Autistic Terminology Speech
[This is a speech I wrote and delivered for my GSCE English speaking project, with a guideline of about five hundred words but any topic we chose. It got a distinction. I have decided to post it here.]
I am autistic. Autism is a disability caused by natural neurological differences that affect how people perceive and interact with the world. Despite having always existed, it is shrouded in misinformation, misconceptions and misleading, inaccurate labels. A simple solution is to examine autistic terminology; words have power, and the more people on the spectrum can articulate what that means to them, the better.
What spectrum? You may have heard that autism is a spectrum due to its diverse array of characteristics - it never manifests the same way twice. A lot of people see the spectrum as a straight line ranging from ‘more autistic’ to ‘less autistic’. From ‘mild’ to ‘severe’. If you’re ‘high functioning’, you’re more capable and independent, closer to being neurotypical (or NT). It can be like you’re barely even autistic, so it’s also called Asperger Syndrome. If you’re ‘low functioning’, you struggle more in everyday life. This is the kind of autism people pity, complain about in public spaces, call a burden on families, use to justify abandoning children.
This needs to stop. Functioning labels are a false dichotomy. I’m supposedly ‘high functioning’, but I still face plenty of challenges and appear not to because I’ve subconsciously learned to mask my autism to fit in. Saying it affects me less denies me the support I do need. A ‘low functioning’ person could have enormous potential, but not the respect and higher expectations to reveal it. Dismissing them as helpless denies them the agency they deserve. The spectrum is a circle like a colour wheel. Shades blend together, and red is no less of a colour than green.
Another major debate is person-first vs identity-first language. Person-first language is saying, “Person with autism” and “She has autism”. The idea is that autistic people are people first and foremost and shouldn’t be defined by what is clinically considered a disorder. Sounds fine, right? Indeed, NT people, including those with autistic relatives, generally preferred person-first language in surveys. But the wording implies that autism is something separate from the person. That it could be ‘cured’ or removed with little harm done. This is a dangerous line of thinking, and perpetuates the myth that autism is a disease or might as well be, stealing children’s true personalities and burying them in traits that are hard to understand and live with. I can’t stress enough how wrong this is.
Identity-first language is what I use, saying, “Autistic person”. It recognizes a truth we are fighting to make heard: autism is an integral part of our identities. A different way of being. It affects all our thoughts, actions and experiences like biological sex, and we are no less human for it. My autism is not a bag of traits and behaviours I carry around; a little dog that follows me and yaps or jumps up when I do something unusual. Everything I do is autistic and everything I am is autistic. In online surveys asking autistic people what language they preferred, identity-first language was preferred by up to 93% and never below half. There’s a clear disparity between NT people’s language and autistic people’s wishes.
Words have power. Words can divide or unite us. If the stigma around autism is ever to fade, we need to rethink how we talk about it.
