I have friends on the spectrum. I happen to agree that mildly autistic behaviour is more akin to a personality difference than a disorder.
That said, I don't think it's fair to admonish someone for using the colloquial norm. The comment might read better if stated less as "careful, you're doing something wrong" and more in the tone of "here is another viewpoint you may find helpful and interesting."
To add to your comment, I wish that high-functioning ASD people would stop ignoring the more severe end of the spectrum. If you are high-functioning, then maybe ASD just makes you quirky and different. But for the lower functioning people, ASD can profoundly affect their lives in extremely negative ways. For example, my son almost starved himself to death because of sensory difficulties. He is four years old and still cannot feed himself. For my son, ASD is not just a small difference that the world has not accepted yet. It's something that possibly could have killed him if he had had less devoted parents and/or lived in less privileged circumstances.
And my son is not even a particularly extreme case. With lots of therapy and a little luck, he may be considered high-functioning someday. Other kids might be in diapers forever, never talk, and live in a group home their entire adult lives.
So I struggle to take seriously the high-functioning people who throw fits about what language we use to describe our situation. I've had people get mad at me for saying that I have a son with autism when I apparently should have said that I have an autistic son. I'm sorry, I'm too busy keeping my son alive to care!
> I've had people get mad at me for saying that I have a son with autism when I apparently should have said that I have an autistic son.
It has become exhausting trying walk the ever shifting minefield of acceptable verbiage. I'm not sure how you would apply this to other situations. If you have a son with red hair should he be called your red headed son? That sounds more offensive right?
Absolutely. One of the biggest problems in autism advocacy is high-functioning people (like me) and (the guardians of) low-functioning people constantly talking past each other. Some people are perfectly happy as they are and don't want to be changed, some people are desperately unhappy and could really benefit from treatment or even a "cure". The spectrum is far too broad for a single approach to work.
> I've had people get mad at me for saying that I have a son with autism when I apparently should have said that I have an autistic son.
I honestly can't remember which one of those I'm "supposed" to be. I could make a case against either: "person with autism" might sound like it's some outside affliction, "autistic person" might sound like the condition matters more than the person. But extreme concern over small details is a defining trait of autism, and I do it too on other subjects, so I suppose I can't be too judgmental...
> People-first language ... is a type of linguistic prescription to avoid marginalization or dehumanization ... when discussing people with a health issue or disability.
The argument for "autistic person" or even "autist" is that it's not a health issue or disability.
That's the error I was addressing in my earlier post. For me, autism is not a disability. For someone like BadCookie's son, it definitely is. I personally don't care either way about "person with autism" vs. "autistic person", but it's dangerous to assume that autism is never a disability because high-functioning people exist.
I have friends on the spectrum. I happen to agree that mildly autistic behaviour is more akin to a personality difference than a disorder.
That said, I don't think it's fair to admonish someone for using the colloquial norm. The comment might read better if stated less as "careful, you're doing something wrong" and more in the tone of "here is another viewpoint you may find helpful and interesting."