re: #886 Talking Point Detective

Well, autism is only one of their characteristics. So if you refer to them as autists (autistics?) you’re characterizing them by only one of their attributes. I assume that you already know that, and reject that viewpoint, and that’s fine. I only offered it as something to consider.

No, I don’t reject it, I just find it a limited viewpoint. I don’t think language has that sort of totem power, where the brain really interprets ‘autist’ as different from ‘person with autism’. If I were to have enough autistic people tell me that they did feel that way, or see other evidence that’d convince me, I’d change my mind.

But it kind of seems to me, yeah, just a semantic point, and a semantic point that’s giving ground, that’s saying being an autistic person is something terrible enough to try to describe our way around it so we don’t have to say it. I’m trying to say being an autist isn’t a negative thing, and it shouldn’t be run away from.

There was a very funny bit in the Nature article I can’t cite, but it was from the autistic researcher, who wryly noted that any difference in the brain structure of an autistic person is seen as negative. Whether it’s a thickening of a structure, a thinning of it, an increase in activity in one place, or a decrease, it’s all seen as part of the problem. Obviously, autistic people have tasks they perform better at than ‘normal’ people; just as obviously, that should mean not every brain structure is an explanation of deficit, some of it is an explanation of increased capacity.