I am a little bit of a nerd when it comes to language. As an avid writer and a language teacher, it kind of comes with the territory. I have a book on strange local terminology from all over the UK written by the biggest language nerd of all: Susie Dent and I regularly look up the etymology of words where I’m curious. But words can also be used to hurt people. They’re more or less one of our most complex tools we use to communicate meaning to others. Which makes a lot of language that people use quite frustrating, as it beats around the bush and is devoid of meaning, making it harder for people like me, who struggle with some of the subtleties, to fully understand what is going on. A funnier way of looking at this concept is done by the late great comedian George Carlin. In this bit of stand-up comedy he talks about language going soft. Looking past the jokes, his point is that we take the life and the pain out of language to sterilize it, so that we no longer see people’s “problems” as problems and that means we don’t have to deal with them. “Fired” turns into “cutting expenses in the human resource department.”
“Shell-shocked” turns into “Post traumatic stress disorder.”
“Homeless” turns into “the unhoused community”
“Handicapped” turns into “handicapable” and suddenly we don’t have to take care of them anymore.
You get the point, we use language as a tool and sometimes that tool is a weapon used to keep groups down. Freedom fighters are terrorists when their skin doesn’t match ours. We use the passive voice when we agree with the violence we’re reporting on but the active voice when we disagree. So with some more extreme examples of language being used to be kind or be mean, let’s have a look at the terminology we use around autism and other mental health issues today.
And let’s start off with the big one. There are a few words that feel like they shouldn’t be said out loud anymore these days. One of those is the word “retarded”. Once a medical term that means someone has less advanced mental or social development than they’re expected to be at their age, it’s nowadays primarily used to insult people with. Where once a doctor would have written that down in my dossier, now it would be pretty weird to see it in a medical document. As a matter of fact, this word is often considered to be a slur. There’s a very funny clip of Linus Tech Tips where he refers to “retarded” as “the hard r” and almost cancels himself because that usually refers to a very different word that only edgy teenagers say out loud to get a rise out of people. I’m not going to dive into that part of language too much, but there are still quite a few differences in how we talk about autism spectrum disorder and what different people prefer to be addressed with.
I am autistic.
I have autism.
I am on the spectrum.
I am a person living with autism.
I am special needs.
I am neurodivergent.
These are just some of the most common ways to refer to people with autism. There are probably more that I’m not considering and speaking a different language might change the way you speak about this subject. I once read a discussion online where someone had a completely different way to refer to masking and was absolutely convinced that their way was polite and masking was impolite and the rest of the forum seemed completely confused about this attitude. I’ve also heard different terminology when describing what I know as spoon theory, so it seems that throughout the world there are many differences when it comes to this subject. But going back to the main topic at hand, what are all these things saying about us? Being autistic makes it look like that is who you are, it’s an integral part of you. Having autism makes it sounds like a disease that plagues you. I guess that’s why a lot of people dislike that one. The same thing can be said about “being a person living with autism” but it does have a slightly nicer ring to it in my opinion. I put special needs in there purely because it’s a more harsh name for people like us. It sounds bad to me and I personally wouldn’t use it. My needs aren’t special, they make perfect sense. I think saying that you are on the spectrum is probably the nicest sounding way to clearly communicate who you are. It’s similar to saying “I am autistic” in making the condition a part of who you are instead of something alien you’re fighting off. Like it or not, our brain is kind of unmissable so we can’t replace it with that of someone else. And lastly, you can refer to yourself as being neurodivergent. That’s a more broad term which includes a lot of other mental health issues like ADD, ADHD and OCD. If you really want to give it some flair, consider calling yourself neurospicy. (I didn’t come up with that one, thank you Damien Haas).
So where does that leave us? In a bit of a pickle. We have a lot of different people who have very different lived experiences and think differently on what they would like to be called. Just like how some people have preferred pronouns. Usually I don’t think anyone needs to refer to me as “that autistic guy” or “that guy with autism”, just like you could easily talk to me without needing my pronouns a lot of the time. But sometimes it can come up and for a lot of people it is nice that you respect what they prefer. My pronouns match my appearance and upbringing and I’m also not fussed about if you call me autistic or not. I just think it’s nice if we all stop to think about it once every so often and if someone asks us to be kind, be kind.
I will try to be kinder in the way I refer to myself and others from now on. My default for this will be “people on the spectrum”, which I think is nice. I might use other terminology from time to time, forgive me for this, I am dumb. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 