To be autistic or not to be?

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Okay, here's the fun world of polls. I have Asperger's and I work with people with disabilities (mostly high school students). I recently attended a conference that is training people who work for adult service providers to be resource people for people and families with ASDs. It's given by Indiana University and involves some of the people who are the top autism researchers in the country right now.

Person first language has come up quite a few times. You know the old "person with a disabilty" rather than a disabled person crap. During the training, we had presenters that were saying things like "our friends with autism" and "people with autism". Me, myself, I'm out of the closet and I call myself autistic. So, I don't care if people refer to me as autistic.

I told the people at IU that I would do a poll on here to see what other people on the spectrum thought. I know that some people are still "in the closet" so to speak on their ASD. What I'm asking is do you care if others call you autistic? Also in a training situation when we are teaching people how to refer to us do you think that they should use the politically correct term of "person with autism" or is it okay to say "autistic person"?

I'm assuming that when people say you are autistic that they are not using it in a derogatory way. I'm thinking that they are using it as an identifier in some way.

I don't care about the label. I don't intend to tell anyone that I have an ASD unless it's complately necessary. hopefully in some years the public awareness about ASDs will grow and there will be no point staying in the closet anymore.

Perhaps I wasn't specific enough. What I'm asking is, how should people who are being trained on ASD's be taught to say?

How I want others to call me?

Person with autism.

To keep it politically fine and to remind people I'm not one odd alien that's called like a strange label, but a person with a strange label.

I call myself autistic usually, I think. Or use the appropriate noun 'Autist' in my other native. That's my preferred use if I am talking about myself.

I'm however appalled if other and especially non-autistic people say German 'Autist' or English 'autistic' to mean me though.

its funny how people speak about the differences of the human brain and body as if you have something, and there is an absolute norm.

i simply have a brain that is further from the mean than normal. a-spec mindset.

I find the idea that we need to flip words around to remind people that we're human, quite odd.

After all, a person can be called "a brunette" without anyone raising a fuss, and that's a lot less of a person than their brain structure.

Personally although I have a preference for 'autistic person' and similar, I use whatever formulation comes out of my fingers when I type it, whether 'autistic', 'autistic person', 'person with autism', 'autie', whatever.

I don't care, I only care If they start talking to me in a loud, exaggerated voice because of it that's when I care.

I hate politically correct language.

I find for any thing, rewording it as 'person with x' draws more attention to it in your efforts to be nice, rather then just saying it straight away.

And yeah, as the OP said, this is only for non derogatory usage =)

Yeah, I love how NTs have made the decision for us that we should be separated from the autism and that we somehow are less than human because of it. It's amusing that there needs to be this odd distinction.

My idea is that we are never separate from the Asperger's. It's the way that our brains are wired and it's the way we think. I don't feel like I'm ever apart from it. With other disabilities they would still be the same people with or without the disability. The Asperger's is not like that. I would not be the same person without it. It's fundamentally why I am who I am.

I know some people take alot of offense to the word autistic. But I wonder if we lived in a world where autistic did not have the negative connotation, would we still feel that way?

By putting the autism last aren't we implying that it's bad and that we should be distanced from it in some way? I don't think it's bad. Do I have meltdowns and bad moments? Of course I do. But I am a unique person with alot of strengths that I have because of the Asperger's. I try to concentrate on the positive things and learn how to live better with the negative ones. But I live in a world where I've made the Asperger's a much more positive thing. I don't hide from it and I accept it.

I know that not all of us can do that. I accept that, too.

Actually quite indifferent on that one.

I honestly don't care. I'd rather be called autistic, I think, simply because it takes less time to say. Perhaps I'm not very PC in this regard.

by my name, or if formally, "Mr. Brown"...

I have some tendencies, they do not completely define me. It's like telling me that since I was born in a certain age, I'm a 'baby boomer'....sheesh...

If you mean autistic as a noun, "an autistic" versus "a person with autism", well, for me, I just don't like the word "autistic" as a noun.

To me, 'autistic' is a word that defines who I am, who I have always been, who I always will be, how I experience this world, and what makes me different from most people. It is the same as calling a person a 'homosexual' or 'gay'. We don't refer to them as being a 'person with homosexuality', do we?

I prefer to be called autistic.