I have autism and the word is deeply offensive to me. For all of my young life, it was used as a cudgel to single me out and beat me into social submission. It was used to remind me of my place in the social hierarchy (lower than non-retards, obviously) and as a reason for excluding me or treating me differently from everyone else. It's just as anecdotal as anything else, but I have many neurodivergent friends and family members with similar histories with the word.

Not seeing the problem with something does not mean there isn't a problem. In this case, it just means that the problem is not particularly relevant to your own life.

And I don't know why "idiot" doesn't have the same sting or modern context around it, but despite its historical use, it simply doesn't hit the same. I guess it could be that it's not used so explicitly to identify neurodivegence, so much as it is a way of saying someone didn't/doesn't think things through, whereas using "retard" is more like insulting someone's genetic pull. One label can be unlearned, while the other is a life-sentence. Once removed; forever a retard.

If the n-word was used to describe people acting stupid would you feel comfortable with that? What if no black people complained about it? Would that make it okay? The degree of severity is clearly different because of the historical context, but it is basically the same thing for a different community. A community that, oftentimes, has far less ability to advocate for themselves and far less ability to mobilize en masse. It's a word that inherently punches down, and using it does shape the perception of our community as well as just hurt our feelings because we are people that can feel and understand when we are being treated differently.

My b for that rant. It's just fucked up that people act like getting punched in the kidney doesn't hurt just because they've never been punched in the kidney before. That's not how it works, and if there was a specific word for denigrating you ("you" as in whoever is reading this tbc) I'm sure many people like you would not like being reminded of what negative bullshit the world at large assumes about them based on something they had no control over. Shit fucking sucks, fullstop.