Well, it's been a couple months since my last post, and you might notice that there is a little change in my blog. It no longer is titled Eccentrics United: An Asperger's Syndrome Blog but is now Eccentrics United: An Autism Blog. My corresponding Twitter name (@eccentricsunite) is no longer "Julie the Aspie" but "Julie the Eccentric" (I chose not to change it to "Julie the Autistic" because it just sounded too silly) I implemented this change for a few reasons:
First, a lot of people who were/would have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome when it was still in the DSM (as opposed to just "autism spectrum") prefer "autism" for themselves. I am hoping this change is more inclusive for said people. After all, all people with Asperger's Syndrome are autistic. It is not, however, a statement of one term being better than the other. Whether you prefer "autism" or "Asperger's" for yourself, I hope that this blog resonates with you.
A lot of people hate the term Asperger's Syndrome because it potentially serves as a functioning label and because it was named after a Nazi, Hans Asperger. However, the aforementioned have nothing to do why I made this change. Functioning labels are a complex issue (and one I hope to discuss eventually, but not in this particular post) and lots of conditions are named after terrible people. There is no reason why the condition named after Hans Asperger should be singled out.
The most important reason I made this change is simply because over the past couple years I have gravitated towards describing myself by saying "I am autistic" or "I am on the autism spectrum" instead of "I have Asperger's Syndrome." My personal preference simply has to do with the grammatical imperative that comes with describing Asperger's Syndrome vs. autism, the latter which is more flexible. With Asperger's, you have to say "I have Asperger's Syndrome." With autism, you can say, "I am autistic" or "I have autism." I strongly prefer identity-first language ("I am autistic", "I am an autistic person") over person-first language ("I have autism", "I am a person with autism"), and Asperger's Syndrome does not grammatically allow it. However, I would still prefer Asperger's Syndrome for myself if there was a way to manipulate it into identity-first language. As far as I know, the majority of us prefer identity-first language for ourselves, but if you are someone on the spectrum who is more comfortable with person-first language, then that's absolutely fine!
I would like to note, however, that all past blog posts where I talk about "Asperger's Syndrome" remain as they were. No retconning on this blog!
I have made it clear that my preference is for identity-first language. And that is what it is: a personal preference. When neurotypical people use person-first, I generally correct them and tell them that most of us prefer identity-first. They are often flabbergasted, thinking that "person first" is what they're "supposed" to say. That is, after all, what they have heard from well-meaning but tragically misguided neurotypical parents and teachers! The reason many of us prefer identity first is because we feel that autism is an intrinsic part of who we are. We would never say "a person with femaleness" or "a person with gayness", for example. You really can't separate a person from autism, in my opinion. I don't think we are neurotypical people hiding under autism, waiting to be "fixed".
Am I overthinking this? Possibly. But it is worth thinking about and discussing. It isn't the hill I am going to die on, however. If I correct someone and they continue to use person-first language out of habit, then I let it go. When my mother recently said "people with autism", I didn't bother correcting her because context matters: I knew that it just happened to be what came out of her mouth, not something she said because other people told her to. If most neurotypical people who used person-first did so just because it happened to be what came out of their mouths, it wouldn't bother me. But at the end of the day, I don't want to get hung up on language preference when there are more important things to worry about it.
Unfortunately, I have found that many of us in the autism community get hung up on language use to the point of absurdity. Instead of accepting that some of us use "Asperger's" or "person with autism" for ourselves, people dogpile on and accuse each other of oppression for using a functioning label and internalized ableism for using person-first language. To be quite frank, I am really sick to death of this nonsense. The autism community is eating itself alive with this word policing. Sadly, I got kicked out of a group on Facebook where autistic people answer parents' questions. Why was I kicked out? Because I sent a mother to my blog posts, which I thought would be helpful. However, the admins viewed one of the posts, which had usage of the word "Asperger's" and discussed functioning labels as a complex issue, as "problematic." The irony? It was part of my recent "Is It Ableism?" series.
A friendly reminder: Can We Stop Alienating Each Other?
