No one has issues with the word when it isn't the slur. If they do, they're in the wrong. (Yes, using the word as the deprecated medical term is also the slur)
Pissed off that you can't use the slur anymore? Blame everyone who used it as an insult, turning it into a slur.
Angry that things changed? That's the way things work. Might as well be mad about weather or the movement of time.
"Retard" is a slur, among elementary school children.
"But I was called that as a chiiiild! And now I have issuuuuues!"
No. You were probably a normal kid and got called bad names like everyone else. Get the fuck over it. If you were actually retarded, you likely had no idea what the word meant.
Y'all didn't go to school with severely handicapped kids, did ya? In the 70s, we had no where else to put them but among the "general population" of the schools. And no, it wasn't the prison most of you young folk grew up in.
It's the same as idiot or moron, which could both be rather limply accused of being ableist, but we all understand aren't. You would call charlie kirk those words, and you would never call someone with a mental handicap those words.
R-word (which lemmy censors) is fine, just don't use it in the ableist and fucked up way.