TW//strong topics:slurs and trauma
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Hello, I am Dawn, you probably haven't seen me before and that's because I've only been here barely over a month.
Anyways, as you can see in the title, I will be talking about the R-slur. Now, I'm not writing this to get a kick or two out of people, I've just seen quite a bit of people who thought saying this word was okay. It's not. It can be very offensive towards disabled people, including myself.
(For those of you who don't know, I have Border-Line Autisim. Border-Line Autisim is kinda like autisim, just with less symtoms and doesn't affect the brain as much.)
A lot of people think the R-slur is a synonym of the word "stupid", but it's more complex than that. The original definition of the word was to be used medically, but over the years, it has been used as an insult towards disabled people, sterotyping them, and meaning that "just because they're disabled, meant that they were stupid." Now, a lot of disabled people have suffered through a lot of serious stuff, including trauma, bullying, and sadly, some have even been killed just because they were "diffrent". A lot of disablities have sadly been caused by trauma too. This is a topic that has not been brought up as often as it should. A lot of people need to see how serious this really is. Just because they are thought of as "stupid" about 1/3rd of disabled people have suffered.
Just because a person is disabled, does not mean they're stupid. Even if you're using it as a joke, it still should be avoided. It is a very serious word, and saying it could get you to hurt a lot of people.
A lot of people do think that because they are disabled, they should say it, but I disagree. Weither or not you're disabled, you should still avoid saying it. It would still be taken seriously, and it is not a word to joke around with.
Now, if you were to say it medically, I wouldn't really mind, but I don't speak for the thousands of disabled people out there who would. So, it shouldn't be said at all.
If you don't get what I'm saying, please at least try not to say it no matter what you think, we are still people and should be treated with as much respect as everyone else.
(I was really tired when I wrote this. If I've said anything wrong or made a spelling error please let me know and i'll fix that :])