"Suffers from Asperger's Syndrome"

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o_O

You really consider it censorship to wish that people used a different phrasing for something? Avoiding "suffers from" language is actually already in the disability portion of style guides used by journalists and the like. And the reasons for avoiding it have less to do with whether or not people suffer, and more to do with how people receive the word and therefore change their thinking about disabled people (it tends to cause pity and adds to the assumption that all disabled people have a limited capacity for happiness, which then leads into some really terrible things that are done to disabled people in the name of ending our suffering... it's not that the word magically causes all this, but that it adds to an impression that already exists, and it's an impression that in its strongest form can lead to our death). To you, or me, it may be "just a word", because I find words rather meaningless in and of themselves, but to a lot of people it can be one piece of what adds to a destructive stereotype of disabled people.

Here's the style guide that I mentioned, by the National Center on Disability and Journalism, although there are lots of similar style guides (or portions of larger style guides) out there:

http://ncdj.org/styleguide/

Nobody writing that style guide is censoring anyone. Censoring anyone would mean they were actively forcing people to do certain things, as well as making it so they could not go somewhere else and say that thing without being censored there as well. (Censorship tends to imply government-level control, not personal preferences or even web board policies.) Nobody's doing that and I am not sure anyone suggested that.

I don't agree with everything in that style guide, BTW, but I do agree with a lot of it. And there's a reason they tried to eliminate "suffers from" and "victim of" and so forth where possible, because in the minds of people who are more influenced by words, those things do cause stereotypes to be reinforced.

Oh and I forgot to mention, anything with a * next to it in that style guide means it's in the Associated Press style guide as well. That includes "suffers from" and "afflicted with" among others. Meaning it's fairly widely disliked, not just by a few autistic people but by enough people that the style guides have been written this way.

I suffer in some respects. (AKA sensory problems.)

When the concept of utopia was invoked that seemed to me to be a bit of a stretch so I was responding with hyperbole.

Technically, it's more of a disorder or syndrome.



That doesn't make any sense. o_O

Last edited by Delirium on 15 Apr 2011, 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, okay. That makes sense. Sorry.

The threat from pretending that AS is just a difference is far greater than from acknowledging that it's a disability. Disabled people in the Uk are currently having their economic right to welfare stripped from them. If you just adopt the line that any Aspie can succeed like Temple Grandin you are adopting a selfcentric approach based on the experiences of a few of the most capable people who are statisitical anomalies when it comes to the hard evidence of aspie unemployment rates. I just want to acknowledge the truth. As far as i can see i haven't been gassed to death for acknowledging that i suffer from aspergers.The opposite is true. People are assuming the world is so cruel that it can only look upon people who suffer in a negative way.

This is all relative, compared to me NTs are disabled in many areas and can't succeed in many areas however compared to them I'm also disabled and can't succeed in other areas. IMHO This means I shouldn't be defined by my weaknesses by having derogatory terms thrown at me but I should still be able to get the support required.

I will not accept that I'm disabled, I will however accept someone saying I'm socially impaired in the context of interacting with NTs. I will go further and accept that I'm impaired at surviving in the society around me but I believe that it's possible to have a society where I could succeed and NTs couldn't so overall I'm not impaired or disabled it's only due to my environment.

Someone mentioned Blacks earlier. The difference between Black Pride and Aspie pride is that Black Pride doesn't seek to downplay the problems of Black People. You don't get Al Sharpton saying "oh no theres no poverty here in the ghetto. nothing to see here folks. And besides havent you heard how brilliant James Brown is?" He might go with the last line but before that he'll campaign to improve the economic lot of his people and back up their suffering with statistics. On a personal level i think we need to be honest with ourselves what our weaknesses are and not to be too ashamed to admit to hardships or suffering. You need to personally accept the whole of Aspergers and everything that it entails rather than just the positives. If you only concentrate on the positives you paint a totally unrealistic appraisal of what AS is and what we need help with.

