12:41pm June 22, 2013

This post is only being written because it popped into my head, not because everything in it matters a lot.

High functioning and low functioning are not originally associated with autism. Mostly disability in general.

I strongly suspect they come from developmental disability (as in, the broad category, including autism, but not just autism) terminology but I’m not certain. Because they sound like a slightly updated version of high grade and low grade.

I’ve heard them applied to autism, intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, brain injury, blindness, deafness, diabetes, schizophrenia, mental illness in general without a specific label, and lots of other things. Not all of these things are on Google, lots I heard by word of mouth or in books.

I’m not telling you this because it matters. I’m telling you because I have heard a couple people on here recently say it’s specifically an autistic thing. And sometimes I have a thing about accuracy.

Another thing that may not matter but I might as well say something anyway:

Since around the year 2000 I’ve been one of the most visible and vocal autistic people who has strongly advised people that the whole idea of functioning levels both doesn’t make sense and can harm autistic people. So the idea that it’s so heavily tied to autism, as well as the trend in parts of the autistic community against using these words, might be partly my fault.

But.

Just because I don’t like when people use these words, doesn’t mean I’m all that happy with functioning labels going on lists of ableist words that everyone is supposed to memorize and avoid using.

Yes this confuses some people. If I hate it so much, why be uncomfortable with this?

It’s hard to explain when I haven’t slept much in two days.

But basically I don’t like when people in a community feel like they have to memorize the good words and the bad words, and face criticism at best and shunning at worst if they don’t go along.

For one thing it’s not very fair to people with language problems. As in, people like me. High or low functioning may just be words that pop out without intending. They may be a shorthand for things you otherwise don’t know how to say. Even though I really hate the way some people use these words (or more important, the ideas behind them) I’d hate to be responsible for people being treated like crap just because they couldn’t find a better word.

Plus to me what always matters more than words is the ideas behind them. And the point of these lists of ableist words always seems to be the exact opposite: caring what words people use more than caring what they mean by them.

I don’t expect people to automatically listen to me just because of my previous standing in a community or because I originated some of the ideas that are popular these days. In fact I’d be rather horrified if they ran out and did what I seemed to want based on this post. But I do think people might at least be interested.