AIBU to ask you to STOP

[Dawndonnaagain]

using the term 'autistics'. Four fucking times this weekend on different threads. You mean person with autism, people with autism, child with autism. Autistics is not shorthand for any of those. Pack it in.

I find 'autistics' as a collective noun really fucking annoying.

People can view it as neutral but it's never going to make me comfortable. It's 'them'ing in my opinion.

Not necessarily pedantic Beyond

My brother with autism / my autistic brother doesn't. He does go on and on and on about stuff. I wouldn't call him pedantic - not realising he is boring the shit out of his companions possibly

Agreed caprini although I have to confess I've personally never heard it (not disputing it.)

I do have a friend who refers to his group of friends as 'the gays' which always makes me laugh

"Where you to" is common is s wales, but i'd never claim that it is now correct cause language evolves, innit.

Its common here in south Devon too and I never said it was correct just used it as an example of variations within local dialects with regards to phrasing.

Social media is speeding up the time it takes for new words and their variants to take hold within different groups and how quickly their meanings shift.

I spent an afternoon with a woman in charge of the new learning unit at a local college and she spent the whole time saying 'well they like X, they like y....
It felt faintly zoo like.
(We didn't chose the unit for ds2)

Raininginspringtime

That is both funny and interesting. Maybe I'm picky because DS2 can't chose. Perhaps I'm pedantic because it's vicarious.

I think it's nothing to do with you what people refer to themselves as.

My dad has autism. He refers to himself as 'an autistic' very regularly. He would be quite pissed off hearing you dictate what is right and what is wrong.

I totally agree. The person is not their condition. And somebody with eplipesy should not be known as an epileptic.

I've never seen so much anger expressed when people have referred to asthmatics, diabetics or dyslexics in posts. In those contexts it generally seems to be accepted that words ending in -ic sound OK to the ear pluralised, so people do it without meaning to be offensive or deliberately to convey a different, dismissive meaning through the use of the letter s, whereas "deaf" becoming "deafs" is obviously wrong, even to the grammatically and semantically challenged, as is "Englishes." You can still say someone IS deaf, though, or IS English. You wouldn't say they have deafness or have Englishness, or that they are a person with deafness or a person with Englishness. So I just don't see what is so incredibly offensive about it, tbh. It's just not the way I would express it, rather than a massive insult.

Vivienne, there is a big movement for 'identity-first' with autism. People prefer to say "I am autistic" rather than "i am a person with Autism"

I am identity first. Autistic is who/what i am, its how my brain developed, its different, not less.

And somebody with eplipesy should not be known as an epileptic.

Sorry to labour the point but no one has explained how referring to someone as a person with x is any different to a x'ic'

If the condition is relevant it has to be described in someway.

Because "othering", its not some new, weird concept

But how is 'person with x' not 'othering' but an x'ic' is?

no-one refers to themselves as 'an-autistic'

tell this young lady that!

As far as I'm concerned people can call themselves what they like.

However , if you describe my son and his friends as 'autistics' I will think you are an utter arsehole. The collective of that is just 'arseholes'

I get you OP.

I have heard it used a couple of times and cringed. Once when my Ds2 was diagnosed with a syndrome, I was asked 'he won't be like those autistics will he?'

Another time, a teacher said, 'I've got the autistics in later'

Both adults over 50 years, both used it in a negative and disparaging way.

www.facebook.com/identityfirstautistic/

"If you have to say Person first to SEE the person First, thats a bigger problem that needs to be overcome!"

ollibean.com/2016/03/03/person-first-language-and-ableism/

As a matter of interest, why is "person with autism" less offensive? To my ear, that makes it sound like something curable, something which can come or go, or a lifestyle choice - something that you could get rid of if you wanted to or if you tried hard enough.

I have skimmed this thread. I think, as PPs have said, the offense is when 'autistic' is used as noun, collective, singular or otherwise.
If used as an adjective is that OK?
Eg. My son might be autistic, is better than my son might be an autistic. Is this what the OP is getting at?

I gave also noted the term used as a noun on recent threads, but as it was used by posters who do indeed have autism I figured it was up to them what they choose to call themselves. I think I would steer clear of using autistic as a noun myself, ad I think it could cause offence, and obviously has done. I wouldn't tell an autistic person that they couldn't call themselves autistic if they wanted.

I've being trying to get to the bottom of that for most of the thread roundabout. There is no answer.

Sorry, " they couldn't call themselves an autistic if they wanted "

I do get the identity first thing. It's like saying 'I'm Canadian' because, especially in the UK, that probably defines you and is all pervasive and not derogatory. Autistic people live in a mostly NT world and having autism is all pervasive. It affects every part of their being and it isn't (or shouldn't be) derogatory.

For me, the NT parent of my autistic DS, I find 'the autistics' a bit like calling Canadians 'the colonials.' Descriptive but derogatory. But that's just me.

Oh yes, forgot to say, 'I'm Canadian' rather than 'I'm a person from Canada.'

Sophie

I think the op is more irked by the collective rather than any individual choosing their own descriptor.

Although I may be wrong.
She's now slightly outnumbered by the number of people being offended by her being offended. It's an excercise in irony.

I agree ellen , calling people 'the' anything has the potential to offend but the OP decided to tell everyone to STOP using a term that no one actually appears to have used in the context she was referring to.