Autism Spectrum Identity

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How would you best describe your Autism Spectrum Identity?

Just to be clear the poll question is focused on Autism spectrum identity, not necessarily associated specific to brain gender or biological gender.

On the Spectrum (condition associated identity)

Autistic (condition first identity)

Aspie (condition first identity)

Person with Autism (person first identity)

Person with Aspergers (person first identity)

A unique personal ideology of identity (ideology first identity)

Or other.

Some people also describe this in terms of neutral disability language, disability first language, and people first disability language. I am using the word condition as the most inclusive word in consideration of not making anyone uncomfortable answering the poll.

Simon Baron Cohen is one of the few professionals that describes Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC's) in his Research to allow for this inclusion.

I was diagnosed later in life, so I can't easily change my ideological first identity, that is specific to my personal life experience living on the spectrum. I can't say I have ever fully identified with my name, instead more of an ideology first identity specific to my own unique experience on the spectrum. I use 4 short lines based on the letters in my avatar custom rank, in word play, to describe my ideology first identity in my signature line below, that is based on my linked wrong planet blog entry below.

Autistic or ASD. My actual diagnosis is Asperger's but I hate saying it because I don't know how to pronounce it and it has a lot of negative connotations now. It's also easier for people to understand "autistic", since it's a more widely recognized term.

I prefer the "condition first" terms. I think of it as part of how I am, like "female" or "tall", with good and bad, not as something I "have". The person-first stuff actually sounds vaguely insulting, as if someone were to call me a "person with femaleness" or "person with height". It looks like a division of my identity for someone else's benefit, because they like to imagine me differently, rather than for my own benefit.

I call myself autistic. Occasionally, as a joke, I'll try to pronounce PDD NOS - sounds kind of like 'pudnoss'.

I chose person with autism, because I certainly am not the disorder but it certianly does effect my personality/behavior and causes some specific issues people with autism don't deal with so while its not my identity I think it is good for people to be aware so maybe they understand there is some reason for the weridness....though sometimes its best not to mention it if in a situation where I am likely to be attacked or put down for it.

"Person with autistic traits." Saying someone is autistic or on the spectrum is very broad and doesn't really tell me much of anything, and its meaning in relation to society can differ significantly based on cultural context. My personal opinion is the Asperger's sub-category is like a rickety bridge that has enabled a wider net of people to see themselves in a more helpful way which will later lead to future sub-categories that will classify autistics in a more scientifically accurate way.

And until I can be empirically classified in a more specific way it's hard to have a firm identity. I don't really identify with a common struggle and cause with anyone, only bits and pieces; and no united front in mind on how to present myself to society. So I might have minor preferences in the poll options, they just pale compared to options I would like to have in the future to better explain my condition the way people with more tangible conditions can.

I just go by autistic. Not begrudging anyone their choices, but person with autism sounds more negative to me. A person with a hemorrhoid, a person with cancer--it makes me think of a disease to be eradicated.

I am not a broken person, I am not a person who had autism happen to them, I AM AUTISTIC - because autism is as much as part of me as my sex, sexuality, skin colour or nationality I don't see a need to identify myself as a person first and separate from my autism.

I greatly dislike person-first language, it sounds forced and overly politically correct - it's not an insult to be autistic, disabled, trans, gay, black, etc. but it is insulting that anyone should feel they need to specify minorities are people, or that people should have to distance themselves from what makes them a minority. Political correctness is important and language matters, but get too sensitive about what we should shouldn't call each other and it creates tension not tolerance.

When it comes to disabilities I think disability-first language is important to create a sense of identity and community - when we fight prejudice and ignorance we do so in our individual communities...'deaf' 'blind' 'MS' 'Downs' 'Autistic'...where as society views us all as one; 'disabled' and so we should fight as a united front, our diversity doesn't need to be lost by uniting under one label but instead we show how diverse disability can be. With autism as well as showing a united front by using condition-first language, it also shows a diversity in autism rather than giving this impression of autism being this thing that effects people.

I voted for "autistic". Normally I'd say "I have Asperger's".

The "person" part of me should be obvious; I see no need to keep mentioning it. It goes without saying.

I say I am autistic, but your classification of that as "condition first" is just as incoherent to me as "person first" terminology that claims because one says "person with autism" that one is actually really putting the person first. Makes no sense to me. Autistic can't come before me and I can't come before my autism. It's an intrinsic part of me.

I just say I am autistic. I don't like the "person with autism" label.

I don't think that anyone uses that "condition" classification, specific to this topic, but some do find the word disability associated with autism as offensive, so I figured more people might answer the poll if it was defined more accurately in the post, per disability language, than the poll. .

I was actually most interested in finding out how many people do not identify more closely with the term Autistic considering the coming changes in the DSM5. And I find it interesting that only 27% do so far. I don't think the poll results would have been the same if I included the word disability anywhere in the poll.

And now that you mention it, and I think about it, it would have probably been better not to use any qualifier of classification..

Last edited by aghogday on 03 Mar 2013, 1:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

Aspergers is my identity because NTs have made it my identity. That ultimately what they used to define me so yeah.

In some ways I look at this way, because while the psychological organizations can change the required observed behavioral impairments for what they define as a diagnosis that will soon be named Autism Spectrum Disorder, they don't change my nature in doing so, and if I had never heard of the label Autistic, or any of the other labels, people would still view me as different, in some ways because of my unique nature and I would still view them as different in someways because of their unique natures. But, in someways everyone experiences life like this, because there is diversity of neurology, and all the factors that make up the human experience, per each unique human.

At least for me I have a hard time categorizing people into labels, because I often notice so many details of difference, down to an eyelash, ear lobe, or the general vibration a person gives me.

