Is "Aspie" or "Autie" offensive

Post Reply New Topic

Do you think health professionals, for example, or teachers can call us Aspies or Auties?

What would be a professional term.

It'd be odd to hear it from a person not on the spectrum, but I wouldn't find it offensive or anything.

They're a bit...cutesie.
I wouldn't think a professional would use the terms, just people on the spectrum and friends of people on the spectrum. I was surprised to hear an NT I just met that his friend was an 'aspie.'
I'm not fond of the words tbh.

I love those words. I have never heard a NT use them of course. Only NT I can remember using it was someone from the Nsider2 forum who was my new friend I thought but he used me.

I personally don't care if people use those terms, since shortening a work doesn't sound demeaning to me. It does however annoy me when someone who doesn't have the condition raises a stink about it. Them: "You're trying to turn it cute and trendy." My attitude about it: "Shut up."

I would be unoffended, but it sounds unprofessional from a professional. I also don't care if professionals sound professional, but the way they talk shows if they are or not, so they kind of have to sound professional.

I wouldn't care if they wanted to call someone else an Aspie or an Autie, but I think they sound too "cute", like a flower or something, and I wouldn't like to be called that. I DO have a name for a reason.

I don't care about (my) names. It's only one more tag to Thoughtpicture. I'm angry only if means sth wrong - because of my PR. But I think Aspie/Autie doesn't mean sth wrong.

I don't mind a person on the spectrum using it but people who use it as an insult or to make a generalised statement (when they only know one person on the spectrum), I would get annoyed.

I don't find those words offensive, but I do consider them to be labels. I don't use the words "Aspie" or "Autie" in reference to myself or anybody else because IMO, there is more to a person on the spectrum than their diagnosis, it is simply a part of what makes them who they are.

If there's nothing wrong with being autistic, then there's nothing wrong with being called autistic, whether by a shortened term or not.

I've heard a psychologist say "aspie".

It made me want to suicide bomb the place.

I don't mind aspie all that much, it reminds me of words like techie and appy (the South African slang for apprentice); but for some reason autie sounds like "my kid has something wrong with him and I'm pretending to be cool with it". With the new American diagnostic manual coming out in a year or two, the term 'Asperger's Syndrome' will fall away anyhow, which suits me fine, because I don't like the word 'syndrome'! I usually just tell people I'm autistic. It seems more neutral to me. The response is usually one of disbelief, and I stake a kind of naughty pleasure from arguing to affirm my autistic status!

I have one or two non-AS friends who use the word aspie, inter alia, the wife of an aspie. One of my friends who has an aspie nephew uses it too, and teases me about it in the context of my fussiness about punctuation. I like that. It makes me feel different-but-accepted, which is one of the most reassuring feelings for me. When non-autistic people try to reassure me that I am like everyone else, I feel like they don't 'get' me, and that they are saying that it wouldn't be a good thing if I were autistic.

PS: I have a non-autistic friend who is developing software to help aspie kids with social skills, and when I was diagnosed he told me that he found the term aspie rather 'eeeewww'. (He didn't mind me being an aspie, though!)

My mum calls me an Aspie and I call her NT. I don't find it offensive at all.

Agree with you 100% on that. If WE don't have a problem with it, what's the issue? I don't think it's insulting.

~K