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.

[AdriftOnMemoryBliss]

so does the Autism Womens Network

autismwomensnetwork.org/autism-awareness-failed/

[MaximilianNero]

Language is very personal, and I like the diversity of the English language. I have no issue with people personally finding a term offensive if applied to them. In fact, when it comes to things like ASD/ASC which are hugely individual for each autistic person, each parent, each spouse, each (you get the picture), I think we have to recognise that it will be impossible to invent any term or small set of terms which would mean the same thing and be equally acceptable to everyone. It's not possible because our views and experiences are too diverse to be captured by one set of terms. Therefore I have an issue with dictating other people's language. It's more than telling other people what to say, it's telling them what to think, and how to see their life experience.

I'm a-okay with autistics. I really like it actually, I came across it first by American autistics (eg. Amethyst Schaber) but it's increasingly coming UK side now, and to me it's my community, I love being included in 'us autistics' etc .

I'm not an Autist, Autists pural just sounds not right to my ears, I'm not a person with autism. Nothing offensive at all to me about either of those terms, I just don't identify with them. I used to call myself an Aspie, but just stopped as I reached adulthood I think because it sounded a bit childish, I don't refer to myself as 'an autistic' either. What I am is an autistic person, part of a community of autistics, and that's how I like it. I want others to respect that, and by extension to respect that my life experience and thoughts aren't necessarily similar or can be mapped to theirs.

I'm a big believer in calling people as they want to be called. I completely respect that OP finds 'autistics'/'an autistic' offensive and so I would never be referring to OP as anything other than a person with autism/aspie/autistic person. Likewise I respect that some parents only feel comfortable about their children being called "people with autism" and thus I would only refer to their child as such (or simply as 'your daughter/son'!!), and all I ask is they respect that I am an autistic person in return, and not call me 'a person with autism' directly.

But respect should go both ways, so if you don't like a term or want it applied to you, you can't demand other people who may ONLY feel comfortable with that terms use yours instead. I am sure there are some autistic people who ONLY feel very comfortable with autistics plural as opposed to other plurals, and I respect them too. They don't have to make themselves uncomfortable for the benefit of other autistic people/people with autism (etc) or parents/professionals/anyone else, life's hard enough as it is.

I also agree with whoever said it's also about context, and that a sentence like "People with autism are usually savants" is much more offensive than "Some (but definitely not all) of us autistics don't enjoy making eye contact".

To draw the LGBT+ parallel again, I'm not queer simply because I don't personally identify with that word. I'm an autistic lesbian. But queer is an interesting word because for some people it's an offensive slur, whereas others find it to be pretty much the only word they are comfortable identifying with, and I (maybe naively) think or hope that there's room to respect everyone in a world which increasingly polices everyone's language - whatever subject and set of terms we're talking about.

[BeyondTellsEveryoneRealFacts]

I wonder if part of the problem is, until a 'new' word becomes established in the world, we dont really know whether it will be positive or negative. So to look to the history of "The Spastic Society", afaik it was not meant as a negative term when created, but common usage meant it ended up that way. The reaction upthread to dd's dd using it shows that people being happy doesnt make 'the term' okay (incidentally, a word ending x-ic. Gonna argue that actually its okay? No?)

Saying that some people do use the word "autistics" (specifically as a plural noun) at the moment doesnt really answer the concerns of those people who have an initial distaste for it, as even if it is used, it is not common usage.

[slithytove]

rain one of my best friends calls his group of friends "the gays". Wonder if it is the same person!

tara actually, I feel that the way in which a collective term is used does make a big difference. It's very colloquial and in some grammatical ways clunky, but not necessarily offensive. At least, I wouldn't assume someone saying "gays abc" or "Jews XYZ" was being offensive, if the remainder of the sentence wasn't.

If you aren't ignoring, maybe you could point out where it is offensive to say e.g. Jews were persecuted in the war. Factually correct, no better or worse than saying Muslims/Christians/Buddhists?

Why is saying blacks any worse then saying whites?

Or the sentence "autistics can have difficulty getting a diagnosis".

[slithytove]

By the way, I don't use the phrase "autistics", mainly because it is clunky. Equally I would respect any individual persons wish as to what they did/didn't want to be referred to as. However that goes both ways, and therefore I think it's wrong to put a ban on a word or phrase like that.

For instance, I hate when people say "someone is downs". But when my cousin says "hi I'm x I'm Down's syndrome" do I correct him? Do I fuck. Not my right to decide.

[Eustace2016]

I don't use autistics as a plural as it sounds wrong. I would say something like people with autism.

If someone tells most people in the UK that they don't like a particular word as they find it offensive most of us try not to use it to that person - the English are nice like that.

[roundaboutthetown]

A bit hard on an open forum, however, Eustace, given that different people clearly find different words offensive and inoffensive. Imo, if a word has clearly not been used deliberately in order to cause offence in a conversation with multiple strangers, then you shouldn't go on about it, just because you don't like it... All that achieves is ridiculous arguments over semantics that do nothing to help people understand autism.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

I'm sure decent people would rather know if they were saying the wrong thing and upsetting people, as they'd prefer to say the right thing.

