Even if it no longer "officially exists"

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Why won't it be "official"?

Last I heard, Gillberg's Criteria for AS will still be valid, and the DSM-V has proposed for the terms Asperger's and Kanner's to be still used if it's prudent (no matter if the label is just "ASD").

It still officially exists in my country, but I've started describing myself as autistic.

The way I see it... I was only just qualified as having Aspergers. So now that it's gone, I have a chance to "relabel" myself. Why not just ignore the whole labeling thing and just be what I want? If I'm asked, I can say I have autistic traits. I don't believe that I'm "on the spectrum" enough to call myself even HFA without the Asperger's bridging the gap.

What people fail to deal with is that autism is a spectrum.

OCD, Bipolar, etc etc, are all being shown to have a very close genetic connection to autism.

So there's really no way to draw a line between mainstream and the autistic.

I'd much prefer to call myself a natural intellectual, who has struggled in a society that advocates emotional values over all else.

I'm officially diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, but I identify as both an Aspie and an Autistic, so it doesn't really make any difference to me whatsoever, and besides, I'm still me...

It's been renamed to "awesome syndrome"

I never cared which word was used; Asperger's or high-functioning autism... I'd use whichever word the other person in the conversation happened to use. I think it's good that we will be using autism as the descriptor now, as maybe it will help to teach the NT public (FINALLY) what autism is, and that it is not the same thing as Down Syndrome or other developmental disabilities, which are completely unrelated to autism.

Charles

Asperger's Syndrome is being abolished in my country this year and replaced with Autism Spectrum disorder. I never talk about it, so it makes no difference. In centuries to come, AS will probably be thought of as a short-lived medical diagnosis which was an attempt to categorise a subset within a very wide-ranging set of people, behaviours and symptoms.

That's OK.

I would rather say I am "Artistic"

Than say I am an "Ass Purger" :D

Asperger's Syndrome is the diagnosis I was given, so I do still use that term most of the time. However, sometimes I just use "autism/autistic" for various reasons:
1.) Space (e.g. character limits on Twitter)
2.) Because more people are familiar with it - in particular, most people who aren't autistic (or parents, caregivers etc) won't have heard the word "aspie" before.
3.) So I don't get the whole "but Asperger's isn't really autism" thing.
4.) So I don't exclude the rest of the spectrum (if I'm talking about general issues rather than just about myself)

What many people seem to forget is that Asperger's is a form of autism. The autistic spectrum is called a spectrum for a reason. To me, "autistic" and "aspie" are a bit like "British" and "English" - I identify with both, and when I use one term, I don't intend to exclude or denounce the other term.

It does not matter to me what particular words are used to describe. When speaking with healthcare people, I will use the DSM-V terminology just to avoid confusion. Otherwise I don't care.