This is how far they’d come: After years of campaigning against the “r-word,” advocates with Special Olympics decided they should avoid educating elementary school children about the slur because so many students had never heard it in the first place.

“Teachers told us we would have been introducing a word they don’t already use,” said Andrea Cahn, who leads Special Olympics school programming in the United States. “So we said, ‘OK, let’s not even go there.’”

That was about a decade ago, a period of landmark progress. In 2010, Governor Deval Patrick had banned the use of the word “retardation” from state laws, and President Barack Obama signed a law removing “mental retardation” and “mentally retarded” from federal health, education, and labor policy and replacing those phrases with people-first language.

In the years that followed, as the movement gained momentum, the word became so unacceptable that when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer used it to describe a home for children with intellectual disabilities, in 2021, he was loudly called out and issued an apology that was widely covered by the news media.

Now it appears the word is making a comeback amid a backlash against woke culture and the election of a president who used it as a disparagement on the campaign trail.

As a Reddit user wailed in a post earlier this year that attracted hundreds of comments: “When did everyone decide it’s OK to say the r-word again?”

Contributing to the rise, experts said, is the vitriol and anonymity of cyberspace, where old rules of civility have eroded. A study by the data analytics firm Kantar of nearly 50 million posts in the US found that more than two-thirds of posts about people with intellectual disabilities were negative, and nearly 29 million contained slurs — many using the word “retard” or “retarded” or other words combined with “-tard.”

The word is used in reference to those with disabilities, as well as anyone the author wants to put down.

Craig Thomas, the co-creator of the hit TV series “How I Met Your Mother” and the father of a son born with a rare genetic syndrome and lifelong learning disabilities, said the instinct of commentators online is to “go for the kill as quickly as possible, and people see the r-word as the ultimate knock-out punch.”

Thomas, who’s writing a comedic novel about special needs parenthood, said he’s started seeing the word used as an almost generic “go-to insult” on social media and in comedy specials, and in politics, where the word “libtard” — a mash-up of liberal and the r-word — has become almost divorced from its original meaning. “Some people who throw the word ‘libtard’ around ... might not even remember that [the r-word] is part of this unfortunate little 21st-century online portmanteau.”

Special Olympics says it has been flooded with requests to call out people who are using the r-word online and is increasingly posting responses to social media accounts that misuse the word. It has also resumed greater emphasis in public messaging to discourage use of the word, including in school programs that educate young children on that point.

The word has made recent appearances in many corners of the culture, including the murder trial of Karen Read, where testimony revealed that a state trooper assigned to investigate Read had mocked her in an online group chat as ”retarded.”

It was also feeling the love on X, where, as Trump secured the needed electoral votes to win the nation’s top job, a popular tweet read: “you can say retarded at work now.”

The r-word may sound like just another offensive word to some people, but not to those with intellectual disabilities and their loved ones and advocates.

“I’m really terrified,” Maura Sullivan, chief executive officer of The Arc of Massachusetts, said of the resurgence she’s seeing and the political and cultural climate that rewards insult culture.

The Arc is a nonprofit that works to enhance the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In her role, Sullivan teaches medical students across the state about the importance of using language that values people with disabilities, and she fears that people may forget the danger that comes when people’s lives are devalued.

“Here in Mass., where less than 100 years ago, and up until the ‘70s, and even later, people were institutionalized and the language to describe these people were words like ‘retarded,’ ‘idiot,’ and ‘genius,’” she said. “These were diagnostic terms. These individuals were abused and experimented on.”

More recently, she said, a medical student told her that one of her classmates tripped on the stairs on the way to class and another called them a “retard.”

Perhaps no one expressed the importance of stamping out the use of the word better than Melissa Reilly, 38, a Special Olympics Athlete and an advocate for people with Down syndrome, herself included.

The word is used to bully, she said, and is often whispered behind kids’ backs at school. “I don’t want people with disabilities and my friends to be hurt if they hear it,” said Reilly, who works as an office aide and disability policy adviser in the office of state Senator Jamie Eldridge.

Reilly has been working on a bill to remove outdated and disparaging terms for people with disabilities that still exist in Massachusetts laws. The archaic-language bill passed through the House in April, but the Senate didn’t take it up during the formal session (although could during the informal session) and advocates, Reilly included, are frustrated.

“I just want the r-word to go away,” she said.

Many that is true, but an incomplete statement.

What if retarded people want to continue to use the word to take back the power of it ?

What if they mispronounced the term for slowing down the tempo of a song?

What if retarded people want to continue to use the word to take back the power of it ?