I don't think I was very clear

[conuly]

Or even very accurate

*le sigh*

Anybody care to go and correct any inadverdant mistakes? On anybody's part, mind, I'm not going to complain if you correct somebody else!

Comments

[goddess588.livejournal.com]

Keep biting me = keep challenging what I say.

You're right about the reality of the word suffering. I seem to have this tendency to use words for their obscure meanings rather than their more common ones, and you're not the only one who's picked up on that.

To me 'illness' equals 'disorder' equals 'illness' and I use the terms interchangably mostly. Illness is on a continuum, as is wellness, in its broad sense. A disorder can be too, but the very word disorder implies that there is a difficulty in order - yep - we have it again - another word that can be twisted - so a shorter continuum, or at least one with a start point. And Aspergers is a disorder in the DSM-IV, though I know that others call it a syndrome. And the thing about the DSM-IV is that it says The disturbance causes clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, which to me means that it's a disadvantage.

DSM-IV definition (http://www.isn.net/~jypsy/whataspe.htm)

Society decides what is 'normal' on that continuum, society (admittedly professed experts in that field) decides where the cutoff is for the beginning of 'abnormality' (I am so digging this hole deeper with all these words with negative connotations) and society decides where the point is that they won't tolerate people out and about, hence the Mental Health Act. Saying that nonautistics would have problems in a world full of autistics isn't even relevant, because autism is not the norm in our world. There is a disadvantage to being autistic in this world, when the majority of people think/process/interact differently, as you admit in your next post.