Published on 12, July, 2020
You know I am not want to quibble about language I would normally say you should use whatever terminology most quickly and accurately conveys what you’re trying to say regardless of whether it’s politically correct. Autistic person or person with autism it makes very little difference to me. High functioning or low functioning yeah I think we all understand what that means now. But there is one terminology that I am seeing but I am not a fan of.
people who say that this person is profoundly autistic or very autistic or severely autistic. Because they’re not talking about the core symptoms of autism being more serious the lack of social skills the special interest are repetitive behaviours. They’re talking about intellectual handicap. As if people who have an intellectual disability are somehow more autistic than people who do not. and the logical extension of this is that they are more deserving of sympathy and help and special accommodations. and these intellectually disabled autistic people are the true autistic people the profoundly autistic people and the ones you have to take seriously not like these high functioning autistic people. they don’t really need help. at least that is a subtext which is conveyed.
I mean no one says “he is so profoundly autistic he kept me talking about quantum physics for an hour even though I tried to change the subject multiple times and then tried to follow me in to the ladies loo to keep talking to me about quantum physics.”
no one says, “he is so severally autistic he thought a good icebreaker would be the group discussing what sex toys we have.” Even though this would be the proper use of the term.
no when they say profoundly autistic they mean “he’s 26 and has a mental age of 12.” I really wish we could stop people and I guess by people I mostly mean parents from using this terminology.
I'm not a fan of that term, but I'd take issue with your point that
Peter said:people who have an intellectual disability are somehow more autistic than people who do not. and the logical extension of this is that they are more deserving of sympathy and help and special accommodations
People who have an intellectual disability *are* more deserving of those things because they have less ability to cope without them.
I m not sure of that. How comparable is the suffering of people who cannot live conventionally fulfilling lives because they are intellectually limited, and the suffering of people who are intellectually capable of living conventionally fulfilling lives but who struggle to do so because of autism traits? The former may not suffer as much exhaustion, frustration, disappointment and mental illness as the latter. So I think that definitely stating that one group is more deserving of help than the other is difficult to sustain.
Martin said:How comparable is the suffering of people who cannot live conventionally fulfilling lives because they are intellectually limited, and the suffering of people who are intellectually capable of living conventionally fulfilling lives but who struggle to do so because of autism traits?
Those with the ability to learn how to deal with their traits and modify behaviours to make them less of an issue are clearly less disabled as they have the potential to do something about it.
I have zero ability to modify my visceral and debilitating revulsion to touching certain textures. I can try to avoid touching them, but it is not an absolute ability. I cannot hold a meaningful conversation if there is a lot of background noise, which has been problematic in my job, and my intellect has no effect to mitigate that either.
Its a false assumption that being aware you have poor social skills empowers you to improve them. In very much the same way that being an expert in the maths of juggling won’t nessiceraly give you the coordination to be a good juggler.