3:46pm December 6, 2011

➸ Functioning labels and meaning

I came to understand something, what people really mean by high- and low-functioning.

It’s not about vocal skills or IQ scores, as I’ve seen proposed in the Autism communities, or frequency of symptoms and self-harming behaviour, as defined by the Global Assessment of Functionality. It’s about visibility.

Think about it; that’s what really is meant when people label functioning status to disabled people, the level in which the disability is visible to other non-disabled people.

Read the whole thing!

It’s true.

(This is why the focus in ABA and special ed and “treatment” stays on indistinguishability, too, at all costs.)

I’m usually very resistant to language changes, but “low functioning” and “high functioning” are broken terms, and descriptions stressing visibility are so much more specific, accurate, and useful. I’m going to try and start saying “visibly autistic” and “high visible” and “invisible” and the other language choices suggested here, because they are specific and accurate and get to the core of what is being said and meant. Anyone want to join me?

This isn’t telling anyone what language to use, just a description of why I can’t bring myself to say certain things.

Unfortunately for reasons partly explored in the links I just posted, I can’t get into ‘visibility’ either. Because visibility isn’t an objective thing where you look at whether a person has certain traits or not and see how 'visible’ they are. It’s not a trait of the person being declared visible or invisible, it’s a trait of every single specific person who sees that person and finds ways of understanding what they see.

Not only is it dependent on people’s understanding of autism (or whatever else), there’s also something going on that Cal doesn’t describe in those articles. I describe it as “being passed off” – rather than “passing”. What happens is that people form opinions and explanations of why you do a certain thing. You handflap because you are “crazy”. You become mute because you are “attention seeking”. You have a very stiff facial expression because you are “physically disabled”. Then, when asked to remember what you’ve been doing, they don’t remember the hand flapping or becoming mute or a stiff facial expression. They only remember their explanations of “crazy” or “attention seeking” or “physically disabled” or any of a large number of other ones. In this way, even a person who is very “obvious” as far as meeting tons of stereotypes and stuff goes, can become “totally normal” (or some other kind of disabled) in some people’s eyes. When I get “passed off "as purely physically disabled because of my power chair, that happens, because every autistic trait gets passed off as a trait I have because of something physical. And yet I’m someone who normally otherwise gets picked up on pretty quickly and labeled "low functioning” and crap. I’ll also try to find my post on passing off and link it here.

Again, not trying to change anyone’s mind, just trying to explain where I’m coming from.

Notes: