TAO, thank you for being a great example of an internet asshole. You are arguing against the use of a word I didn't use and attacking my "defense" of it, which I also didn't use. Get off your high horse, you don't know shit. Reading a few books and taking a few classes at the community college doesn't make you a civil rights leader. All you are proving is your desperate need to feel important and righteous. You are so desperate to make this argument, and show your moral superiority, that you stretched calling a gamer a "fucktard" into an attack on the Intellectually disabled community. It's as asinine as calling someone racist for using the word "niggardly". Grow up. Want to help people who are suffering with disabilities? Get your hands dirty and do it. You have to be a real person. The people I work with would roll their eyes at you and see you as the gilded farce you really are. I may come across as a loud mouthed and opinionated asshole, and that's often the case, but I've also worked with adults and children with IDD and mental illness for almost 11 years. And I don't mean spending a weekend here and there volunteering, I mean working with those people no one else has the heart, stomach or courage to work with. You talk big, but have you ever held a child as he cried because the other kids have called him a retard? I have. Have you ever worked with adults so severely disabled they need 24 hour care to even survive? I have. Have you ever seen a man break down in tears because someone refused to sell him a car, just assuming it was "illegal for the retarded to drive"? I've been there. That's just the surface, the stories get a lot darker when we bring mental illness into it.
Mindfulness. Really look at why you felt so compelled to make this argument. If all you get is that you are a righteous crusader, than you have missed a good opportunity to learn who you really are and make a change for the better.
I'll put aside the fact that we have no way to verify your claims, which would normally be pretty significant.
You are spewing quite a bit of hyperbole while accusing me of overstating an unimportant word choice. An attack on the community? Hardly. Its just amusing that you make such a big deal with the I love disabled people thing while using a word derived from a word used to attack them. You are the one who started throwing out your I dealt with horrible things stories as soon as someone mentioned you doing something inappropriate.
Instead of going much farther in being self righteous and pushing your activism cred than I did wouldn't it have been so much simpler to say, you know, you are right. I shouldn't have said that word and I will refrain from it in the future. Seeing as this is the internet and you have plenty of time to remove bigotry from your post before hitting reply, and it can't just slip out like it might in irl.
Its not like there aren't dozens of replacement words you could have used.
I used an example known even to the average person so that you could check it out for yourself. My using a personal example is just as useless as your doing so, there is no way to verify it. I have indeed dealt with young children who were called a retard by other children and were crying. Your other examples are too specific. I have seen and/or been involved in similar events.
Your niggardly example is spurious, the words do not have the same origin. In fact its likely derived from a totally different family of languages than the n-word. So in fact I see no reason to be upset about that word. Nice try.
Mindfulness. Really look at why you felt so compelled to fight the idea that you had done something wrong when its so clear that you did. Ditto on your second sentence.
