Reply #7: Yeah. I agree with you, but its kind of a shame to be getting rid of the r-word.

[napoleon_in_rags]

Its a shortening of the old medical term, 'developmentally retarded'. Here in Washington state we refer to the population now as 'developmentally disabled', or DD for short, but its actually kind of a misnomer. I've worked with this population for years, and I can really say they their development isn't disabled, its slowed, (or retarded in medical terms) The point is that the struggle and fight their whole lives to develop, and 'disabled' doesn't really express the struggle. However it DOES have the advantage that it can't be meaningfully shortened to an alien word like "retarded", because "disabled" is a broad term. What I wish though is that we could acknowledge their struggle, with a term like "developmentally challenged". This risks being shortened to the diminutive "challenged", but if we could avoid that and just abbreviate it, like we do with 'DD people', I think we would have a term that really does justice to the struggles of that population.