Beep beep coming though!

Mental retardation is no excuse for abuse. But it’s still an apt term, in denotation. But the connotation has become unacceptable.

A plant’s growth may be retarded due to various conditions, and that may interfere with it’s prospects for survival.

Fire retardant may prevent a fire from starting, or stop one that has started to develop.

But when considering people, there are a whole slew of subtle problems, including that people may include that in their identity, and give up. They can be treated, possibly, but that’s all for them now. You’re a retard. It leaves no room for other things. People still feel this way about some diagnoses that, if they didn’t lean into them so hard, leave plenty of room for change. But the social weight behind “retard” just carries too much crap, and speaks volumes - some of which may be true, but a lot of which is not.

‘Disabled’, ‘undeveloped’, and ‘inhibited’ can be good terms. But most of it depends more heavily on how we treat others and what has been taken into common use.

Retard is more recently used, and is still being cycled out.

Except that with “retard” and quite a few others, there are genuine traits that are undesirable to most people, thus the constant cycling of terms. Technical terms come in to general and pejorative use, then new technical terms come in to be less pejorative. This the terms more and more vaguely refer to the condition when referencing actual mentally handicapped people.

idiot moron cretin retard (from ‘[profound] mental retardation’)

All technical or health terms that have been cycled into being slurs in common use. Some more terms that have made their way into pejorative use:

Handicapped (not so much pejoratively used, but being cycled out anyways) Special Differently Abled

I’m sure any new technical terms that are used will be picked up for pejorative use soon enough. But “mentally retarded” was and is an apt description, it’s just not socially acceptable anymore because of it’s ease of use as an insult, and the concomitant public view and usage of the word.

I think you may be misunderstanding your “victory” here. I suppose that’s pretty contextual, when it comes down to it.

Time.