Bring Back Aspie

So I really feel that the term Asperger's, although dropped for valid reasons, served a very real function within the community.

I of course understand why the grouping exists. But from a social stigma pov, I find it limiting to consider myself, who is fortunate to be a very adept and able high-functioning person, in the same category of autism as those who sadly are much less well functioning.

I'm sure it won't be popular to say it, but I feel I would certainly benefit from being considered an Aspie instead.

I'm interested to here why other people think about this?

Parents
  • The issue to my mind is services for aspies / high functioning autistic people look quite different to services for low functioning autistic people. It is useful to have a separate term because the services for each needs to be set up and run differently with an emphasis on different needs.

    As it is the one size fits all terminology hides the fact that people with 'Aspergers' type autism are not being well served and having their needs met. It also makes the services that are set up for them harder to find.

  • Low functioning needs / issues: Issues with mental capacity and issues with independent living, accessing healthcare and welfare services.

    High functioning autism needs issues: Issues with social isolation, discrimination (especially in the workplace / education). exclusion from education / labour market unrelated to ability.

  • Low functioning needs / issues: Issues with mental capacity and issues with independent living, accessing healthcare and welfare services.

    High functioning autism needs issues: Issues with social isolation, discrimination (especially in the workplace / education). exclusion from education / labour market unrelated to ability.

     But I have "HFA" but my needs are also "low funtioning" needs. Where do I turn if those support services get split in half and people doing triage only read "HFA" on a decades out of date document? That's a problem, because I'm not the only one in that boat either.
    Because if my reality isn't that I'm always or mostly "High functioning" then having "HFA" is just a meaningless wild stab in the dark made by some shrink with a clipboard and outdated notions of what autism is back when it was thought that it was caused by vaccines.
    What would you propose to remedy that issue for those who would fall through the gaps?

  • I had actually thought of that before, and this is where overlaps may come back into it because we can't be the only ones with issues of isolation, and actually a lot of things that affect autists also affect people with ADHD, etc, hopefully You see where I am going with this and I won't need to make a full list. haha. So what if it wasn't only Autism specifc but opened it's doors to various kinds of neurodivergent folks? That would be okay by me, more people to get to know and hopefully find friends in. Anyway something for the next thread on it. Maybe we shuld copy paste a few points from this discussion to save us all typing things out quite so much if we need to refer back to this chat.

  • As I said I’d happily settle for a Portakabin on an industrial estate provided it had good transport links. But autism charities just do not see this sort of thing as a priority.

  • By all means let’s have a thread another time but I’ve already thought this through to some degree. An endeavour like this needs at least one full-time employee. Someone who can turn up with the keys to let people in and out of the building. If you can only do it when volunteers have spare time you won’t really be using the building enough to justify having a building.

    also a thing about having a service like this is it’s geographically locked. it’s very difficult for people to be involved unless they are in geographic proximity and on this forum we are scattered all over the place. I for my part I am Yorkshire based. It will be difficult for me to collaborate on a project like this with anyone who wasn’t in the Yorkshire region. Simply because if activity is based around a physical place it’s difficult for people to be involved if they can’t easily get to that physical place.

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  • By all means let’s have a thread another time but I’ve already thought this through to some degree. An endeavour like this needs at least one full-time employee. Someone who can turn up with the keys to let people in and out of the building. If you can only do it when volunteers have spare time you won’t really be using the building enough to justify having a building.

    also a thing about having a service like this is it’s geographically locked. it’s very difficult for people to be involved unless they are in geographic proximity and on this forum we are scattered all over the place. I for my part I am Yorkshire based. It will be difficult for me to collaborate on a project like this with anyone who wasn’t in the Yorkshire region. Simply because if activity is based around a physical place it’s difficult for people to be involved if they can’t easily get to that physical place.

Children
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