Calling people autistic (Title edited by MNHQ)

[Rossigigi]

This is only trivial to some but it's annoyed me to hell.

Ds13, has just started calling us all autistic, and using it when to refer to friends, e.g X is autistic.

So I just cornered him in the living room and said 'I do not like it when you call people autistic, it is disrespectful to those who are on the spectrum and their families.

He said 'why are you getting so triggered? I'm only joking!'

So I asked do you actually know what it is?

He said 'when people have difficulty in things like maths, they punch things when they are angry, and they can not behave properly in social situations because they do not understand emotions'

So I said, you've got some things right, however other things not
so much'

So we've had a conversation on what autism is, how it affects people differently and so on.

But I still feel really uneasy. I don't know where he has got it from? What else can I say to ensure he does not use this type of language in the future. I know this is minor to some people, but having worked for years with those who do have autism, this, has he would say has 'triggered' me!

It's the insult du jour. Used like retard.

I'm autistic, two of my dc are autistic.
Ds2 sometimes goes to a skatepark with a group of boys, their go-to thing to say if someone has done something wrong is to call them autistic.
To start off with it used to upset him, he'd come home and meltdown, mainly because he knew that there was nothing he could do, he's managed to escape being bullied, disclosing his autism would (sadly) be a sure way to lose friends (adhd is apparently cool, ASD not so cool).
Now he feels he has a way to see who the dickheads are - usually the ones calling people autistic, retards and spaz. He also considers them to be lacking in the imagination front if that's all they can come up with.
I'm sad for him that he hears it, and it makes him feel worse about himself, and means it will take longer for him to accept himself, but on the other hand, if he's astute enough to realise that there are decent people around him who don't insult him, then that's not a bad thing.

Have you explained to him that using a disability as a form of insult could be construed as hate speech?

You can come down on him like a ton of bricks for using disablist language, for a start.

I agree it's just the current insult.

DD and I are both ASD. She gets very upset when she hears this, I just think it's stupid.

And you can tell your DS we're both very good at maths!

Just another reason why my son will not be going to mainstream secondary school next year...good to know his condition is the current insult of choice. I would be furious, but then I am biased.

Tell him he's using it incorrectly anyway and doesn't that mean he's behaving incorrectly in a social situation?

I'm autistic, so are my kids.
People who use language in the same way as your kid does are twats.

I think its the sane as if some one was to use homophobic racist or sexist language and name calling you make it abundantly clear it's not acceptable. You are him with the strategies to challenge his friends.

Sorry OP and I know your thread was posted "seriously " but you need to get the title amended by HQ

I'm autistic and while if upsets me, i know it comes from peer pressure.

It's about making this language unacceptable

I'm autistic. I heard a teenager recently yell at another one "OHMYGOOODDDD you're so autistic!" in the same way that some kids at my school used "spastic" (although thankfully that was on the decline) and then "gay."

Hearing it used like that startled me but didn't massively bother me. I think it would if I heard it routinely though.

Also, spot all the autistics posting online at midnight at new year instead of being at noisy hellish parties

@LauraMipsum

Laura

Yeah, we know how to party 🎉

laura haha yep would rather be anywhere but out tonight!!

Although being awake at this time isn't unusual for me,

It’s as bad as the phrase monging out which unfortunately people still flippantly use.

How do you stop it though?
No matter how much you fight against it and point out how disablist and twatty it is, people keep on using words like that.
It's massively insulting because there's an opinion that people who are autistic, or retarded, or spastic, or gay or anything like that, are there to be derided and so it doesn't matter. They don't matter.
I pointed out to someone once that autistic people are proportionately overly represented in areas of growth, whether it's industry, the arts, IT, STEM, so the last laugh's on them.
It's shit though.

Sadly, it's just a term bandied about by teens at school.

I would repeat things I have heard my kids' friends say, but it's too offensive. And sadly, because they have little frame of reference regarding the terms that were a complete no-no when we were kids in the 80s, they seem to have come back into fashion.

If anyone used the term in front of me I'd tell them just how disgusting and inadequate they are.

ADHD is not cool

In our experience it has a nasty non existent label attached to it where as ASD doesn’t

Another partying autistic here!

My son gets this a lot. He's dyspraxic, so very clumsy, so gets called 'spaz' and 'retard' too. As it happens he is on the waiting list to be assessed for ASD. I hate hearing these terms used as insults.

Hate criminal in the making. But then, I have an autistic son and this kind of thing wounds me, massively.

In dd's school (the school where ds2 went until he was unable to attend), there is an attitude that adhd is cool though. Amongst the children it's seen as acceptable, where autism is seen as weird.
Amongst adults it's still seen as an excuse to be naughty though, but there doesn't seem to be the stigma with other children.

Obviously one school isn't anything more than anecdote, so apologies if I'm way off the mark there.

Tell him it's disablist hate speech.

Tell the Head of the school to get his act together and get it stopped.

Say you will tell everyone one of his medical diagnoses, find one he's really sensitive about and see how he feels when all his friends start using that as an insult.