Autistic person vs. person with autism

It is probably not surprising that I do quite a bit of reading about autism. I have always been most interested in reading first-person accounts. I started with books by John Elder Robison, Valerie Paradiz, Donna Williams, Temple Grandin, etc.

More recently I have been reading the blogs of autistic people. My current favorite is Autistic Hoya, written by Lydia Brown. Her intellectual rigor really appeals to me.

Please note that I am now using the term "autistic people". I used to refer to Singularity as a "kid with autism" or as "having autism", but I have been rethinking this in light of what I've been reading from the autism self-advocacy community.

Person-first language was advocated for by the disability rights community, beginning in the late 1980s. It is entirely understandable that a person with a visible physical handicap would want to be seen as a person.

However, I now understand that this person-first language doesn't make sense in describing ways of being such as being autistic, Deaf, gay, etc. The term "person with autism" makes it sound as if autism is something that you have to carry around with you, as if in a backpack. Something that is a burden. Something that a you might want to cast off.

But autism is integral to a person's personality. It is pervasive. And autistic self-advocates are owning their autistic-ness. They don't want to cast it off. It is part of their identity.

I really can't explain this more powerfully than Lydia Brown does, so I do hope that you will check out her blog post "The Significance of Semantics: Person-First Language: Why It Matters".

I hope that I will do a good job of teaching Singularity to own his autistic identity with pride. And remember: if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.