Autistic vs Has Autism

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Hello I am posting here again for the first time in a long time I will try to be active more since having area like this not linked to social media is good.

I was with my helper and at the government office for unemployment, I had my teddy bear with me, ear defenders on and chewlery thing on neck and using phone to talk since I don't do well with new people/people not used to.

She was talking to the lady there about disability claim and how I obviously had autism (due to what I had with me?). She had said something similar with some thing else I can't remember.

when I first got her she asked if I prefer has autism or autistic and I said autistic I think but either is fine.

she said that autistic is like a bad thing to say since it links to stuff people see in media but if you say has autism you can say x person is good at x y z and has autism.

I thought you can use both but then this seems to mean one is worse than other?

You can use either but some people have reasons for preferring the one over the other. Valid arguments exist for both preferences, as well as for not having a preference.

They mean the exact same thing, so I never used to care.

Nowadays though I'd say I prefer 'has autism' because 'autistic' has been adopted by people who think we all have an 'autistic identity'.

I prefer Autistic.

I used to argue the case for this more than I do now. I guess I'm a little burnt out with challenge, arguments, egos, trauma so am gradually becoming indifferent. I find it exhausting.

I tend to expend more of my energy on issues related to the LGBTQ+ community these days. I recall a time when we used to engage in the same kind of circular arguments and community division there too. Things seem way better now.

Just my personal opinion of course. Other opinions are available and all have validity.

X

There are a lot of options. As someone diagnosed with Asperger's (one way of putting it) I don't say "I have Asperger syndrome" or worse yet "an Asperger's sufferer." I usually say I am an Asperger Syndrome person. It's just a matter of which sounds more comfortable to the person.

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

I prefer autistic because it is something that defines me and nothing that I have, or is imposed on me, like a hearing loss or something.

I prefer “Autistic” because as my name says I think of Autism as part of who I am. “Person with Autism” implies Autism as an unwanted invader that is destroying normal people.

A decade ago I viewed “Person with Autism” as a lot more of a problem than I do now. At that time every mainstream media style guideline recommended “person with autism”. The worst part of was that in seemingly every comment section of Autism related videos or blogs you had somebody scolding us for using “Autistic” because they considered it offensive. I likely had six decades more experience at being autistic than the language policers and they were telling us what we should consider offensive. I was offended by that. I told them exactly that which shut them up every time.

That was then, this is now. The mainstream media uses the terms interchangeably and I can not remember the last time I read someone demanding we use “person with Autism”. The Live and Let Live attitude of today leaves us more time to discuss the real problems we face.

I'm autistic.

Who happened to have other unwanted issues that had nothing to do with it, unlike other people's assumptions of over what I'm dealing with.


I don't mind anyone using one or another or how they defined it.


But personally, "has Autism" meant their own autism doesn't synch with who they are, what they want to be and where their values lie.

A lot of things about autism and being autistic aligns with my values and priorities as a human than just some compensatory cope that most autistics identify themselves with.

... And I'm not a 'normal' person.
I don't even want the 'person' everyone might be claiming 'underneath my autism'. That so called imaginary person is more of a dead weight to me as a human, than whatever they thought autism even is.

I may not even be a 'normal' human (a lot of autistics and allistics alike are, most of which have just as conventional aspirations around emotion, socialization, morality, etc.) regardless if I were any 'more' or 'less' or even if I'm not autistic at all.

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I use both, just as I do for my diabetes, I am diabetic, I have diabetes. life is too short to argue about the way people choose to describe themselves. We have enough "rules" to contend with already.