The interesting part is that it was never intended with malice, it was just a lighthearted bit of a joke. I guess if I had my disability as a kid, I think that would be different. And you laugh along the first few times with them because you know they don’t mean harm, but eventually it gets very old and it sinks in that this is how people perceive you - even if unintentionally. It becomes your defining feature and just a constant reminder of how you can’t do certain things you want to, and it’s worse if your condition is also physically painful it becomes a reminder that you’re in pain, even if you’ve managed to forget for a few happy seconds. It makes it just that little bit more difficult to not think about, when the same word that has been used to describe you just pops up casually in its slang form.

But, for people who have the additional baggage of having how people perceive you as being disabled, when the word has a dual meaning with ‘unintelligent’ like ‘retarded’ or ‘spaz’, its an even more painful sort of othering. It’s not one I’ve experienced personally, but this is why I’ve tried to stop using words which have a medical + bad thing association… which, as it turned out, was most of the words historically used to describe people with disabilities. It runs deep. Even if I aim the words correctly and precisely, I don’t want to make other people feel sad as collateral damage.

I think it actually says something about ‘lame’ that we mostly only use it to refer to animals now. When you hear it used about yourself or others in the original form, it even has a flavour of dehumanisation that it didn’t entirely have before.

Language is a weird thing like that.