Published on 12, July, 2020
How do y'all feel about an autistic person identifying as an "aut*st" or calling their autistic friends they have close relationships with the same word? My autistic friend prefers it because he says it is "taking the word back", but only autistic people can use it. He likens it to the n-word or h*llbilly.
Personally, I agree with him. In fact, I designed a shirt that says "All my friends are aut*sts" (but actually spelled out without the astrix). It's from a running personal joke where I was completely unaware I was autistic and just thought I liked autistic people, which is why I would say, "All my friends are autistic." Using the word "aut*sts" in the shirt would be an indirect way of disclosing my autism flavor since only autistic people can use it. Would this shirt be offensive?
This thread concerned me a bit as its a word I’d started to use. Certainly here, relatively often - having seen it in many posts and thinking that it was perfectly correct. Now I feel really unsure. Is it a slur? Was it a slur in the past? Isn’t it just a quick way to say ‘autistic person’? I’ll certainly step away from using it for now if there’s any such aspect to it, and I apologise if it caused offence at any point, I just assumed that as it was son commonly used on here it was a sanctioned term. I feel embarrassed now! Like I thought I knew it all when I’m still very much learning
I think some NTs use it as derogatory when they are jealous of our ability to focus on a topic.
The reason I was concerned with using it is because this site says to avoid that word in one of the guides.
I thought about it like you did. I did not realise it could be derogatory, I thought it was a new variant of "Autistic" which is how I refer to myself and others.
Of course I had to go into research mode so I did some Googling. I did see that "aut" is slang and a negative, insulting slur. Not that I ever used that word, but now I know it's wrong if I ever hear it or see it in print.