I will respect what any disabled person wishes to be called. I will respect what any Autistic person, whether that person feels disabled or not, wishes to be called. But as you can already tell by my post, I much prefer identity first language and I call myself an Autistic person. Anyone who tries to "correct" me and tell me that I should call myself a person with Autism because I should consider myself a person first, will get an earful from me.
My reasons for this are as follows.
1. Autism affects every single part of my life. There is nothing in my person which is not directly affected by my Autism. Some people like to say that Autism does not define them. Well it certainly defines me. What makes me a person is not only that I have the physical attributes of a human being. What makes me a person is how I interpret the world around me, how I process and deal with stimuli and emotions and how I interact with others and how I process relationships not only with other people but with every sentient being around me. What makes me a person is how I interpret and understand and respond to every experience I have, how I experience my own body and mind. Every single one of those things is directly affected and in very deep ways defined by my Autism. I cannot separate my Autism from my person. If my Autism were to be removed, I would be a completely different person and I would experience everything I experience in my entire life completely differently. My Autism literally defines everything about my experience as a person. I cannot be a "person first." That is literally not possible.
Autism is not something I caught and that can be cured. It is not a disease. Now I know that there are many many causes for Autistic symptoms and some of the environmental causes can be addressed and some people have actually reversed their Autistic symptoms when the environmental causes have been addressed. But that is another topic. I am genetically Autistic. My Autism was formed in the womb. I was born with it, I cannot change it. It is not something I can put aside at will or have surgically removed. It is part of my physiological makeup, It is part of my DNA and genetic coding. I consider it part of my soul.
2. As some others have mentioned, using person first language implies that Autism is a bad thing. It is not. A society that treats us unfairly because we are Autistic is a bad thing. The fact that many neurotypicals have no Theory of Mind which causes them to discriminate or to make things difficult for us is a bad thing. The fact that society creates and upholds environments that make it difficult or impossible for us to function or to survive is a bad thing. Autism in and of itself is not a bad thing. If society were to make very simple changes in order to accommodate everyone, many of us would not suffer from Autism. And Autistic people play a very crucial role in keeping society as a whole balanced. There have been Autistic people since the dawn of humanity and we have played that role throughout history but that is also another topic.
3. In my opinion, insistence on person first language is extremely bigoted. I have bolded, underlined and italicized those words so that people don't attack me if they differ in opinion. I am old enough that the diagnoses for ASD were not available unless you were extremely severe and thought to need institutionalization. Because I was what would have, prior to 2013, been considered Aspergian or HFA now, and because I am female, my Autism was not diagnosed until 2014. But when I was growing up, I was mistreated and bullied because of my Autism. As a young teen and preteen, I was so mistreated without being able to understand why, that I literally did not think that I was human. I thought I must be something but I knew I was not like everybody else. I still to this day get bullied and mistreated for being Autistic which makes me feel dehumanized. So for me, personally, I don't appreciate a society that hurt me and continues to hurt me so much that as a young girl I did not even understand that I was a person, now tell me that I have to consider myself as one of them because it makes them feel better, as they continue to hurt, bully, and discriminate against me. I now know that I am a person despite how they treat me. I don't need them to give me their permission to consider myself one.
I feel like person first language is bigoted because the reason that I sometimes feel less than human is not because I am Autistic but because people bully me and treat me less than human because I am different. People who are disabled and who are respected and loved and have their needs met and who are honored for who they are and who are treated with dignity and respect, do not feel dehumanized. The ONLY reason people feel that we have to be "reminded" that we are people is because we are being discriminated against and being treated as less than people. If the people who insisted on using person first language simply respected us and treated us as people to begin with, they would not need to add a label every time they talk about us to remind everyone, and especially themselves, that we are actually people. The reason they have to do that is that they don't think of us as people. We are not the ones who need to be reminded that we are actual people, they are.
4. Most people who insist on person first language have no idea of the history of person first language. They have no clue where it came from or how it started. Person first language came from the Denver Principles. That is where it started. Here is Wikipedia on the Denver Principles. You can find lots of other sources as well on both of these topics if you are not a fan of Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_With_AIDS
Here, also, is Wikipedia on person first language. Take a good look at the criticism section
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language
Insistence on person first language actually goes completely against the concept of the Denver Principles. The Denver Principles were about empowering the individual, giving the individual the right to make his own decisions and to have control of her own affairs, particularly medical decisions. First person language was created because people were being discriminated against and stigmatized and treated as less than human because of a horrific disease that they caught. Before they caught AIDS, or the HIV virus, they were not treated as less than human. Some homosexuals might have been but the person first language came about from a direct result of how people who had AIDS or the HIV virus were being dehumanized. It was the contracting of a horrific disease that made them subhuman in the eyes of others. Person first language was never intended to be used as a way to identify people who are born with a different neurology or with physical differences which are part of their specific being. Those are not things that should make us be thought of as sub human. No one had a problem with being called an Autistic person or having others call us that before June, 1983. Just like no one had a problem with the clinical word "ret*d." The word "ret*d" only became taboo because non ret*d people started using it as a slur and as a word to make people with intellectual disabilities feel less than human. If people stopped treating us in a discriminatory way, we would not need labels and specific language to make us feel like we are not being discriminated against. That is just proof that we are.
