3:43pm October 29, 2013

If you are autistic, reblog or like if you use identity-first language!

dendriforming:

madeofpatterns:

purplewowies:

If you are an autistic person, and you prefer people use “identity-first” language, reblog or like this post!

(I’m acquiring hard proof of what most prefer to justify my using that in an assignment.)

DO NOT REBLOG IF YOU ARE NOT AUTISTIC.

“Person-first” post here.

I prefer identity-first language, but it is not hugely important to me which words people use so long as they have respectful intentions.

I prefer identity-first language, but the people who self-select to be in the Tumblr autistic community are not representative of all the autistic people in the world. (I am not saying it’s possible to survey a group representative of all the autistic people in the worl)d! I am not saying it is bad to use identity-first language! I am not saying that Tumblr autistics are “high functioning!” I am just excessively persnickety about what constitutes “hard proof.”)

THIS

^^^^^ Exactly this stuff.

Plenty of autistic people strongly prefer to be called person with autism. And they’re usually people who have been through a lot of extremely shitty experiences where they were seen as a walking autism with no person attached. (That’s the same reason people with intellectual disabilities OVERWHELMINGLY prefer person-first language. As in, very few prefer otherwise. The experiences that almost all people with intellectual disabilities have are very similar to the experiences that drive some people with autism to prefer being called people with autism.)

I don’t prefer person-first language but I know exactly why some people do. And if they’re disabled, then I don’t question it. I’ve heard some tumblr autistic people actually refer to such people as “brainwashed”. The assumption is that they just don’t know any better and if they did know better, they’d prefer identity-first language. The reality is that most people with disabilities who prefer person-first language do so for very specific reasons that are not, at least not usually, the result of being brainwashed by the sort of nondisabled people that are likely to push person-first language on people by force.

The reasons nondisabled people prefer it and the reasons disabled people prefer it are generally light years apart and shouldn’t be assumed to be the same.

Personally, I prefer “autistic person” or “autistic” or in some circumstances “autie”. But I don't take offense to being called “person with autism”. And I try (within the limitations of my language problems, of course) to call people what they want to be called when I can manage it. When doing writing and speeches for mixed groups (of people with autism and autistic people, I mean) I try to alternate between one or the other.

But basically the experience I’m talking about?

Is where everyone around you calls you an AUTISTIC (person). Where AUTISTIC is in huge bold letters and (person) is in parentheses and almost invisible. And that usage means something different than it does when autistic people use it. And everyone around you, everywhere, treats you as one big bag of walking autism with no actual humanity to speak of, whatsoever. You’ve usually been labeled since an early age, and people considered severely autistic are more likely to be treated this way. And basically the whole AUTISTIC (person) thing is connected directly to being treated like an empty shell or close to it. And…

Not everyone who goes through that experience comes to connect “autistic person” with that attitude. But many do. And they’re not wrong. Correcting the language doesn’t always eliminate the attitude but it can eliminate being extremely triggered by being described and treated as an AUTISTIC (person) all the time.

I’ve been treated that way. But I haven’t been treated that way all my life. But I’ve been treated that way just enough to understand why a person who has been treated that way their whole life could totally legitimately prefer ‘person with autism’.

Notes: