You know what?

[conuly]

When I leave a long, thoughtful review on how a certain book sends the message that it's okay for autistic people to kill themselves because, after all, it's not like we fit in, there are a number of correct responses to that.

Not a single one of those responses is "Please use person first language!" Not even as part of another response.

Because seriously? Fuck that shit right there. This is exactly the problem! If you can't remember which people are really people because we don't all talk funny? That's all on you. That's not my concern. Maybe if you didn't think we all had to talk funny first you'd be more on top of having people love and accept their autistic family members.

I am done. I am no longer even going to reply to people who think it's oh-so-crucial to call me out on my use of the word "autistic" when that word does, in fact, apply to me.

(And it really bugs me because I couldn't care less if you use person-first language or not. This is me, not caring. But do I get the same respect and consideration about my language choices, when I promise you I've thought more deeply about it than they have? No, no I do not.)

Tomorrow maybe I'll feel bad for being snippy towards this person, but honestly: STOP telling people to use person-first language! It's really not God's gift to human discourse.

Comments

[codeman38]

It's quite ironic, really. The same people who put people first grammatically seem to often be the same ones who put people last in their actual concerns.

[conuly]

Indeed.

Not always, but so very, very often.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I'm an autistic adult, parent of an autistic kid, and teacher to a lot of autistic children and adults, and I DO care about the use of Person-First language. People who use it around me will first get a taste of my +5 Autistic Pedantry in the form of a comprehensive Explanation of why it is insulting, condescending and obnoxious. Then if they persist, they can have a bellyful, if not more, of my +5 Autistic Bloody-mindedness, as I abandon all adjectives in favor of using the -with- construction to describe everything, in elaborate detail.

"Person-with-autism" is as obnoxious as "person-with-homosexuality" would be, and for the same reasons. People who persist in using it after they've been informed of that fact are only revealing themselves as hypocrites trying to hide their prejudice behind a facade of political correctness.

http://aaspire.org/about/language.html

http://autismmythbusters.com/general-public/autistic-vs-people-with-autism/jim-sinclair-why-i-dislike-person-first-language

http://sarah-tennant.suite101.com/personfirst-language-and-autism-a56063

http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2011/11/person-first.html

http://lastcrazyhorn.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/person-first-argument-against

http://www.vickiforman.com/?p=856

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, and this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ouch/200707/bad_language.shtml

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for these. They will come in very useful when we are explaining about this. Mostly, we say "Autism is not AIDS."

[eofs.livejournal.com]

If they want to use person-first-language, they should go and speak French.

[conuly]

Why, thank you! The more links, the better.

In this case I just went "I AM autistic, and I don't appreciate you telling me how to talk, and I'm not even going to continue this because clearly you know nothing."

[legendary-zelda.livejournal.com]

Most autistic people I've seen on the internet don't prefer person-first language, but I've seen at least one who does (http://adeepercountry.blogspot.com/2010/03/why-i-dislike-person-free-language.html).

At least, that's evidence that's there's difference of opinion on the subject, and therefore strict prescriptivism is uncalled for.

(Personally, I loathe person-first language.)

[redbird]

Indeed.

I've been guessing that part of why we're asked to say things like "person with AIDS" is because people with AIDS may or may not be patients: that term refers to someone receiving medical treatment for a condition. That doesn't apply to autism, as far as I can tell (from the outside: I'm neurotypical, as are my parents, siblings, and partners).

[conuly]

Also, AIDS isn't an adjective. Autistic? Is.

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

...or Spanish, or any language that uses language more commonly in that format. As long as it is not language that is insulting, i don't see why we should use language that is more long-winded. Sheesh, i ramble enough as it is, and i suspect i'm a person with autism!

Gads, how awkward, even for me.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh, it gets even better than that: autism isn't even a medical condition; rather it's a 'syndrome', a constellation of behavioral traits that may or may not occur together in the same person, may or may not have a single cause, and are highly prone to change drastically over time, both as the autistic person gets older, and as the authors of the DSM change their minds.

There is no medical test for autism - no blood test, no brain scan, no DNA test, nothing. This is because 'autism' is probably caused by an assortment of genetic susceptibilities and adaptations to an assortment of environmental assaults on the brain at different stages of its development. There is no medical treatment for it - it's like being deaf, or being gay; if you are, you ARE, and the only thing to do about it is learn to cope as well as possible in a world where you will be stigmatized for it all your life.

I don't know if being deaf confers any specific sensory-cognitive advantages. LOL, I asked my gay housemates what advantages it confers, and they answered "fashion sense" (which is somewhat ironic coming from them.) Anyway, being autistic commonly does confer autistic super-powers as well as autistic deficits. Some of them are flashy, like being a lightning calculator or a code wizard, having perfect pitch, absolute direction, eidetic memory. Some of them are subtle, like the ability to hear electrical malfunctions in the house wiring, type one-handed blindfolded, sort a bag of different-sized screws by touch. Some of them are just weird, like the ability to deliberately trigger 'lucid dreaming' while awake, or the inability to be fooled by optical illusions.

Most autistic adults would not choose to give up any of their unusual gifts in order to be 'indistinguishable' from the peers who have rejected them all their lives for being unusual. And that's where the Autie Pride cuts in, and links like this one (http://asperger.tribe.net/thread/8725f112-ca77-4a8a-be19-38fb08728089): who says we would wish to be 'cured', any more than people-with-homosexuality wish to be? Surely, we'd all like to be less stigmatized, but 'passing better' isn't going to help.

[conuly]

Perfect direction? Man, I wish! I have a terrible sense of direction combined with what I found out is called "spatial agnosia", even a moderate sense of direction would be preferable!

But can't everybody type one-handed without looking? How else do they manage to write angry screeds while viewing, um, interesting material?

[conuly]

I really don't care. I mean, people who use PF language towards autistics tend to have a number of views I strongly DO care about, but it's the views that matter, not the language. I can't be bothered to correct them on the relatively minor point unless They Start It.