why do people use autism as an insult, what do you think

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Pondering this after I uploaded some art for autism acceptance month on deviantart and received a hate comment. I'm not upset about it, just curious what these people think is so insulting about being autistic.

I suppose my best guess is that it's rooted in an ableist belief that people's value lies in their intellectual ability..... which, autism doesn't necessarily mean intellectually challenged. Regardless tho, it's a gross attitude to take.

I'd mock a person who tried to use autism as an insult.

I think they CAN'T unless you let them. "Autistic" isn't a dirty word. Don't let it affect you as though it is.

They do not care what word they use, they just want to insult people. They will use the first word that pops in their head. Autism is in the news a lot so that word pops in their heads.

I mean if anything I'm mainly just annoyed that they were accusing me of being a zoophile just because I like talking animals and use them in my art. I find the use of autism as an insult to be more perplexing than upsetting.

In context, any word can be an insult.
Just watch the tone and structure of the sentences.

Where it came from, came from the association with intellectual disabilities.
And intellectual disabilities, in history, had a lot of slurs back when eugenics are popular.


People should wake up to the giant and subtle 'productivity machine' and 'standards' that the previous generation created, yet that had gone out of control today.
With their descendants as it's fuel.

One cannot be it's 'efficient fuel' for not 'keeping up' the privilege of keeping a competitive job...
"Autistics" are one of them -- unless you're the uncommon type without executive dysfunctions.

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The root of using autism as an insult is they're saying some people are worth more than others to them. Why might they view people with autism as worth less? If someone has difficulty, they don't want to help. They want to ignore the need, possibly because they're low on resources themselves and don't want to admit it, possibly because they're greedy, possibly because they're traumatized by not getting the help they needed.

Type 1 and 2 autism triggers a reaction in people because there's a violation in norms. The person seems "normal" on the surface but then there are differences that they didn't account for. People don't get why I understand rocket equations but can't spell or handwrite clearly. I'm generally stoic because I mask and if I let that mask drop because of a meltdown I'm suddenly crazy. It's a situation they're not prepared for and it makes them fearful and angry. Some people's reaction is to degrade others in response to making them uncomfortable.

Type 3 autism insults are just cruelty. It's a flat out evaluation that someone has no intrinsic value.

Not saying any of that is right, just that's the chain of thought that seems to go on.

I think it's because we're socially delayed, which means we likely aren't popular. If we aren't popular we have nothing to offer them in terms of social advantage, so we're discardable. They'll insult us to prove they're nothing like us. They're popular, and we're not.

Years ago few people heard of autism it was something possibly related to vaccines was the common ordinary view 15-30 years ago.

Even if they knew this they didn’t really know much more about it.

Now autism is everywhere everyone knows about it and most know it’s a problem that is related to low IQ (some of us) or at least cause people to have problems with social interaction.

So this is an open door for anyone wanting to insult someone by calling them autistic rather than ret*d or if they do something socially unacceptable they are “acting autistic”.

The larger problem is the school shooters who many either are autistic or at least can be claimed to have some autistic like behavior (Loners, few friends etc)

We don’t want to be associated with that because all sorts of bad discrimination will likely occur worse than in the Muslim community after 911

It will only take a neurological research finding to find a biological signature link between a form of autism and those that commit these mass shootings, for us to be in a world of problems.

Let’s face it most while not always diagnosed certainly fit the social behavior criteria.