I’m perfectly fine with “person with autism” and “autistic” but if you call me an “autist” I will punch you in the throat

I can’t directly relate. I strongly prefer ‘person with schizophrenia’ to ‘schizophrenic’ (or similar, worse terms). I feel that, first and foremost, I am a person, as are all people, neurodivergent or not.

But also, I support you in being referred to as you want. I don’t need to relate to your experience to just, refer to you as an autist (when I would need to refer to it at all), after you tell me you prefer that.

I am a person with autism the way I am a person with legs, they’re kind of an important part of me

I’ve heard repeatedly, from different autists, how they explained this to teachers for pschology, pedagogy etc. and the teachers listened, nodded along and then immediately went on to keep using person first language.

Ask them if they’d call a black person a “person with blackness”

I hate when chuds say “autist” as a put-down, and it’s dreadfully common in some parts of the internet (and in public schools, unfortunately).

I wholeheartedly agree with you that being neurodiverse is not something that could, or even should, be “cured.”

I still feel uncomfortable sometimes when I see some chud say “lot of autists on this map, they should (self harm)” or the like during a game, or when seeing bullies during lunch saying “autist” while tormenting a kid for standing out, autistic or otherwise.

Sounds like the root issue is that you wish that people saw your autism as something you are, and that it’s not something you have.

As a neurotypical person (not “a neurotypical”) I would struggle to call someone “an autist” because that term is often used by chuds trying to marginalize autistic people.

I would absolutely be fine with saying someone is autistic but in my opinion there isn’t any meaningful semantic difference if I said they are an autistic person. Do you agree?

Someone who uses the phrase “person with autism” is just trying to emphasize personhood. I don’t think they are necessarily trying to imply that autism is separable from the person, although I guess that could be the case depending on context.

personally, I don’t mind “person with autism.” To me, implication you ascribe to it seems like one that isn’t necessarily inherent to the text, but I understand your problem with the phrase.

interesting that you even prefer “autist,” I’d bristle at the term.

I get your perspective and you’re not wrong but personally for me I would be so happy if there was a cure for autism. It’s a destructive and limiting force in my life.

Personally, I wouldn’t have any problem with “person with autism” a priori or in a vacuum, but what bothers me about it is that it is used with the actual intention of separating my autism from who I am, and that combined with the fact that it’s often allistic people promoting it makes it feel like framing my autism as something negative and that I ought to be treated in spite of it rather than framing it as something normal. Which sucks because it is a part of who I am and it feels like they’re just denigrating me for being autistic but in an indirect way.

Certainly an interesting first post to make on Hexbear.

Seeing person first language as eugenicsy feels a bit weird to me. By law, only a person can have rights, protections, and privileges. And I feel like person in no way implies an “ideal human mind”, given that even an organization can be a person (a “judicial person”, though perhaps it’s a silly comparison given how legal and actual uses of terms vary), and even when unconscious people are still often referred to as a “person”. The only entities that usually aren’t considered a person are slaves, and animals, so it feels like refusing personhood would be even more problematic. Adding on to all that, I’ve basically never heard a proponent of eugenics using person first language.

The people first vs identity first debate seems to have a lot to do with the specific identities involved, specifically how “harmful” it’s perceived. Blind people, hard of hearing people, and autistic people often see their condition more as being a part of them. Homeless people, people with drug issues, people with diabetes, people with AIDS, people with cancer, generally see their condition as inherently problematic, and so want to be associated more with themselves than their condition (even when it’s not curable). An autistic person can be at peace with who they are, in a way that no drug addict or cancer patient could be.

All that said, I think identity first language can work better in some situations, mostly because it’s less verbose. “in common usage positive pronouns usually precede nouns” and all that. “Autistic person” rather than “person with autism”, “homeless person” rather than “person experiencing homelessness”. It still gets most of the idea across, but it’s easier to put on a sign or in a headline.

Oh, and like people have said, “autist” is a 4chan word with some not amazing connotations, and it’s often used by people who aren’t necessarily autistic. Perhaps it’s better to avoid that word (unless you have some intention of reclaiming it? I’m not sure it’s reclaimable, or if it’s even worth bothering).

I’m with you on this.

If you wouldn’t say “person with gayness” or “person with womanness” or “person with blackness” because it sounds weird and dehumanising then please don’t call me a person with autism.

While we’re at it, don’t refer to me as being “on the spectrum” because that comes off as euphemising autism and it gives the false impression that autism is a scale that spans from “less autistic” to “more autistic”.

On the other hand, as much as a I find those terms uncomfortable and grating, it’s a good indicator of how neuronormative someone is going to be so I’m not about to coach an ableist person in ways that they can couch their bigotry in socially-acceptable language; I’d rather someone throw up those red flags early on so that I know what kind of person they are.

agreed, it grinds my gears.

I prefer the term pokemon trianer.

Honestly, there are others I’ve met who prefer to actually use “autistic” as a noun, like they might say “fellow autistics” or something, and more power to them — but for me it has to be “autist”, so I’m glad to see that there are other people here who also prefer that term.

I think I probably first started saying “autist” as an influence from Norwegian, actually — that I’d basically hear about or talk about autism less in English-language spaces (i.e. with my family, who already understood me and my needs etc), compared to in Norwegian-language spaces (i.e. with friends, at school, in health settings, etc), and so “autist” being a perfectly innocuous and common word for an autistic person in Norwegian, I just started using “autist” in English as well. And so it was then only much later that I found out about how the word “autist” is misused by channers. Finding out about this misusage of the word didn’t really make me want to stop labeling myself as an autist, rather it made me want to double down and tell the chuds to ligma balls, because I’m sure as hell not going to let those bozos decide how I label myself.

It is a bit of an interesting thing, though, that the same word could end up getting such different connotations between English and Norwegian.

Edit: Of course, when allists say “autist” I take this with due skepticism, and I don’t call other people “autist” if they don’t want to be called this.