts people, and knowing it’s not necessary or even all that useful of a word.
i can only speak for my experience. growing up autistic, i was targeted due to my different ways of thinking and acting for bullying, using the r-word to belittle and demean me, far too many times, for hearing it used to mean ‘bad’ to feel like anything but an attack on me or those like me. when someone uses the r-word casually, it hurts, and a fully automatic system, borne of hard experience, files that person away as a probable threat. i don’t understand why people want to use the word so badly, knowing it hurts people, and knowing it’s not necessary or even all that useful of a word.