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

[lilysea]

Also there are a gazillion wheelchair users on the internet

saying not to use the phrase "wheelchair bound"

which range from serious/earnest explanations

to BDSM jokes...

[redbird]

I think the person who snapped at you is projecting, and assumes that anyone who disagrees with them must be malicious.

[calimac]

"autistic person" > "person with autism"

Really? What I've been told is adjectival forms presume to thereby define the person, and putting it as a dependent clause is the more desirable procedure, as it's then something the person has and not what they are. Thus, "person with disability" > "disabled person." Am I getting something wrong here?

[spiffikins]

That was my understanding as well - thank you calimac for putting it into words - I could only go "wait, I thought it was the other way round, becuase, reasons I don't quite know how to express"

I am missing something?

EDIT: wait - is it because we are not considering autism a disability or something to try to 'cure'?

[silveradept]

You ran into able-bodied fragility (like white fragility, but for abled people,). Yay.

Getting people to decouple "you did a bad thing" with "you are a bad person" is hard.

[silveradept]

As I have read, several autistic people prefer identity-first language, as being autistic is an essential part of who they are, rather than a thing that can be imposed on or removed from a person. (And, as you might guess, there's a lot of bad behavior and abuse stemming from people believing autism can be cured or removed from someone.)

As usual, having met one autistic person means having met one autistic person, so there may be someone else who prefers person-first language.

[calimac]

I was using "disabled" as another example of usage, not equating it with autism.

[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.

[conuly]

It's so freaking obnoxious.

[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.

[erinptah]

Eh, this is one of those things where it's not about a consistent rule of grammar you can apply in every situation. It's about "which phrases have picked up too much cultural baggage from being used in a negative way, so we're trying not to use those ones?"

Thus "people of color" but "black people" but "Asians" but "gay people" but "asexuals" but "people with ADHD" but "autistic people" but "Celiacs" but "people with depression" but "Deaf people" but "amputees" but "people of faith" but "Jewish people" but "Muslims" but...(to say nothing of the phrases that swap "people" for a more context-specific noun, like "wheelchair user" or "assault survivor"...)

"Autistic people" currently seems to be the preferred term among most of the people it actually applies to! That's what makes it better to use, not anything about the linguistics. (Heck, in 10 or 20 years the community might have moved on to a whole other phrase! Doesn't invalidate that this is the one to go with right now.)

[konsectatrix]

The whole problem with "person first theory" is that it collided with autistic people (like myself) who look at it and go "Um, if people are required to twist around all their grammar and talk funny just to remind themselves that I'm a person, or let me know that they think I'm a person... That's uh, well. That doesn't say much good about NT people in general, now does it?"

(Some of the younger ones may have latched onto the logic and decided that people that didn't use person-first were disrespecting them or something, I don't know. I've met maybe two person-first autistics (both youngish); I've run into far more Autism Mommies that get up in arms about it.)