Rant: People first language police online

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Okay, time and place, agreed. However, this thread got full of people complaining about political correctness, and I don't want to just let that go unchallenged. I haven't accused anyone of malice yet. I've been accused of malice, but so weakly that I don't see any point in responding.

Another consideration ....isn't "I am autistic" a meaningless abstraction ?

If I say, "I am artistic" , have I told you anything ? Do you know if I am good at making sculptures, not good at paintings?

Autistic people vary in their traits, thus, there is no single defining trait. All that is learned from "I am autistic" is that the person has at least some mental difference ? Of course, don't most humans have different wiring in their brains ?

So, is "I am autistic" a meaningless abstraction? Should everyone rightfully assert, "I am autistic", because everyone has at least some slight brain differences ?

No, because "I am autistic" doesn't just refer to "at least some mental differences," but rather a collection of specific neurological differences. True, there is no single defining trait, but the group of autistic traits is specific rather than general.

There are plenty threads here that have little or nothing to do with autism, they do not get criticized for being invalid or unimportant. What is so insulting to people about this thread?

Yes language is important, and how others view us, and how we view ourselves are related in some way to the important issues you mentioned above.

Very related to the topics above is that it is ok to bully autistics/people with autism by invalidating their experiences. These people are coming into discussions and trying to bully autistics by telling them how they should identify. Unlike here, in those threads autistics as they preferred to be called are not accepting this bullying because there are more important things in the world. They the standing up to these bullies both for themselves and in the hope that non autistics reading might get a better understanding. In that spirit of standing up to bullies trying to invalidate people, who the f**k appointed you head of priority police? Answer nobody. You do not get to choose what topics are ok to post about on WP, only Alex via the moderators get to do that. What is so hard for you about skipping a topic that you think is trivial? Why waste your time on it? Roll you f*****g eyes somewhere else.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 05 Jun 2014, 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The quotes were messed up when I replied to the post. I tried to fix them.



I don't think it's humanly possible to be more of a dick than you're being right now.

And you're not going to convince anybody by acting like an arrogant dick.

They do get criticized, or, more likely, reported, when they are invalid in the sense of being in the autism-specific sub-forums. They are not criticized for merely existing, as you seem to be suggesting, because the WP forums specifically allow the discussion of topics other than autism.

Still far too weak an attack to merit a response.

And yet, here you are, replying. LOL

So when someone says, "I am autistic ", then you know they have at least one trait from a set of unknown X number of traits ?

It seems the same as me telling you, "I am artistic" and letting you guess at which art out X number of arts I am artistic at.

Do you think, "I am artistic" is not a meaningless abstraction?

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 05 Jun 2014, 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's not an abstraction to the person thinking he/she is artistic/autistic.

Whether others think the same thing is questionable.

No, not "at least one." Autism is characterized by the presence of several sorts of traits. There must be something from the social dimension, the communication dimension, and the stereotyped/repetitive behavior dimension.


The entire purpose of abstraction is to distill the common component(s) of the various specific instances from which the abstraction is drawn. The component that is common to the pursuit of all of the arts is creativity, and I would therefore interpret "I am artistic" to mean "I am creative."

Okay, language is important. I don't think it is trivial. I don't think it's a waste of time.

Why are you so defensive? I had an opinion. You have one.

Yes, changing * I'm Autistic* to * I am a person with Autism* will be more empowering, less marginalizing. Society will realized that that people should not a description

Actually, I'm going to an open forum Aspergers support group meeting in an hour. I'm printing out the original post, and offer it up as a topic.

Should be interesting...

My professor did this to me: I wrote a paper about autistics and used the phrase "autistic people". She crossed it out and wrote, "people with autism." The funny thing is, she knows I'm autistic, and she's a doctor of psychology, so you'd think she'd know better than to assume she knows more about "political correctness" regarding this issue than I do.

Ok. I did not know that all three types were required for a diagnosis. The doctors never said that to me either.

Thanks.

If I recall correctly, the social and communication dimensions have been sort of combined in the DSM V, though.

Last edited by starkid on 05 Jun 2014, 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.