If you don't know which word I'm talking about, I mean the word "retarded". People say it all the time as a synonym for "stupid," "annoying," "weird" and lots of other negative terms. Most of the time, people don't say it maliciously, they just don't realize how that word can really hurt people.

To start, the term "mental retardation" isn't even the correct terminology anymore. Medical professionals use the term "intellectually disabled" to describe someone who has a mental disability. So saying someone is the r word really doesn't mean anything, you just sound like an insensitive jerk. And since when are medical conditions interchangeable with insults? Now that is f*****d up.

Calling someone or something "retarded" is just straight up mean because you're using someone's life, someone's struggle and (possibly) biggest insecurity and making an insult after it. That's like someone saying "Oh my god, that professor just spent a half hour blabbing on about his life story. He probably has cancer!" (For the record, I would never say this). See how not cool that is? And it doesn't even make sense, just the how the r word really doesn't make sense when you think about it.

Way more are offended by this than you think also, and just because you say it around no intellectually disabled people doesn't make it okay. You could have potentially said the r word in front of friends and families of someone who's intellectually disabled, they themselves might be and it's just a mild case and so on. Not limited to that, a lot of people feel uncomfortable when people say the r word to them but simply don't speak up about it in fear of being called "sensitive" or "dramatic". No, standing up for people with disabilities doesn't make me sensitive thank you very much.

Let's not pretend that there aren't 100 different ways to express your feelings without saying the r word. And replacing the r word with "challenged" isn't any better, just so you know.