‘Today Show’ article about “Autism Wars”

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You use whatever words you please but the concept you are describing is commonly known as “natural selection”.

You could say that because black people die younger being black is dangerous to your health. While that is acknowledged the blame is usually not assigned to genetics, it is usually assigned to racism. Oversimplifying things where the disagreement is that the ND movement says it’s societies fault. What the anti ND people say is the problem is Autistics were born that way.

I think one issue those particular protesters have is distrust of Simon Baron Cohen due to his zero degrees of empathy and extreme male brain theories. Combine his theories with how eugenics has been historically used and the opposition to all is understandable if not logical.

I do think Autistic disabilities are a combination of Autism and ableism. There is no room for that in the zero sum game era.

Until Autism Spectrum differences can be reliably diagnosed with more precision I think it important to not over-generalize. Some on the Spectrum get along just fine. They might be "different" but they are educated and have good jobs. And some marry. Some have children.

Not all will be academically and professionally successful. Many will not marry and many will not have children. But...

<=>"If you've met on Autistic you've met one Autistic."

And I don't know that I consider Autism to be my identity but rather just part of my identity.

A long-smoldering debate among scientists studying autism has erupted. At issue is language—for example, whether researchers should describe autism as a “disorder,” “disability,” or “difference,” and whether its associated features should be called “symptoms” or simply “traits.” In scientific papers and commentaries published in recent months, some have decried ableist language among their colleagues whereas others have defended traditional terminology—with both sides saying they have the best interests of autistic people in mind. The vitriol is harming the field and silencing researchers, some fear, but others see it as a long-overdue reckoning.

But according to some autism researchers, the field still too often defaults to terms with negative connotations. For example, in addition to “symptom” and “disorder,” many scientists use the term “comorbid” rather than the more neutral “co-occurring” to describe conditions that tend to accompany autism. Similarly, some argue the oft-used phrase “people with autism,” as opposed to “autistic person,” can imply that autism is necessarily an unwanted harmful condition.

In a recent survey of 195 autism researchers, 60% of responses included views about autistic people the study authors deemed dehumanizing, objectifying, or stigmatizing. Some responses described autistic people as “shut down from the outside world” or “completely inexpressive and apparently without emotions,” according to the November 2022 Frontiers in Psychology study. “What is worse than I thought was how blatant a lot of the content was, which shows that, for [a] large proportion of participants, they did not consider the things they were saying to be problematic at all,” says lead author Monique Botha, a psychologist at the University of Stirling.

At the same time, others argue that making certain terms off-limits stifles the scientific process. “If you can’t use words like ‘challenging behaviors’ or ‘severe disorder’ or ‘symptoms’ or ‘comorbid disorder,’ then how are you supposed to study those things?” asks Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, who laid out these concerns in a December 2022 commentary in Autism Research. Singer and others, including her three co-authors, fear that using neutral terminology—such as “traits” or “features” in place of “symptoms”—downplays the experiences of autistic people who, like Singer’s daughter, have significant difficulty communicating, intellectual disabilities, or critical health concerns. It “trivializes the severity of autism,” says Singer, who is nonautistic. Botha, Bottema-Beutel, and 61 other researchers, clinicians, and advocates have submitted a letter to the editor rebutting Singer’s commentary.

Singer and others also worry moving toward neutral language could lead major funding agencies to shift support from research exploring autism’s underlying biological causes and potential treatments to other sectors, such as services and supports for autistic people—though whether this would be a positive or negative change is also a subject of debate. For now, the bulk of funding for the field falls squarely on the side of biological research in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Amid the ongoing language dispute, researchers on all sides report coming under attack, in the form of vitriolic Twitter exchanges, remarks at conferences, and being shouted down during talks. This increasingly hostile environment threatens to drive some scientists out of the field altogether—something Botha says they have seen firsthand among autistic researchers.

“People are getting reluctant to give public presentations or to be too vocal about what they’re finding,” says David Amaral, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, who is nonautistic. “Science is supposed to be about communication.” He wrote a December editorial in Autism Research, for which he is editor-in-chief, calling for civility across the board.

But, Botha says, “Civility is only possible when there is an equal playing field,” which can’t exist, they say, as long as the field marginalizes autistic people. Zeroing in on the heated nature of the debate is to “entirely overlook what autistic people are saying or protesting.”

