I don't care what people call me, but I can't speak on behalf of anyone else.
Personally, I don't think there's any such thing as high or low functioning. Back at school they were autistic individuals who struggled to understand rules to games and didn't communicate verbally (that's what it appeared to be).
I chose to let them play with me even though they weren't speaking and couldn't understand rules, what came to my mind is if they can understand my language maybe it's possible they're choosing not to speak, not they are unable.
I played with them day after day treating them as any other person, after so long they began to understand the rules and occasionally say a word or two and their verbal communication gradually increased.
I've listened to parents share stories about their autistic children and the same applied, at one point they were not speaking at all and were totally resistant to any form of communication, but once the parents of these children stepped outside of the traditional medical route and looked for their own way their children became entirely engaged with other people.
The medical model is what I see to be the problem, the medical model treats the person as the condition, those who become engaged were treat as people and not a condition. Just like how I treat the students at school as people who simply have not learnt to understand rules yet because no one tried teaching them.
So concerning functioning, I see it has nothing to do with the autistic person, but is all to do with how the autistic person is treat and viewed.
I can relate to this a lot. I don't like the way that I'm treated by society because of my functioning label.
Not really, but some things do bother me. Eg when NTs give me *** for being on benefits and tell me to "try harder" to get a job, be a social butterfly etc because I'm "high functioning"...
I care about what functioning labels people use against me because it influences the way they treat me because of the function label they use against me. I strongly dislike functioning labels. Using "high functioning" doesn't mean that I'm "high functioning" 24/7 but people treat me as if I'm high functioning 24/7 and it really does affect me.
I don't think "high functioning" is a diagnostic term, so one isn't diagnosed as high or low functioning. It's just something used to separate the verbal from the non verbal, because that's really all it means. I would be called high functioning, but I function terribly! Lol!
I'm diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Condition. They've not diagnosed me specifically as "high functioning" and I'm glad because whilst I have a job, good education, husband and kids, house, all the conventional goals basically, I don't think my autism makes me high functioning at anything, and I don't always function well thanks to autism when trying to meet even the smallest of demands.
I refer to myself as being autistic in conversation. I don't really know what I'd have been labelled as in times gone by.
One former NHS nurse I know said that labels were counterproductive, whilst at the same time demonstrating a considerable number of supposedly ND behaviours herself. I told her that I found labels could also be quite convenient personally. But what do you do when no one wants to even discuss a label, least of all former NHS employees. I would say that actually it helps to talk / act out to yourself aloud quite a lot, so that no one can easily imagine that you are just faking it. So they get the point, even though the label is never mentioned. I find it suits me just fine to do that, and it keeps the doubting Thomases at a very safe remove at the same time. Nice!
Aspergers Syndrome, as a separate diagnosis, was removed in order to make diagnosis (and getting help) easier (and when I say easier diagnosis, I don't mean, easier to *get* a diagnosis, but easier for the clinician to make an evaluation). There were several different 'varieties' of autism, as it were, and PDDs, and they all had their own diagnostic criteria. Research, over many years, showed that there were so many overlapping symptoms/traits, that it was obvious it was the same condition, with just differing levels of severity/help required. So they removed the individual labels and placed them all under the umbrella term, 'Autism Spectrum Disorder', and simply divided it into levels 1, 2 and 3. I do believe the list of symptoms was reduced a little too, but the qualifying number of symptoms required for a diagnosis was increased. People think AS was removed because of the bad association that Hans Asperger has but it wasn't that. It was simply a streamlining of terms/diagnostics....
People that already have an Aspergers diagnosis can either continue to use that term, or change it to ASD, if they want to, but that's their personal choice. I think, to a certain extent, neurotypicals might understand the term "Aspergers", better than they might understand "ASD, level 1". Though, from talking to people, it seems they don't consider Aspergers to be particularly serious. They see it as just someone with a bit of a quirky nature, whereas they see autism as pretty serious. Neither of which, I think, is particularly helpful. I don't really like the term "high functioning", either, because (as Hannah Gadsby jokes), it gives the impression that the person "functions highly"!
Personally I don't really mind how people label themselves, or me, really. We're all labelled to a certain extent, regardless of whether we like it or not, though most of us are happy with most of our labels, such as mother, father, grandparent or artist, sportsman, musician or straight, gay, bi...
So long as people are respectful and polite, they can call me what they like! Lol! I'll continue to label myself, "me"....
I've never cared about labels, but I don't care about many things. I've learned that the less time you spend worrying about things like this the more time you have to enjoy what you want to do in life.
Of course labels can be hurtful when you are a teenager but it's something you will learn as you get older.
I don't really either mind or care what it is called, as long as it is open to some sort of dialogue. But apart from the UK organisation who agreed with my own identification, almost no one really wants to talk about it, anywhere. I am, I suppose, not much more than a bit of a pain. But not so much of a pain that I would ever become a person of any great significance/notoriety. And somehow I remain fairly cheerful. With all the environmental, religious social and economic problems in the World today, I'm sure most people would willingly sweep the whole issue of autism under the carpet. (We're on a road to nowhere!)
Difficult one.
I've always believed each person has an absolute right to self-define anything about themselves, whether their autism, race, sexuality, gender, whatever. I understand that other people might struggle to keep up with the preferred terms and worry about committing a faux pas if picking the wrong one.
I think ultimately as long as there is no intent to insult, people will respect it if you say: "I prefer X because of y". I wouldn't get upset if people didn't immediately pick what I would prefer. That said certain terms like "different" rather than "disabled" create a useful, more positive shift in the discourse.
