My DH's SN have prevented me from helping a woman in need

[BathshebaKnickerStickers]

Trying to cut it short - acquaintance I first met 12 years ago, she moved away, lost contact, met her in the street a wee while ago, gave her my number etc....

Her life is a mess. Too much detail would be identifying, but essentially it's a mess, mostly not of her doing....

She phoned tonight when I was dropping my youngest at an activity - she needed a place to stay tonight until she can get to the council offices first thing tomorrow.

I feel so upset as I had to turn her down. My DH is autistic and has social phobia - he simply couldn't have coped if I had brought a stranger home to stay overnight no matter how in need she was.

I had to turn her down - she was in tears and obviously desperate for a place to spend the night. I offered her sleeping bag/air bed etc if she can find somewhere to go but I feel helpless as I couldn't help her.

My DH is supposed to be away with work this week and if he had been away she could have come, but as he is here I honestly had no choice.

I don't have the money to pay for her to have a night in a b&b or anything, and she clearly doesn't have the money either.

PolterGoose I do have problems maintaining eye contact and find it extremely threatening.

I would also say that I have 'too much' empathy, to the point it is extremely overwhelming.

The sooner people realise we can't all be lumped into neat little groups (including everyone not just disabled people) the better!

I'm self conscious about eye contact. Is it right or wrong or too much or too little...

I've also reported one of my earlier posts to MN to request that they think again about censoring the language a person chooses to use about their own disability. Surely there can be little more disabling than dictating how we may describe ourselves

My DH is not autistic. If someone I knew but wasn't close friends with needed a place to stay in an emergency I would not offer our home because my DH would freak out, even if the DCs were all away.
I don't think that means I'm treating him like a pet, just that I know him well.

An autistic friend told me he was quite pissed off that, after a mega-effort to learn how to do eye contact consistently, he realised that the reality is that the British just don't do eye contact when they can possibly avoid it.

Hi all,

Thanks for the reports.

We did indeed remove some posts because of the term 'autist'. While it may well be OK to some, it's really not to others, and especially when teamed with the word 'pet', we had so many reports that we decided it was best all-round to remove the posts.

To clarify, we are by no means calling anyone disablist, however the posts were reported for the use of disablist language and in this instance we did agree.

If you have any feedback on this, please do let us know.

What's wrong with "autist?"

The adjective is okay but the noun of the same word is not? How does that work then?

Are you seriously saying that an autistic person was being disablist about themselves? I think the context of that entire post has been grossly misconstrued tbh and deleting it repeatedly is ridiculous.

Autist is not disablist.

The phrase pet autist was being used in the context of challenging posters who were claiming knowledge or understanding of autism based on knowing one or two autistic people. I've come across this a lot and it's often used to shut down discussion or to belittle- as in "my child has autism but they don't do x, y or z because I've taught them so you can learn too" or "autistic people don't empathise. I know two at least who don't". Whilst it's not a term I've seen or used, pet autist is about right tbh. It sums up the patronising nature of the commentary.

You've got this one wrong MN. I know you've been taking a pasting for letting disablist comments stand but this is wrong.

Agree Statistically.

I've described myself as an autist, the word is more pleasing to me than autistic for some reason, it's not a disablist term at all, and the context that it was used by Papaver wasnt offensive at all, it was being used to show up people who silence us.

Sympathies to you OP, and your acquaintance. What I find surprising about this thread is that people are so surprised that others don't understand the difficulties faced by an autistic person in this type of situation.
ASD is a varied and complex condition and unless you actually have a reasonable amount of personal experience of autistic people you're not likely to fully get it. Yes, people should try not to be judgmental even if they don't understand it, but they are perhaps finding it hard to weigh up the feeling of compassion for the homeless woman whose situation they can understand and identify with, against the to them incomprehensible feelings of someone with a condition they don't understand.
No it's not MNers' job to educate people, but explaining is definitely more effective than ranting.

I found the term 'pet autist' patronising (though I admit that I hadn't realised the poster was autistic and might have misunderstood their use of it), but it was the pet that I had a problem with. How can 'autist' be offensive generally? Granted, some individual autistic people might not be keen but it's no different to me describing myself as an aspie. I think Mumsnet have got it wrong on this one.
Oh and I think the OP was spot on not inviting the person to stay the night. She knows how her husband would cope & if she'd mentioned it to him before he might have felt like he had to agree with a visitor, and afterwards he might have felt guilty, or worried that it might come up again. His home is his safe space and it doesn't matter how much he can get through life outside it, he has to feel able to be himself when he walks through the door. I assumed that the OP posted because she felt guilty about turning someone down and needed reassurance that she was right to put her husband first - and she was.

