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.