"autistic" as a pejorative term

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So, I tutored a remedial English student today who was writing an argumentative paper on technology, and one of her claims was that technology is "making youths socially autistic." I was very taken aback by this claim, so I asked her why she put it that way--it turned out that she did not, but rather one of her resources she used for her paper wrote it and she did not cite it because she did not know it was so unusual and pejorative--in fact, she had no idea what the word "autistic" meant and just assumed that it meant something negative.

I told her she needed to do some research and, if she wanted to make a point about technology causing youths to have social problems, she needed to be able to put it into her own words and be careful.

Anyways, I walked away from that tutorial a bit shocked, and I decided to look the pejorative "autistic" up on Language Log. Sure enough, this negative usage is spreading--including Asperger's

Is anyone else disgusted by this?

It certainly does not make me remotely happy.

That's horrible. It seems to be a growing trend too. My mom loves to blame most of my social faults on my time spent on the computer and has even gone on to say it makes me "act ret*d". I find it offensive and wrong and belittling on so many levels. I also see the terms "autistic" and "Aspergers", and even more recently "assbugers" used within the internet community for someone who is into anime or shows like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The sheer amount of ignorance is very sad and annoying. I am pretty sure the majority of these people would not be able to give an accurate definition of autism if they were asked to, even if their life depended on it.

In the past I used to be the one pointing to everyone that what I do is due to Asperger in order to be forgiven for what i do, and they won't listen. With my most recent girlffriend, however, tables turned. SHE was the one saying its because I am autistic and used it against me. Then I was the one telling HER to view me as individual but she won't listen.

Unhappy but not surprised.

Yuck Yuck Yuck, definitely disgusting.

I feel disgust anytime I read the comments on any news article about autism or autistic people.

The latest super genius comment was that autistic children are totally broken and incapable of learning, and their parents should admit these totally factual facts and keep them out of school to avoid costing the school district money, stressing out the teachers, and disrupting the learning of normal children.

A cross between disgusted and angry. Are people not capable of reading about things before opening their yaps? Do they just say whatever they hear and think it's acceptable? Someone I know posted this on their Facebook: "Today I learned that Spongebob has Asperger's disorder.... ouch, right in the childhood." Needless to say, I was pretty offended.

I chose ambivalent. Although my ambivalence is largely about the limited vote options available. Why have a poll if you have already decided on the outcome?

That said I do not think the statement the poll is about is in any way helpful. But that is the nature of the use of metaphor - it's a way of putting a lot of content into one word. The long version might go something like this: "modern technology increases young adults' tendency to withdraw from interacting with real life and real people, a tendency which shares some external similarities with interaction styles of some people with ASDs - discuss!"

You can see that ain't gonna fly as an essay question.

I chose ambivalent. Although my ambivalence is largely about the limited vote options available. Why have a poll if you have already decided on the outcome?

That said I do not think the statement the poll is about is in any way helpful. But that is the nature of the use of metaphor - it's a way of putting a lot of content into one word. The long version might go something like this: "modern technology increases young adults' tendency to withdraw from interacting with real life and real people, a tendency which shares some external similarities with interaction styles of some people with ASDs - discuss!"

You can see that ain't gonna fly as an essay question.

Technology is causing an environmental form of ADHD. Not as serious but it's making real ADHD harder to diagnose. Even that Hallowell guys says. He has ADHD, wrote a book about it.

Socially autistic is an oxymoron. Anyway, even with technology people are still as social as possible. It is called 'social media' for a reason.

I'm just honest with people and say that the reason I'm not that social is because I can't stand people. Yes I'm autistic but I can still find people unbearable.

None of those really fit I just think, its one of those ignorant statements people make based on their limited and possibly inaccuarate knowledge about something. If this is a research paper she might want to re-think that one unless sources and research are not nessisary for the paper and she actually has something belivable to back it up with.


But good luck arguing todays technology causes autism.....shes going to have a hard time getting anywhere with that.

Nevermind the poll. It had another option when I made it--"other"--but it only posted the three options for whatever reason.

I won't make any more polls since this one annoyed everyone :-/

Anyways, the thing about composition and rhetoric is that one must try to write exactly what he or she means to write.
Obviously, that is not always possible, but concision only goes so far. It's content over quantity (whether more or less is written), not the other way around.

Well I am starting to think they just shifting things around.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/15/stop- ... ed-people/

Also think they might not be in touch with reality & just looking at figures or paper. More I look at DSM, the more it looks like both sides, except the introvert & extrovert is not in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_aggression

Read this^^^^^^ link

I would say I am a Victim-defenders.

Last edited by TechnoDog on 01 May 2012, 10:50 am, edited 3 times in total.

Using it that way doesn't bother me. I'm hard to offend though.

However, I can sort of see what they mean by that. Using mainly technology to connect to others tends to cut down on regular face to face interaction, so it can hinder social skills. Autistics, stereotypically, have poor social skills. Many people on the spectrum communicate much better through technology and I can see how the comparison was meant.

My kids communicate via text and facebook with their friends unless they are face to face. They rarely talk on the phone. I have a friend who will sit in the same room with me, both of us on computers and we talk via FB messages. Really. We do say things out loud, but it's mainly through fb. Sometimes, when she has a guy over there, I sit on her laptop, she's on her phone and we fb message about him while he's sittinng right there. Once we had to come up with a way to make him leave because he took no hints. Finally she told me "just tell him" so I said "You need to go, we have things to do. Say bye!" He did, and that was that. I digressed, sorry.

Anyway, I see how the analogy could be meant and don't take offense at all. No more than I would if someone said "Watching NASCAR can make you socially redneck".

Exactly. Some people seem to have established a false causality between the internet and autism - lots of autistic people use the internet, therefore autism is caused by the internet. There is no evidence to establish that two things are not purely coincidental, which seems the most likely outcome as the increase in autism diagnosis rates predates widespread use of the internet (and definitely Facebook, which seems to be blamed for everything bad in the world). I voted 'disgusted' mainly because what disgusts me is when people just make things up and pretend it's science.

Baroness Susan Greenfield claimed last year that there was a possible link between internet use and the rise in autism diagnosis, which annoyed a lot of people on the grounds that she had no real evidence on which to base that and has refused to publish any of her so-called research in an academic journal rather than the British gutter press. A professor of neuropsychology at Oxford University pointed out that, "Most cases are diagnosed around the age of two, when not many children are using the internet. You don't suddenly get autism in the middle of your childhood. And this rise has been documented over the past 20 years, long before Twitter and Facebook."

Greenfield replied, "I point to the increase in autism and I point to internet use. That's all." That sums it up really - you could do this with anything. I could say there is an increase in people owning electric kettles and therefore imply that electric kettles cause autism and I could probably get people to believe me.

So technology has the ability to change a person's genetic makeup ...