I'm trans and I really don't want to federated with these people if their mods are defending the -tard suffix and they aren't getting de-modded and banned. I also don't want to be federated with them if they ban critiquing western chauvinism.
Someone who is an admin and with more of a level head than me RN please talk to their admins about it.
I mean, what's the project there, I think, is the question. In the same way that the f-slur can be used in person by people who are LGBTQ, I suppose people who are neurodivergent/disabled might use that term amongst themselves.
The issue is that you have people with intellectual disabilities under that umbrella along with the nerudivergent. So while the neurodivergent person has the agency, perhaps, to be reclamatory like your friends, I feel like the intellectually disabled don't really have the same agency. Like, there's diminished capacity there that I think makes it a lot more complicated than other oppressed groups. I'm being somewhat paternalistic here, perhaps (in part because I have a family member who is disabled and I have a paternalistic role to a degree due to their capacities), and obviously there's a huge spectrum. But I think that's actually an important distinction between it and other slurs that can be reclaimed.
Again though, I say this as someone who isn't disabled/neurodivergent, so I'll say that all of this is very much just my personal take and not programmatic.