The ‘r-word’ is back. How a slur became renormalized

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On an April episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the host used a slur within the first 45 seconds of the show.

“The word ‘retarded’ is back, and it’s one of the great culture victories,” Rogan said with a laugh in the April 10 episode of his über-popular podcast. “Probably spurred on by podcasts.”

A few months earlier, on January 6, Elon Musk used the word in response to a Finnish researcher who called Musk the “largest spreader of disinformation in human history.”

Use of the slur more than doubled on X, the platform Musk owns, in the two days after he made that January post, researchers from Montclair State University found. More than 312,000 subsequent posts made on X in that span contained the r-word, wrote co-author Bond Benton, a professor of communication at the New Jersey university.

The buck didn’t stop there, Benton said. Throughout 2025, influential public figures like Rogan, Musk and Kanye West have used the r-word on platforms where millions can see and hear them. (West most recently used the term in March to refer to Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s twins, though those X posts are now deleted.)

Since Musk’s January post, the online prevalence of the r-word is “absolutely getting worse,” Benton told CNN.

Rogan, Musk and West are likely using the word to get a rise out of people and draw more eyes to their content, Benton said. But by using a term that has historically been used to disparage and diminish people with disabilities, they’re renormalizing the slur among followers and fans who interact with their posts, he said.

Musk, Rogan and West haven’t responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

The resurgence of the r-word is symptomatic of a graver problem — the “apparent death of empathy,” said Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor at American University who has studied how the far-right uses tech to grow its influence.

“What you’re seeing now, people’s masks are off,” Massanari said. “This is not just misunderstanding but the mischaracterization and demonization of communities. The use of that kind of language is signaling a shift, a desire to sort of push the envelope.”

Push the envelope too far, she said, and the harm spills out into all marginalized communities. The r-word’s surging popularity is just the latest effort in a movement to normalize hate, she said.


The r-word has never really gone away, Massanari said — many people still use the word in private, and controversial far-right influencers and some members of the former “dirtbag left” podcast scene alike have used it for years to rile up followers and appeal to edgy comedic styles.

But most people “were comfortable with the word retreating from normal discourse,” after years of campaigns designed to end use of the slur, Benton said.

“There was a reason these words are no longer being used,” Massanari said. “They weren’t productive. They weren’t helping. They are actively harming communities.”

The r-word, initially, was meant to replace words that had become pejoratives. Introduced in 1895, “mental retardation” became the preferred term among psychologists, supplanting the diagnostic labels “imbecile,” “moron” and “feebleminded,” said Lieke van Heumen, a clinical associate professor in disability and human development at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

The r-word was intended to be a “neutral” term, van Heumen said. But people with disabilities then were still largely disregarded and treated as lesser members of society, regularly institutionalized in dangerous environments and even forcibly sterilized without their consent. Under those conditions, the r-word eventually warped into a slur and an insult, she said.

“When disability is framed as a lack, limitation or loss, it reinforces the idea that people with disabilities are inherently incapable,” van Heumen told CNN. “This framing is used to justify their exclusion from everyday life, as if they are missing what it takes to participate. Such language is not harmless — it influences public attitudes, informs policy decisions and ultimately affects how people with disabilities are treated.”

The chorus to retire the r-word grew louder in the 1970s, van Heumen said, as people with disabilities advocated for their right to participate fully in society and end the use of ableist language. Nearly 40 years later, the “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign encouraged young people in particular to quit using the slur to insult their peers.

The federal government signaled its support to end the use of the r-word with 2010’s “Rosa’s Law,” named for a young girl with Down syndrome, which updated all federal laws to use “intellectual disability” in place of “mental retardation.” The legislation stated that the term and its “derivatives,” including the r-word, were “used to demean and insult both persons with and without disabilities.”

Sophie Stern, a 22-year-old choreographer and actress from Arizona, has Down syndrome and is a member of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council. For years, she’s confronted classmates who’ve said the r-word in front of her, even petitioning to have the word removed from a script.

But she’s hearing the word more often now than she did in school, she told CNN. And it doesn’t make her any less upset to hear it, even if it’s not directed at her.

“It still hurts my feelings,” she said.

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