Autistic - the Word
Personal opinion, lol, not policy:
I use "autistic"
and accept the consequences - if any - of my choice.
Others who use "autist" and "aspie" and "spectrumite"
can do likewise
and also accept the consequences - if any - of their choices.
I groan when I hear someone using terms
other than "autistic"
about people other than themself,
or about all of us,
if - and this is important - I detect the possibility
of poor or bad motivations for doing so.
I.e. something not likely in the mind
of a fresh newbie
unaware of the historicity of autistic language
and its importance to progress,
but something seemingly always present
in autistics who make a point of doing
misogyny, homophobia, incelism, fascism, misanthropy, etc.
That being said, all autistics would do well to remember:
1. that the word "autistic" is a "nominalized adjective",
an adjective repurposed over years of usage
until fashioned into a noun,
and therefore not an ideal construction.
2. that the word "autistic" is English,
and an oddity within English,
one word not readily translatable into other languages,
and 17% of the world cannot <impose> too much on 83%.
3. that the word "autistic" has its stem
in "autism" (perhaps renderable as 'selfism'),
a word imposed on us from the past,
i.e. not chosen by us,
pejorative in one sense, i.e. mean to us,
having a ring about it closer to illness than completeness,
i.e. schizophrenic rather than academic.
4. that the word "autistic", like "aspergers",
might one day have to be let go,
farewelled by us, abandoned by all, shunned globally...
if that is what the bulk of us come to need,
i.e. a real possibility,
pointing to wisdom in not becoming overly invested
in the word ... until matters become clearer.
Some point to the autistically-authored word
'neurodivergent',
a categorisation of which autistics are a component,
a bulky component,
yet we must remember
each other component of neurodivergent
has a discrete name/sub-categorization
... and so should we.