Oh and some of the people posting on here have a shocking lack of knowledge (and empathy and compassion) regarding autism. (And that includes ones who claim they have hundreds of autistic friends and are therefore practically experts!)
But I'm glad the OP did post because it's highlighted the problems that a lot of other autists (yes I'm using it!) have and that's reassuring to me :)

I think pet autist was meant to be patronising/ sarcastic, but patronising the way the posters think and talk about the autistic people they know, rather than about the autistic person themselves.

Eolian, it's not a problem at all that people don't understand ASD and its variations and complexities.
Several of us have explained over and over how these things affect us, yet some posters have continued to be disbelieving and patronising despite our detailed explanations. We're not here to educate, but we have tried on this thread.
You can't educate pork though 🐷.

That's how I read it Statistically.
I've been silenced so many times in RL because the person knows someone with ASD, or used to work with someone whose child has ASD. It's ridiculously common for that to happen, to those of us who live it day in day out.

Personally I hate all the terms like autist, aspie, etc. I find them twee and annoying. I have aspergers, my son is ASD/has ASD (depending on who we are talking to) but I think the dislike of the terms is grouped into my dislike of terms like lol, they all make my teeth itch.

I don't think autist should have been deleted per se, but pet autist did come across rude at the time.

I know they are fields apart, but for me it's a bit like the n word. Americans offer refer to themselves as it, but anyone typing it or using it about them is racist. It's like disablist language needs to go really extreme to calm down again.

(And I'm aware that's a shit comparison, it was just the first one that came into my head)

Actually I think it's more fundamental than finding them twee - i think aspie is but font care particularly as its still how i prefer to describe myself. the alternatives you prefer are both of the " person first" type convention ie person with autism rather than disability first e.g. autistic person and which is correct or best is quite heavily debated.

I don't think the comparison with the n word is the same, although I get where you're coming from. Language used to describe autism is still evolving - autist or autistic are not words which have ever been considered universally awful in the way n*** was. In many ways the autistic community is a fairly new thing in that autism hasn't been known about all that long - always existed but under different labels and non labels. We're still working out what to call ourselves. But I don't think autist has any of the connotations of n word.

Oh I don't either, I was just trying to do a comparison which obviously didn't work out so well!!

I'm not saying any term is right or wrong. However, if someone else introduced me as an Aspie, I would be pissed off, probably irrationally. I'm not an Aspie. I don't like that term.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say is actually coming out right though!

I think that's kind of the point though - you would hate Aspie (as you are totally entitled to) where I would hate "Stat is ASD." Surely it's up to us as individuals to define the terms we're ok with? Obviously you need to have an awareness of the terms which other people with the same condition use purely so that you don't get irrationally annoyed by it and can address it appropriately, but we should be able to choose how we (individually) want to be referred to.

So if someone said "Oh you're Autistic" (for example) it would be totally fine for you to say "I prefer to be described as a "Person with ASD" thanks, I know others like that term but this is my preference" whereas it might not be fine to start calling the person a disablist wankbadger if the term, whilst not your preferred one, is within the range considered acceptable by people with the same condition. The problem here is that MN has decided that a person with autism can't use their own choice of phrase.

I think in terms of comparison, n*er would be more comparable to something like retard in terms of being widely considered offensive?

Your explanation is great - and exactly that, we aren't being allowed our own terms.

I think it's also worth remembering with terms such as the n one, and retard, spastic etc, that they were universally ok originally...... I certainly remember thirty years ago it was common to refer to people as spastics, and the corner shop owner as a p*, but quite rightly now it isn't. Because the majority found those terms offensive - though there were some who surely used those terms with no problem in reflection of themselves? Whos to say that a similar evolution of autistic terms may not happen as well?

I know the thread has moved on from the initial frustration that I was feeling - I have now heard from the woman in question - very brief - all I know is she is "back at the hostel and safe".

Glad to hear it OP

I think there almost certainly will be an evolution of terms - but I think that's actually why that deletion made me so cross because it's like people who aren't autistic are trying to dictate the path of that evolution IYSWIM? The whole "person first" was a very dominant model for a wee while and it's only fairly recently and particularly amongst those with autism that I've seen a real push back against it. It's like we're being forced to evolve in a direction lots of us aren't comfortable with.