Around 15 years ago, a new campaign took off across the young social media ecosystem. People with learning disabilities and intellectual disorders were asking everyone else to stop using the r-word to describe them or even to make jokes. No more, “Bro, that movie’s so dumb, it’s [r-word],” no more, “Don’t be stupid, why are you acting like such a [r-word]?” Across the internet, commentators had their doubts that the movement would succeed, or even that it was worthwhile.Surely, detractors argued, we had seen this dance before, with words like “idiot” and “moron” and “stupid.” All of them were originally developed as clinical terms for people with intellectual disorders, and they all eventually became insults as the wider public picked up on them, in a process variously called the euphemism cycle or the euphemism treadmill. “Idiot” and its ilk emerged in an era that lacked our current moment’s sensitivity over slurs, so they hadn’t experienced the same boycott campaign that the r-word w...
