Fair Warning: I WILL challenge this kind of bigotry.

[HereSince1628]

16. But we aren't just everyday folk...we are people who other people discriminate against

The general public acquires prejudice based on the language and defaults to two considerations of us...

We are stereotyped as unpredictably dangerous, incompetent or both. When members of society act on that the result is discrimination against us in hiring, promotion, housing and social/family associations. The response of government and the justice system is no better.

People acquire a belief that we can't be trusted, with trivial or important responsibilities. Our possibilities are endangered by the facile capacity of many others who 'mean no harm' and whose language simply demands using us as iconic colorful disparagements to publicly heap upon their opponents.

It's a disappointing curiosity of liberal existence how so many people that fully grasp that demeaning speech about ethnicities, genders, etc harms those targets yet don't see similar dangers in using speech that demeans persons who struggle with current illness or who are marked by past struggles with mental illness.