Autistic Person vs Person With Autism

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This has been a question on my mind for a while in recent time. Which is the preferred term? I like to say "Autistic Person" or "Autistic People", but on some of the Autism pages I follow, a number of them and a number of members use "Person with Autism", "Child with Autism", etc.

Now in my mind Person with Autism has the strong reference to Autism = Disease. So I don't quite understand why we seem to be commonly referred to as people with autism instead of autistic people. Is this due to NT perceptions or something I'm missing? I mean, as far as I know no one says things like "person with homosexuality".

Any clarification would be appreciated.

Some people think autism is a disease that robs people of their personhood and using person first language will make it all better.

Depends on whether you feel autism is a part of who you are as a person or a condition that is separate.

My personal take on it is that most HF and MF autistic people are simply different. Yet we are expected to be able to function as well as the people who are setting the standard for behavior, environment, social interactions, etc. - neurotypicals. When we do not, because the society we live in does not currently value those who don't conform, we are labeled by them as mentally ill, deficient, dysfunctional, etc..

So, I am proudly an Autistic. Or Autistic person. I'm different, intrinsically so. We don't say, "Oh, she is a person with shortness". I don't fit into their world. It sucks sometimes because they set the rules, but it's better than going around always assuming all of us on the spectrum are somehow "wrong" and bad.

Honestly, sometimes the grammar takes precedent and I'll use all sorts of structures. But I try to make my overall position clear, too, when mentioning autism or being an Autistic.

I'm not sure, but I'm not a fan of "Aspie," though many on WP and elsewhere use it to designate themselves. To me it smacks of something used for taunting or belittling.
Jury's still out on the newer term "autist."

Does Autism define who I am as a person, no. Does Autism play one of the parts in who I am as a person, yes. That's how I see it at least.

I say Aspie from time to time, autist sounds weird to me.

I think NTs like it better when we say "person with Autism." It makes it easier for them to justify why we should be able to do the things they feel we should be able to do that we can't do. It's a way of trivializing and minimizing our struggles so that they can have an excuse to expect us to always act NT. That is how I personally feel. I am HFA and I really feel this way about NTs who insist that I refer myself as a "person with Autism." I have never heard an NT refer to an LFA as a "person with Autism." I have only heard it said to and about HFAs.

I am only speaking from personal experience so I could be very wrong in this. Feel free to correct me if I am. It's just my personal observation.

I think that NTs don't expect LFAs to act and appear NT. But they do expect it of HFAs. So they have to separate us from our Autism. If it is separated from us, in their eyes, it won't affect us so we should be able to act and handle things just like they do and so they can then justify their unrealistic expectations of us.

To call someone an "Autistic Person" means you can't separate the Autism from the person which, in turn, means that now the NT has to acknowledge and understand that this person has real issues and real struggles which affect him or her much more severly than the NT would like to think and so now the NT has to make an effort to understand that and work with it. Calling someone a "person with Autism" makes it easier to dismiss the Autism by insisting that he or she is a person first. And that way the NT puts all the responsibilty back onto the Autistic person to be able to act and appear NT and meet all the NT's expectations.

I call myself an Autistic Person.

For me, Autism is so prevalent in every part of my life and affects so much of everything I think, feel, understand, perceive, process, do, don't do, every aspect of every relationship I have, and so on, that I think it does define me as a person very much.

I think you are right about this.

I say Aspie and Autist. I have no issues with either of those words.

I think person-first language is a crock, political correctness gone mad. It's cumbersome and causes as much trouble as it avoids. I can't be bothered with it, and I certainly wouldn't be offended to be described as an autistic person, though I like Aspie better. If the experts who decided these things put their energy into helping us on our own terms instead of messing with language, we might be better off. End of rant.

Last edited by ToughDiamond on 03 Jul 2016, 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I tell anyone that I can that I prefer "Autistic Person" because that feels like a more accepting term to me. I've heard some people say the reasons that they say person with autism is because it puts the person before the condition because they are not defined by autism. While I understand that perspective, I still feel that it refers to the disease concept.

A person should identify how they please. For me it is Aspie, Autistic, or Aspie-Autistic.

What I do resent is that psychologists, school systems and the media have mandated calling us by person first language because they decided for us that identity first language is offensive and demeaning to us.

Autism is certainly something that affects me very deeply, it does not define me but it is a cloak I wear that swishes and swoops and tangles so I don't mind if it's acknowledged that I am an autistic or that I have autism, I'm not really concerned on how it is presented since if I'm an autistic person, I'm still a person, if I'm a person firstly, then it's acknowledged that I have the condition.

Interesting that you view it that way.

The "person first" preference (person with autism) is supposed to be the politically correct way to say it- that many folks on this (and other autism sites) want you to follow. The reason being that saying "autistic person" supposedly makes the person's autism their own whole identity. In contrast saying "person with autism" implies that they are "a person who happens to have autism" instead of having autism as their whole identity.

So person first is supposed protect you and your feelings.And/or saying it "person first" is supposed to magically transform how the world views you for the better.

But here you're saying that that very attempt at protecting you is "baffling" to you! So I find that amusing.

Myself: autism IS a deviation from the norm. It is a "condition". Its inborn (like diabetes). If folks wanna call it "a disease" (like diabetes) it doesnt really bother me. Dandruff can be called either a "condition", or a "disease" so why not "autism"?

So though I agree with you that this insistence on using "person first" is baffling- I object to it for a different reason than you do. I object because I think its silly to think that it makes any difference whether you are called an "autistic person" , or a "person with autism" ( it would not make a difference either to how folks view me, nor does it directly effect me emotionally differently. Its all the same to me and to others).

But you object to person first because "it implies that autism is a disease".

I am surprised that you're surprised that autism is thought of as a 'disease'. Of course its a disease. Or something like a disease ( condition, disorder, or like that).

I prefer to identify as an autistic person.

I have no problems with being called autistic. I don't understand this insistence on person first language. I saw an article that compared it to being female. You wouldn't say "person with femaleness", would you? It's the same with being autistic. And I consider autism an important part of me, so I don't feel the need to separate it from my identity.