Is "cripple" a bad word?

Warning: This post will contain a lot of swearing.

Seriously. I'm going to swear here more than usual.

.. Ok, you've been warned.

Able-bodied folks absolutely should not fucking use the word "cripple" when referring to those of us who are disabled.

It's goddamned story time, folks.

About an hour before this rant got published I was walking up to the coffee shop after grabbing a delicious breakfast.

I'm wearing my "Fuck Off, Faceless Fascists" morale patch, a sweet-ass Rory Blank t-shirt (that was a limited run, like most of his awesome shit), and have my 5.11 Tactical EDC bag on my back.

A young man held the door open for me as I walked into the coffee shop. He's a regular, like me, but instead of h4ck1ng t3h g1b50n (he thought I worked in InfoSec for some reason), he.. Studies the bible.

There's a certain bit of fucking irony about to happen here.

Anyway, we approach the counter to order, and I buy his coffee; Partly because I felt like it, and he did just hold the door open for me. As I am paying, he comments on my backup cane in my bag and says something to the effect of "It must suck to be crippled, but at least you get to have fashionable canes".

The fuck? This guy is younger than me. Where in the shit-stained hell did he learn the slur "cripple" and think it was appropriate?

I seriously don't know how to react at this point. I look at the barista, and I don't think she even reacted to it, and she's younger than both of us.

I should add a bit of extra context: This fucking guy comes off as a bit.. Slim of thought, we'll say. I have no doubt he's heard some slurs hurled at him before, and knows that shit sucks blistered dicks.

People really seem to have no idea that fucking normies should fucking not use the fucking word cripple.

It is a goddamned slur, but it seems people really don't fucking get it.

It's not even the first time I've been called cripple.

It made some sense (but still isn't justifiable) when a local Lyft driver asked Jess "where your cripple boyfriend is" when picking her up for a ride, because he was an old racist piece of shit who judges folks so hard he must feel the need to compensate for the fact that his dick is limper than reheated shit log in a microwave.

This kid, though? I mean, Jesus fucking Christ..

Much like the slur faggot - which I have heard plenty of times in anger - Just because it applies to me doesn't mean you get to use it.

I get to use it because I fucking earned the scars of the word, and am allowed to use it with my fellow faggots and cripples because we have a shared pain of it's context (although in both cases I only drop it with my compatriots who are also a dark fucking void of pain inside to the point of laughing maniacally about it all). With folks I don't know? Yeah, I'm not going to drop it without asking them if it bothers them first.

Don't like it? Wish you were a cool kid like me?

Too goddamned bad, asshat. Get hit by a car or start sucking dicks if you want to use either one; until that happens, though, you should probably start adhering to a certain degree of human decency.