Autism as a metaphor for--you name it

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I read it but missed the point at first, so I gotta vote that, although factual, it was not intelligent (either that or I am the one lacking intelligence - any way there was a lack of intelligence between the article and this reader )

The author was trying to illuminate a pro-as point of view, but the article was so overburdoned with anti-as info and the author's point was not forceful enough to be clearly made, and thus was burried under the avalanch of negativity.

I wished that his thesis statement had been more clearly stated so idiots like me could grasp it on the first reading

I think some people might be missing the point of this article. It's from Language Log, a linguistics blog which I read occasionally. It's primarily about linguistics, not Asperger's. It's talking about how the meaning of words can shift (semantic drift), quite rapidly. The author says they think the way Asperger's is being used is quite insulting for us. The author isn't someone who would use Asperger's like this.

The problem is, once a word starts drifting like this, you can't really stop it. Linguists know this well. It happened with 'ret*d', 'spastic', and the N-word. Hopefully the fact that Asperger's Syndrome is a bit of a mouthful means it won't be completely mainstreamed like with 'ret*d'.

We see people more as objects than as people?? Hmm...

...at least according to the out-side-looking-in view of the "experts"