5. The right to self identity is one of the most basic human rights that we have. Insisting that people identify themselves the way we want them to rather than respecting how they want to identify themselves strips them of that most basic human right.
6. If we are required to call ourselves people with Autism or people with disabilities, neurotypicals should be required to call themselves people with neurotypicality and able bodied or able minded people should be required to call themselves people with able bodies or people with able minds or people with blackness or people with caucasionness and so on and so on if we are so concerned about putting the person first. Or like a previous post said, people with Britishness. Why is it that no one is up in arms about that? Why is it not consistent across the board and in every circumstance? The answer is that it is only because the people insisting we use person first do not actually think of us as people so they have to make sure we get that label to let everyone know that they are elevating us to that level. You would never call a British person a person with Britishness because there is no question that that person is actually a person. Many neurotypicals don't consider a need to label themselves as people first because many of them think that they are the standard of what people should be by definition. The only reason you would need to add that person first label to someone is if you do not think that he meets that standard of what a person should be so you have to give him permission to be one. I cannot tell you how disgusted I get with this kind of hypocrisy.
Person first language, to me, carries an assumption or an implication that says, I am not OK being Autistic, I have to aspire to be something more or other than Autistic. It's almost like saying that I am not good enough unless I put my Autism aside or behind me and I feel that that implies that I am trying to be as nuerotypical as possible. Well NEWSFLASH, the Autistics that I know personally actually have no desire at all to be neurotypical. You could offer us neurotypicality on gold platters with a side of cole slaw and we would refuse it. Most of the most beautiful, endearing, gifted, and powerfully good qualities about me are directly because of my Autism. My Autism is part of the defining factors in all of those things. It is not a bad thing to be Autistic, it is simply a difficult and challenging thing and that is ONLY because of how society treats us and the the environments they insist on creating and sustaining.
So these are my reasons. But it is up to each person to decide for herself or himself what he or she wants to be called. Each person has his or her own convictions and understanding about this topic and it is right to respect each person's decision even if the convictions are different from your own. Every now and then I even use the phrase person with Autism to talk about myself but I only do that when it fits the sentence structure better, never because I want to think of myself as a "person first." And I try to say Autistic person as much as possible because I do not want people thinking that I ascribe to this "you are a person first" BS.
As a parent of a young Autistic child, it is up to you to develop your own convictions about how you want to address your child and how you want other people to address him. When he is old enough to make his own decisions based on his own informed convictions on the topic, it is your responsibility as a parent to then support and respect whatever he decides. Like I said, self identity is one of our most basic human rights and no one has the right to take that away from us. If, as he grows, he is not capable of making his own decision about this, then it will be up to you to stick to your convictions about the subject. But do not decide this based on some flim whim by self righteous people who have no idea what all the implications are behind this statement. No one has the right to tell you what you should decide on this. And no one has the right to "correct" you on it. If they do, tell them off.
Many people are sticklers for one way or the other and each person has his reasons for what s/he decides. Many people could not care less what you use to describe them and that is great as well. The important thing is that you decide what you think is best for your son and then once he becomes able, that you respect what he decides about it for himself. And it will be good for you to share all the information about the topic with him and encourage him to research it himself so that he can make a truly informed decision if he is capable of doing that. But everyone should be respectful of whatever people decide about how they want to be identified. And if you don't know how someone wants to be personally identified in that regard, just ask him or her directly. We feel respected when we are respected.
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"I'm bad and that's good. I'll never be good and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
Wreck It Ralph
Last edited by skibum on 22 Apr 2018, 12:25 pm, edited 7 times in total.
12 Apr 2018, 6:15 am
But when I'm trying to emphasize the medical/neurological aspect of it, I will sometimes say "my autism" or "I have autism", because saying "I'm autistic" can be misinterpreted by some folks as an offhand comment about personality. People misuse the word "autistic" as an insult and also to refer to nerdy, socially inept folks and on occasion I want to avoid a misinterpretation.
