The term "Aspie" is a deragatory slur in my book.

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"as*hole" sounds like a pretty vitriolic term of abuse to me...and it's halfway to being "aspie", so anything's possible.

I presume that you meant "a***hole", which is nasty but not in the same category. The literal definition of that word is an ugly, pungent part of one's anatomy, not a human being. Anyone who uses that word to describe someone may feel angry, and may upset the person that they're referring to, but they aren't vilifying your a***hole in the process.

By contrast, anyone who uses a word that's not meant to be negative - like "ret*d" - in the same way intends to shock and offend. That's part of getting their anger or derision across and semantics are crucial to that. It's no coincidence that people do this more now that society's tolerance of conventional profanity means that many swear-words have lost their impact. Swearing is intended to offend, and it's now more effective to attack community standards of sensitivity and acceptance (or "political correctness", depending on which newspaper you read) than to simply rehash some word that's lost all relevance to its original meaning because someone at the pub drops it every 3.5 seconds, just like their parents did.

I am new to this, having been diagnosed in April… I think I would use the term Aspie for myself with other people here, and maybe with close friends. However, I wouldn’t say ‘I am an Aspie’ to someone I didn’t know well, and I probably wouldn’t mention Apergers at all. Come to think of it, I never meet anyone anyway.

I think that black people use the word ‘n*gg*’ (sorry, I won’t say that word myself) to acknowledge a shared history of hardship and prejudice… I might think of Aspie in the same way; though the prejudice is much less extreme, we still seem to struggle with similar problems.

I wouldn’t go up to someone and say ‘hi, I am an Aspie with PTSD and Obsessive compulsive, and I am an ADD as well…’ you might as well just give someone a medical textbook and say, ‘let’s not hang out- you can just sit there and read that, it’ll tell you all about me!’

Aspie isn't a slur. Even phychiatrists use that word sometimes. Maybe I don't know.