I agree with you, I'm not saying I don't have problems, what I'm saying is I don't want generic derogatory terms applied to me like "Suffers from Asperger's Syndrome" because I am not defined by my problems or weaknesses and not all aspies do have the same problems much in the same way the black people in your example wouldn't accept "Suffers from Ghetto Syndrome"


What I'm saying is I do want a balance, to only focus on the positives would be "Blessed with the gift of Asperger's" to focus on the negatives is "Suffers from Asperger's Syndrome". I say "I'm an Aspergian" or "I'm an Aspie".

There needs to be the balance that we have some flaws that may need working on, that there are things that are "wrong" with us, but there also needs to be the sense that it isn't all bad, and people with AS can have great lives and overcome some of their issues.



To say that someone suffers from AS is a negative term. So effectively by saying that someone suffers from it, you're saying that there aren't any positives in having it. I personally think there are, as it is a key part of my personality.

I really really like you.

I really hate the whole aspie pride movement because if it isn't a disorder, well for one it wouldn't exist in the first place and second we wouldn't be able to receive support for it. Take away my pension and I'm just another person struggling on the dole, applying for 10 jobs that I'm not qualified for. Not to mention all that stress from rejection. I only get a bit of stress from maybe two rejections every couple of months, if even that.
Even when parents talk about their autistic children being gifted. You want to take care of that gift for the rest of your life?

The problem with the word suffering is it derives from a medical model of disability. The medical model placing the emphasis of interventions on correcting the individuals disability and making them more into a "normal" non-disabled person. Problem with autism is that the majority of problems for those on the spectrum are caused mostly by the environment of that person i.e. it's 95% environmental/outside factors and maybe 5% of the persons actual autistic spectrum condition.

You can't do much to change a person from being autistic to being non-autistic. But what you can do quite easily and without too much fuss is change that environment. Remove the stressors, take into consideration a persons hyper and hypo sensativity differences etc

Yet all the fashionable interventions are based around trying to make an autistic person no longer autistic. It's rather self defeating and simply stressing people out. Then they scratch their heads wondering why such people develop secondary mental health conditions and anxiety. If a person average level of anxiety is always high you arn't going to get anywhere fast or in a sustainable fashion

Maybe I've written too much as usual but I'll try and make my thoughts on this simpler

Coming in at first place was Jake, aged 25 Jake suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and lives with his parents in Manchester

Coming in at first place was Jake, aged 25 Jake is gifted with Asperger's and lives with his parents in Manchester

Coming in at first place was Jake, aged 25 Jake is an aspergian and lives with his parents in Manchester

Coming in at first place was Jake, aged 25 Jake is a proud aspergian and lives with his parents in Manchester

Coming in at first place was Jake, aged 25 Jake lives with his parents in Manchester


Which makes more sense? I think people will get the wrong image of me with the first one and though it may be positive for people who need benefits to be seen as broken I don't like it.

I realise now however that NTs often write stupid things such as "unimaginable disaster" to describe the recent events in Japan even though I can imagine the whole world blowing up so maybe I can overlook this as just another stupid phrase that is used to tell the reader how to feel rather than them thinking about it for themselves only I'm still much less happy to tell people about Asperger's now as they may instantly think "Suffers from Asperger's Syndrome" at the mention of it.

I understand that people individually may have experiences that they feel that AS is not an impairment for them, but the criteria for diagnosis (as with just about everything in the DSM) requires impairment in multiple areas of functioning in life, and thus for people who get the diagnosis, odds are pretty good they are experiencing impairments. And while I do not mind when someone says that they are not disabled or do not find it to be a disorder, when it becomes "Asperger's is not a disorder, syndrome, or disability" this is casting a pretty wide net.

If there's anything I suffer from its illogical and irrational people with no common sense whatsoever.

I am not talking about racism. I meant that skin colour ITSELF does not disable people (not that people don't discriminate against people because of skin colour). But, I think you knew what I meant.