Even cats, as while they may be described as all autistic by some analogies, they too are unique and different per personality as any human being I have come across. And my interaction with them can have an impact of change on their personalities, and their existence, as theirs can for me.

Reading the replies, I notice that there are multiple ways of interpreting the poll. It's also interesting to see that some people who self-identify as 'condition first' are questioning the validity of a 'person first' view, and vice versa.

To illustrate my own stance on this, I'd like to mention that, in recent years, I've sort of been interested in connecting to my Indonesian roots- to which end I visit events/festivals by and for the Indonesian/Eurasian community here in Holland, read about history and culture, watch movies, etc. In discussions both in person and online, there is also a question of self-identification. Some place more emphasis on how they view their ethnic heritage, and how they express it in their daily life.
But for me, it's just another facet of my being, among many other facets. And that's how I also view my autism.

I've thought about this for a minute, and I believe that the relative mildness of my ASD may also play a factor in how I adopt a 'person-first' attitude. At this point in my life, autism is not so much 'in-my-face' anymore as it was 10 years ago.

I'm just throwing this out here, aghogday, I had a different and longer reply, but I'm in too mellow a mood to turn it into something coherent. Your thoughts?

I was fortunate to be an observer of the ethnic heritage of pacific Islanders and others among people in a military environment from different parts of the world for decades and generally enjoyed observing people. I always felt more like an observer than a participant, but it was more than enough for me..

I had the vague feeling I was not part of a social bonding process that everyone else seemed to have access to, but with no label to attach that to, I really had no reference point other than my own existence and that vague feeling of being an outsider that I defined as an observer rather than a participant.

Other than that my life was structured and fast paced enough where I never gave identity much thought, and I think I only felt it, when I was pushed higher up into the organization that I worked for and people looked to me as an authority figure, where I would have much rather of stayed in the observer role, as a supporting actor, pushing other people up in life.

The government environment I worked in allowed employee protection from any type of discrimination as long as a person did their job. I don't think I would have made it as well in the private world, where there were no consequences for treating employees unfairly.

I suppose I had, in part, an employee first identity for most of my life, and found some of my identity in my sensory experience of life and what I did day to day on a routine basis. I observed that other people seemed to have more "coherent" identities, judging from all of the complicated facial movements they made that I could feel but could not imagine myself making. I felt a laser focus on the other person in an observing manner but again not in a participating manner. For me it was definitely a condition of difficulty in social reciprocity as a receiver of social communication rather than a provider of social communication.

Interestingly, the fact that I intently focused on the communication of others, and did not provide much, was observed as a positive rather than a negative to most people I was around. But it was more of an issue of not having anything to say for me. It was not in me, unless it was short sentences of technical information of some kind.

I felt like the talking part and the non-verbal communication part was the identity part, that I seemed to be missing, in a vague kind of way; understood much better, later with an actual diagnosis. But for me a technical label to describe discrete issues, not identity. And only pursued because I was no longer able to adequately adapt to the social environment.

The idea of even the potential of identifying with any medical label was completely foreign to me, until visiting online communities. And the idea of "NT" was one of the most unusual things I had heard in my life. But it now seems like a natural part of the online culture to me, but not something that I think many would even think about in larger society, unless they were part of the autism online culture, in someway.

My preconceived thoughts about autism were strongly colored by the fact that I had worked with severely impacted people diagnosed with autism in my life, in a collateral supervisory role, that had extreme difficulties in both the initiating and receiving of social communication. It was nothing compared to what I could imagine experiencing as a very receptive person of incoming information, regardless of difficulties with outgoing communication.

That strength allowed me the ability to more independently adapt in life without a diagnosis until later in life. But, I was very fortunate to have fallen into an environmental niche that I could adapt to. I think everyone has their own unique space on the spectrum and I usually try to identify it as a spectrum when talking about it not to offend anyone in using that neutral term.

Even in my signature as I describe my experience on the spectrum I can't bring myself to describe myself as fully autistic in first person language, because I still perceive that as the difficulty in the reception and delivery of social communication from my history of working with people with these more challenging difficulties, that I personally observed.

I have a rigid internal set of structuring language and meaning, that I have a hard time deviating from. Even calling someone by a nickname once I identify them by another name. I suppose that could in itself be specific to my personal life history to make it harder for me to identify with the term autism that I had already identified as a substantially different condition in others I worked with.

I had a one way ticket into the lives of others, but I did not provide much of a ticket into my life other than laser focus on the other individual's communication, not intentionally, but apparently inherently as such.

Typing on a computer has provided me accommodation to structure my language in what I always hope is a more coherent way to provide outgoing information to others.

Objectively speaking since I identified identity in others most of my life through their non-verbal communication and speaking abilities, it left me in a way with a vague feeling that I did not have the same full social identity they had. So for me it's an objective analysis that the social communication difficulty is a reduction of the social identity that I saw in others, that I did not see the same in myself. It would be like describing what I have perceived myself as missing in social identity to literally identify with the social-communication impairments that are defined as autism, that I share.

So, I really don't have what I would describe as a full cultural identity, or social identity, but I can attempt to describe an ideological identity associated with autism, with the strength of reception of communication and the sensory environment around me that I personally experience. As well as analysis of "kindology", as it relates to how I attempt to treat others objectively with respect, as well as identifying and classifying all the different "kinds" of phenomenon I observe in life.

But, this is only one tiny place on the spectrum, that I describe, in a likely way that is too much detail for most people to attempt to read this. I'm not sure I will ever get the outgoing stuff in a social way, as anything close to acceptable, per a fuller accepted ability for social communication with others. But I continue to try.. I am often surprised that what I type even makes sense to me..