What to call ourselves?
Punkrockaspie
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 4 Feb 2016
Age: 71
Gender: Male
Posts: 51
Location: Toronto
Given the revelations in Herwig Czech, “Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and ‘race hygiene’ in Nazi-era Vienna,” Molecular Autism (2018), I was wondering if individuals not only on this forum but in the entire Wrong Planet community still call themselves “aspies” and why?
If I've got it correctly, this is the link for Czech's article:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5907291/
I thought of one possibility. Take the initials of Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD, add "ies" and you get ASDies or Asdies, which sounds close enough to 'Aspie" to be an easy-to-learn substitute. And certainly the substitute suggested for 'Asperger Syndrome' is too many words and misses the mark, viz. "Social Communication Disorder". Yet at the same time, the word 'Aspie' is all over the clinical literature and has been for years, so slip-ups will happen. But identity-politics "cancel culture" and "call out culture" guarantees that people will jump all over you for using the term, even if you use it unintentionally. It's already happened to me. I actually think that we would be doing more good by getting rid of identity-politics cancel culture and call out culture which are based entirely in guilt.
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Diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome by Dr. Joel Jeffries of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Adult Psychiatry and Health Systems, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. No intellectual or language impairment.
