How do you feel about the word ret*d?

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Temple Grandin is famous for much more than "studying horses."

I once broke a kid's wrist ligaments because he followed me around calling me "ret*d."

I wish the video went along with this, but this captures my feelings on it precisely.
Doug Stanhope captures many of my ASD thoughts very well.

As far as I'm concerned, I view the word ret*d in a similar manner to the "N" word. Black people use the latter all the time when communicating with each other and it's perfectly fine, but a white person uses it and suddenly it's a slur. Likewise, I'll use ret*d when talking about myself or other friends of mine who's minds (like mine) might not always process things the right way, but anyone who's "normally functioning" says it and I'll get defensive, stating that it's "our word", much like how black people have their word. It even reminds me of the subtle commentary in Zootopia where Judy Hoops states that it's perfectly fine for one bunny to call another bunny "cute", but that it has negative connotations when a completely different species uses that same word to describe said bunny. Sorry for going off on a tangent. Just had to get that off my chest.

I'm fully in favor of losing friends over political beliefs. Much of what they believe politically comes through in their friendships. Both Republicans and Democrats believe in the progressive notion that morality needs to be policed through government. I've seen far too many instances of this belief shining through in their relationships. I don't need rulers and I don't need anyone deciding what's best for me. I'll own my own life thank you.

Obviously I have very few friends but the one's I have are true friends who respect my personal sovereignty.

Yeah I think that's fair.

However it's hard work navigating friendship where the beliefs/attitudes of your friends don't align with your own. I think you need to have high amounts of flexibility in terms of personality type.

I haven't read all 16 pages of this thread, but has somebody made a distinction between the word "ret*d" as an epithet vs. "ret*d" as an adjective? Until fairly recently, it was considered perfectly acceptable to describe somebody whose primary disability is to have a low intellectual capacity, usually to the extent they cannot succeed in "regular" public school etc. Having a son in Special Olympics, I could identify a number of people I know who, it you look at them, would seem perfectly normal except you will sooner or later recognize their intellect is too far "below normal" for them to every be completely independent. In my state, there is a non-profit called "The Arc" and its name was originally an abbreviation for "The Association for ret*d Citizens" until 1992 when they dropped that. The only problem I have, is that nobody has yet come up with a simple but acceptable term to replace that. So 30 years ago, you could legitimately say a person was "ret*d" and it simply meant they had a primarily intellectual (as opposed to neurological, etc.) disability. Nowadays I wouldn't know a straightforward way to communicate the same thing except with some sort of overblown circumlocution.