Some hold more moderate positions, such as Zack Williams, an M.D.-Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University. “If we have the appropriate language to say something in a neutral and nonoffensive way, we should do it by default,” says Williams, who is autistic and a co-author of the letter to the editor responding to Singer’s commentary. But, “If someone goes and says ‘autism spectrum disorder,’ they shouldn’t be canceled,” he says; the focus should be on whether and how the research is helping autistic people.

Others say the field is too fractured to even try to resolve the divide. “I think that we don’t have a unified field anymore, and I think the sooner we recognize that the less pain will be there,” says Helen Tager-Flusberg, a psychologist at Boston University. Tager-Flusberg, who is nonautistic, and others say one source of the friction is the use of a single set of terms for an extremely heterogeneous condition. She argues for splitting the field and adopting separate terminology. But the autistic community largely thinks dividing them into groups such as “high-” or “low-functioning” is harmful and unnecessarily segregating, according to a December study exploring the language preferences of 654 English-speaking autistic adults across 30 countries.

“I don’t get why we can’t have common ground,” says Bottema-Beutel, who is nonautistic. “I don’t think that anyone who is saying we should avoid dehumanizing language is saying we should avoid accurately describing people and what they need.”

“Why not just be specific?” Botha asks. For example, if a study’s sample includes autistic people who are nonspeaking, have intellectual disability, and require supported living, just say that. Phrasing like this doesn’t minimize the very real challenges some autistic people experience—but it also doesn’t dehumanize them, Botha says. “Specificity is always going to be more rigorous and accurate than generalization.”

Those who claim they are just different I bet you they come from privileged backgrounds. For the rest of us life with autism can be hell on earth. Not to mention those with intellectual disabilities and their families.

I don't understand what is this fixation with language activism. Especially activism that interferes with scientific research. It's truly an Orwellian world this one we are living in. How control of language controls our ability to address reality. If you stop calling it a mental illness then it stops being treated as a mental illness. It is what it is though. We are not normal in the sense that we struggle to survive. Those who claim they are just different I bet you they come from privileged backgrounds. For the rest of us life with autism can be hell on earth. Not to mention those with intellectual disabilities and their families.

I come from a relatively privileged background. My father was a diplomat. I was privately educated from the age of 8 to 18. Social drift due to a combination of SMI + ASD(that was very late dxed) has meant that my life as an independent adult has been far from privileged.

I can't identify at all with those that see ASD as purely a 'gift'. If you're struggling and you're looking for answers; then fine. However if getting a dx amounts to ' I'm brilliant, and the ASD dx confirms that' - that's a very different ballgame.

My father was blue-collar in a grocery store the whole time I was growing up. It was the 1950/1960s so my mother was a stay-at-home Mom until my youngest sibling got older, then Mom's first job was as a server in a cafeteria in a department store.

The "privileged" part of my youth was that my parents had a very happy marriage and chose to raise me with what I think today would be called Autism Acceptance.

I think of my Autism as being a difference. In some ways it hurt me, in some ways it helped me. While my Autism was no joy ride it turned out OK (after lots of unhappiness).

However, I emphasize that I am talking about my Autism. The unidentified underlying cause of my Autism might be completely different than the unidentified underlying cause of someone else's Autism. And I think it is quite likely my parent's decision to accept me the way I was helped me a lot. I don't think I was privileged, I think I was lucky.

If you've met one Autistic you've met one Autistic.

I don't understand what is this fixation with language activism. Especially activism that interferes with scientific research. It's truly an Orwellian world this one we are living in. How control of language controls our ability to address reality. If you stop calling it a mental illness then it stops being treated as a mental illness. It is what it is though. We are not normal in the sense that we struggle to survive. Those who claim they are just different I bet you they come from privileged backgrounds. For the rest of us life with autism can be hell on earth. Not to mention those with intellectual disabilities and their families.

This has changed a lot since this ok boomer grew up when pretty much all the adults in my life said “Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never harm you”. That was not quite correct. If bad inaccurate words about autism are repeated often enough autistics are going to be hurt. The problem is we have gone to the other extreme where people are allowing microagressions and what should be trivial slights to cause them to develop PTSD. I am not talking about a person who has been repeatedly abused and what normally would be a trivial slight triggers PTSD.