12:15pm July 6, 2013

➸ Trying to find the right words: Stop saying "neurotypical"

girljanitor:

youneedacat:

rayvenloaf:

youneedacat:

goldenheartedrose:

eyehaightewe:

What the hell is “typical”, anyway? When you call certain people “typical”, you are holding people up to a standard and implying that those who do not meet that standard are “atypical” or “abnormal”.

Say “allistics” instead of “neurotypicals”, please.

And I’m never, ever going to say allistic in my life. Ever. And that’s besides the fact it doesn’t even mean the same thing as neurotypical. Besides the fact that my brain just won’t use allistic in ordinary sentences, there is the fact that I remember who coined it and why (way back before most people even heard of it, it was just one person trying hard to popularize it) and I hate the implications of allistic, they’re even more insulting to autistic people than the word neurotypical is to anyone. Not that I care, you can use words without caring about their origins, and I’m not saying other ppl shouldn’t use allistic, but I remember that one and I reject the word as totally as my brain rejects me using it.

If you don’t mind and are feeling up to it, could you explain the origins of allistic, or point me to a resource? I’m unaware of it’s negative aspects and interested, as I had quite liked allistic.

Allistic was created by an autistic girl as an opposite to autistic.

Aut- means self.

All- means other.

So it just seemed to me to be reinforcing the idea that autistic = self-oriented and non autistic = other-oriented. Which isn’t in the slightest bit accurate.

And the girl actually liked that connotation because she believed it was real. (She tended, IMO, to believe a lot of stereotypes were real. And would defend them in terms of “it’s okay that (this group of people) are (that stereotype)“ rather than acknowledging that the stereotype wasn’t even based in reality to begin with.)

And… it just left a really bad taste in my mouth at the time and I never got over it.

And that’s besides the fact that it’s a word my brain refuses to accept on a more cognitive vocabulary type of level.

But my objections to the actual meaning were that autistic people aren’t any more self-oriented than nonautistic people, so other-oriented isn’t a good word for the opposite of autistic. Combined with my problems with the way that the originator of the term approached lots of other disability stereotypes in the exact same manner, cheerfully accepting their reality. So it was not that she just came up with a prefix that was the opposite of aut-, she also meant it, and meant so many other things I disagreed with.

YMMV of course.

No references because this happened back when most autistic communities took place on mailing lists, not blogs.

I have no idea what portion of the autistic community took her idea and started using it lots and migrated to tumblr until practically everyone here uses it, because I’m not part of whatever that community was and was surprised to see a little used ten year old term suddenly flare into life.

I think it’s not so much that her idea was accepted, so much as the word itself was accepted because it filled a very important need, and the real meaning was changed.

In much the same way that Aut- does mean self, and yet most of us aren’t really accepting “Autism” to mean “self-oriented" as a synonym. If that makes sense. As in, when I say “I am Autistic", I don’t mean, “I am self-oriented". They’re not interchangeable. It kind of about words not being the sum of their parts.

In that same way, “Allistic" fills a very important role. A word was desperately needed to describe someone “not autistic but also not necessarily neurotypical". The word itself, while it might be literally “other oriented", actually means “not autistic but also not necessarily neurotypical".

Language, as a human thing, is really no more than people acknowledging a certain sound has an agreed-upon meaning. At the same time, it’s one of the most powerful tools we have.

It’s the same way words and phrases are adopted from other languages, and mean something else when you use them than their literal meaning. Like, “Grand Prix" literally means “great prize" translated literally, but if a person says, “I’m going to attend the Grand Prix", you’re probably going to get the idea that they’re going to a race.

Or idioms in the same language. For example, “Lo siento" in Spanish means, “I feel it" literally, but if you say it, really means “I regret it", which REALLY means, “I’m sorry". It’s an apology!

In sum: when a need arises, words are either invented or appropriated to be shoved in to fill the gap. I 100% understand why you would be bothered by the word because you literally were there for its invention, and its origins sound dubious. But for many of us who weren’t, the word doesn’t have the same associations because the agreed-upon meaning isn’t inherently judgmental, or doesn’t have that quality.

By idea, I meant the idea to use that word to mean nonautistic.

Apologies if I gave the impression people shouldn’t use the word. I’m not into dictating people’s language choices except under extreme circumstances.

I strongly disagree, however, that allistic fills a very important role where the word was desperately needed.

There was already a word filing that role when the word was invented. It continues to fill that role wherever allistic isn’t used, and is the reason that most people feel no pressing need to use the word allistic, ever. It has the advantage that anyone capable of understanding the word ‘autistic’ will instantly understand it with no explanation needed.

That word is 'non-autistic’.

A Google search on “allistic” returns 26,100 results. A Google search on “non-autistic” returns 154,000 results. That is how common the word is in comparison, being used by autistic people and non-autistic people alike. And from the very first result, it’s clear that non autistic is used to mean something clearly different from neurotypical.

Not that there’s any problem with there being many words for one thing. But it’s absolutely untrue that the word was invented because there was no existing word, let alone a “desperate” need for one.

So basically there’s a common word that is simple to construct out of common English language elements even if you’ve never heard the word before.

Or else there’s a word that took digging into etymology dictionaries to construct (which is why nobody just makes it up on the spot). That is only used by a few people. And that is nearly impossible to understand unless you’ve had its meaning explained to you.

And it’s a word that exists only in connection to a group of people who frequently have problems with both expressive and receptive language.

Which, to me, are all reasons it’s unnecessary and not the best choice under the circumstances.

Again, regardless of my strong opinions on the matter, I’m not trying to tell other people to stop saying it. But the reasons for my intense dislike of the word just pile up more and more, the more I think about why it exists and whether it even needs to exist.

But I do understand perfectly well how language works. I’m usually the person explaining to people who have no problem with 'allistic’ even with its recent origins, that maybe words with hundreds of years since their first usage with a certain meaning, aren’t always slurs just because of their (real or imaginary) origins. And I know perfectly well that people coin words. I just always don’t see the point in coining them. That is the difference.

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