What do you think of functioning labels?

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I think they are sorely lacking, actually.

I am hyper-verbal and so people assume I am not as impaired as someone who is more silent.
And yet, my sensory problems are incredibly severe, as is my adherence to routine and rigidity and daily patterns and rituals.

I fit 'mild" with some things,
"moderate" with some things and
"severe" with some things.

Last year I came of medications and I went mute, could not follow conversations AT ALL and spent my days pacing and rocking in the house.

I do not work beyond the home (tried it part time for periods of time. but cannot sustain it.)

I have learned various vacuous social scripts, but scratch beneath the surface and you get confusion from me.

I think my concrete thinking and literal thinking is quite severe so I miss double meanings, and failure to read between the lines other aspies might be able to I even take phrases literal depending on how they were used and I have difficulty understanding phrases, etc. But I'm mild in other things. My anxiety used to be pretty bad so it made my AS seem worse in my teens. I can get moderate at times but I don't see it that way. It's just an illusion. It's the stress doing it, not the AS. But I'm aware AS does get worse during stress.

Ah, you have just described me there. I get pretty bad social anxiety at times and it some how pushes the AS-ness up a few notches. In certain situations I become the sperglord extrordinaire but in others I go back to being really mild. It's usually stressfull situations that do that to me, or even when I'm too relaxed because I just let it all hang out.

Another aspie has done that to me. He told me he is more aspie than me and I shouldn't take X literal because he doesn't take it literal. This was back in 2008.

They are superficial, because they make an extremely vague description of an individual.

When I said that I'd rather people expect more of me I mean't like studying, getting a job, taking care of yourself etc. If someone said to me..."You're mild so you should know what would offend people", then I'd say to them..."Well at least I'm not doing it intentionally!".

All these clinical labels sound kind of dehumanizing to me. I don't like them.

Labels try to freeze a dynamic process. I am, acccording to what day it is, if I have had my coffee, what else I am doing at the time, when I last ate, and and where I am going.

At the same time, I can be three labels while doing three things.

Other people are not standard parts, so the exact same thing can have a large range.

My view, high function is doing what I want to get done, not fitting in with someone talking about a game they saw on tv, that they know I never watched.

I will never get an "A" in pandering to the masses, and I am not in that business. All of my "As" come from getting the job done.

People who meet all the standards for low function have done very well by focusing their drive on their goals. They may not have range, but one human's worth of energy applied does things.

The social pick one path, the mechanical another, they might get elected, till a better lier comes along, I build private worlds that continue and grow. Everyone was their friend as they rose, and forgot them when they fell, they had a new friend. No one knows me, I do not have friends, but my world grows.

A few years ago home builders and realtors were the important people to know, now they collect food stamps, and avoid their old customers. Were they high functioning? Are they now low functioning?

Is the mask of social skills just a cover for living a lie? It would seem if it had a reality, it would have added something equal to the non social nerds who came up with computers, changed the world for the better, but religious and political leaders have left only a moral and economic hole.

Would I be a better person if I went down to the sports bar and talked point spread with a used car salesman? Or should I stay home, design a web site, and reach all of the world that shares my interests?

I rarely leave the house.

It was just an idea, but it reflects more of the symptoms than the IQ. That's the limitation with labels and words since you cant really give a full description of someone/something without writing a few pages about it. But, if a description could be applied to this said case, i would say that person would be Type 9 - HIQ (type 9 because he/she can display feats of high intelligence, but not much more than that, so i added the HIQ for High IQ). All ideas start out rough to some degree. Type 10 would be the person(s) incapable of nothing more than screaming (as ive heard in some of the more severe cases). Just a thought.

I have found this too. When I first moved to my residential home, they couldn't understand how it was that I could 'talk for England' but couldn't understand why I freaked out over change, had major screaming fits and couldn't understand 'simple' instructions. They're learning though and a recent test showed that I have a slow processing speed so they speak more slowly and clearly now! (not like I am stupid though which is nice!)

This brings up another thing. This person who can't talk or walk but has the high IQ - they are only labeled compared to NTs. Even us relatively mild Aspies are labeled as having a disorder because we're different from NTs.

But I don't agree with that way of thinking. What's so great about NTs that means anyone different from them has to be disabled? Us Aspies apparently have a disability because we basically think differently from them, and people with even more differences (not able to make facial expressions, unable to talk, etc) are called low-functioning, as if NTs are somehow the superior ones who are the really high-functioning ones, as if they're somehow perfect. Even problems faced by the more severe autistic people are only problems because this NT society MAKES them problems. Would not understanding facial expressions and social signals, not being able to talk, and enjoying yourself by simply stimming all day, be a problem if the world wasen't full of people expecting you to be like them? No! Such people would simply be accepted!

I'll have you know that I'm a trillion times better at computers than most NTs, so why don't we give all those computer-illiterate idiots "low-functioning computer skill syndrome" or something? There's only one reason why that's not done: because it's considered normal by our stupid society! Yet having a different way of socialising is considered enough to have a disability, and not being able to make facial expressions and talk may be considered enough for people to call you low-functioning, even if you may be much smarter than whatever idiot came up with that stupid label!

Utterly stupid! Who are NTs to judge what we can and can't do anyway? More to the point, who are they to judge how much of a human being I am using their stupid labels?

People on the autistic spectrum - no matter how 'severe' - are still human beings. NTs reading this, would you call your neighbour low-functioning because they couldn't memorise pi to 22,514 decimal places? Because there's an Aspie who's done that, so surely anyone who can't must be low-functioning by comparison and have a disability, right?

Of course not, such an assumption is stupid! So why are people who can't do some things NTs can called disabled, despite the fact they can often do things NTs can't anyway? And even if they can't, they are still humans and deserve to be treated as such.

Rant over.

i really try not to use function labels, because strength and weakness depends on the person

But what would they do for society? Paint an abstract mural with their own feces? If we're talking severe Kanner's, we've got to be realistic. What if they go apes--- because some person is innocently walking by wearing vinyl pants, which make that annoying rubbing sound against the wearer's legs? Because they can't talk and express themselves properly, they begin to scream, or worse, attack the person?
When they run into the streets, should the cars "accept" them and just float into the air?
This just doesn't make much sense.