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5:25pm July 3, 2014
Anonymous asked: Is there a value-neutral way of saying an autistic person who is capable of functioning without much assistance in their current environment? Someone who's not "obviously disabled"? Someone who might seem "barely autistic", just into the spectrum? On a multitude of axises - motor, social, sensory, etc. Per outside judges or their own perception. I just want a word for it, without it being a More/Less Autistic than Thou gatekeeping question or a diagnosable/meaningful subtype.

Mildly disabled autistic person?  That’s the closest I could put it.  I find it much easier to describe myself as “severely disabled” than “severely autistic”, because it’s obvious to me that I’m severely disabled, but how much of that comes from autism is anyone’s guess, and we don’t even know how to measure autism.  By some measures, the most severely autistic people (the people with the highest number of autistic traits as measured on a specific scale) are the ones who function best in society.  Try and work THAT out.  It’ll make your head spin.

Notes:
  1. alliecat-person said: Someone who seems only mildly disabled in their usual context can be much more disabled if put into another one.
  2. strugglingbuthoping reblogged this from madeofpatterns and added:
    I’ve heard of high-functioning being used
  3. mmmyoursquid reblogged this from madeofpatterns and added:
    i wish i could work this out into anything that made sense
  4. madeofpatterns reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    Also. A lot of autistic people are way, way more impaired than they think they are.
  5. thislousytshirt said: so more autistic does not equal more disabled?
  6. withasmoothroundstone posted this