It's far more than PC gorn mad.

[roundaboutthetown]

What decent people have learnt from this thread is that autistics is not a word that is generally and widely accepted to be offensive, but that some people do find it offensive. They have also learnt that people with autism is not universally accepted as an alternative, as some people find that offensive, whereas other like it. I fail to see howmthis has helped anyone know what to say to anyone else.

[manicinsomniac]

roundabout - well, I think it has helped me in that I wasn't sure which to write before (person first or disability first). Now I know it's so individual I will probably always write 'child with autism/autistic child' or 'disabled person/person with a disability'. It might take a bit longer but it's worth it to cover all bases I think. And I will avoid 'autistics' and 'autists' because it seems at least 50% find it upsetting and there are ways around using it.

[sleepwhenidie]

Roundabout please could you point me to where anyone has said they find the term 'people with autism' offensive or unacceptable? I thought I RTFT but must have missed that.

[Eustace2016]

Probably someone said people with autism (which I think is fine) lumkps them all together but then so does "women" and I suppsoe some of us don't like sentences like all women are passive and want to be housewives (given some of us are ambitious and like power and money etc). However we cannot avoid all generalisations in life.

[bearbehind]

manic I don't see how using both terms helps at all. It would sound very odd in spoken word and even written down all you are doing is simultaneously pleasing and offending everyone who has a preference.

I think this thread has shown that the term 'the' autistics is offensive if anyone had ever said it and everything else is personal preference and, with everything in life, you can't please everyone you just have to be conscious of the fact.

[SylviaWrath]

I'm sure decent people would rather know if they were saying the wrong thing and upsetting people, as they'd prefer to say the right thing

That makes no sense at all. What is the wrong thing? The thing YOU don't like? Or should we take a poll? What if one person finds one term offensive, and another finds another term offensive? What does the decent person do then?

There is no right thing or wrong thing, most of the time. There are preferred terms, but as we can see there is little consensus on what they actually are quite often.

[Caprinihahahaha]

I think decent people go about their business and try not to upset others.
And I think decent people go about their business assuming that others are not trying to offend.
I think people on the internet vent about stuff that upsets them because they don't do it in real life.
So mostly it works in real life. On the Internet people love to argue so it doesn't.

Having said that I find the subject really interesting so the discussion underneath the nasty stuff was really good from my point of view.

[Sofiria]

This is a very interesting thread!

I've always said 'autistic people' as I view it as a facet of identity. 'Autistics' really depends on context - if it's attached to a negative statement it comes across quite differently than if it's neutral/positive.

I've never used the phrase 'person/child with autism' - I liked the comparison someone made earlier in the thread to 'person with homosexuality' which makes it sound like a disease. If an individual told me that's how they preferred to be referenced, though, I'd use that for them, just because that's basic courtesy.

I think if this thread shows anything it's that it doesn't help to assume that because someone doesn't share your preferred terms they must have negative views about ASD!

[Bluebolt]

Equally what we do not want is decent people not engaging due to fear of offending especially if that person is on the spectrum. Is is very interesting and I am more confused about terminology but I have been for a while and why if I need to disclose about DS2 I avoid all reference to Autism.

[SylviaWrath]

That link of a survey don't on preferred terms; the majority of people on the spectrum and their families preferred to use autistic people/he is autistic etc...and the majority of professionals working in the area preferred people with autism.

If we're going to decide on a term shouldn't we be going with what the people actually living with it want to use?

[hedgehogsdontbite]

Roundabout please could you point me to where anyone has said they find the term 'people with autism' offensive or unacceptable? I thought I RTFT but must have missed that.

I find it offensive. The whole purpose of saying 'person with autism' is to separate the person from the autism because the autism is a disease and does not define them. Except autism is an integral part of who we are. 'Person with autism' is implying that a massive part of who I am is wrong.

[PageStillNotFound404]

roundaboutthetown What I've taken from the thread is that "autistic people" is the term likely to give least offence to either identity-first or people-first advocates.

[StopBoasting]

PolterGooses Link is really interesting and reasonable scientific albeit with drawbacks.

The report is based on a much bigger sample (4000+ people) than this thread and I think it was conducted last year

It's probably best to look at the accompanying graph in the content of the report. It's interesting how using the them 'person with autism' is less well endorsed than other terms.

ASD is more 'endorsed' than ASC by a higher percent of stakeholders, i.e. Person with autism, parent, professional and family member.

I'm going to discount everything on this tread and use the report . Actually. I will do the sensible thing and try to avoid ever directly referring to autism again

[StopBoasting]

What I've taken from the thread is that "autistic people" is the term likely to give least offence to either identity-first or people-first advocates

......but thats not necessarily what's preferred by people with autism autistic adults in the report referred to by Poltergoose. (If I'm interpreting it correctly? )

[StopBoasting]

That's how I read it too.

It also looks like you should change your terminology depending on whether you are addressing someone who has is autistic or whether you are addressing someone else.