Well, that's a rather inauspicious start to April!

[conuly]

When confronted with somebody using both "wheelchair-bound" and (ugh!) "person with autism" in the same post, I took a second to point out that both terms are generally dispreferred and you should, when referring to people whose preferences you don't know, try "wheelchair user" and "autistic person".

I actually have a lot of practice saying that in a fairly neutral and non-aggressive way.

To which I got a snippy reply back about how I shouldn't assume everybody is malicious and - dude. Did you think a second before you said that? If I thought you were malicious why would I waste time replying?

Comments

[conuly]

You are, in fact, getting something wrong.

Person First Language is generally considered stigmatizing. Would you describe somebody as "a person with homosexuality"? No, because you don't need to talk in some funny way to remember that gay people are people.

https://autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/identity-first-language/

https://nfb.org/people-first-language-unholy-crusade

(I know many Deaf people also strongly condemn PFL, but I can't find a link by a Deaf-run organization right now.)

You should always use what the person you're speaking to/about prefers, but if you're not sure, you should see what generally people with that specific disability prefer. Do not listen to what is made up by organizations run entirely by people without that disability and without any sort of significant input by the community they claim to represent.

[calimac]

So this is all wrong, then?

[conuly]

4. However, always ask to find out an individual’s language preferences.

People with disabilities have different preferences when referring to their disability. Some people see their disability as an essential part of who they are and prefer to be identified with their disability first – this is called Identity-First Language. Others prefer Person-First Language. Examples of Identity-First Language include identifying someone as a deaf person instead of a person who is deaf, or an autistic person instead of a person with autism.

[calimac]

5. Many people find being constantly asked their preferences to be really annoying. Others perhaps do not. Perhaps we should begin by asking them if asking for their preferences would be acceptable.

Or perhaps we should just drop the whole thing and do the best we can with the best advice we can find, and stop correcting people who are not being actively obnoxious over this fairly sophisticated level of discourse. Because if individuals' preferences vary, much of the time our corrections will not be correct.

[conuly]

People's preferences don't really vary all that much. Most people do prefer to be spoken to and about in a normal way, not in a weird way. The best advice for the subject will always come from people with that specific disability and never from people with no disabilities.

[conuly]

Also, I don't know why you included a number? I included a number because I was quoting an entire bullet point from the page you linked to. I assumed that was obvious, because of course you must have read the entire page before linking to it and asking if the information was accurate. I simply excised the part of the page that sums up exactly what I've been saying.