Autism is not a “person-first” kind of disability
The golden rule of disability language is that the person should come first in phrasing, preceding the condition that disables them. For example, people who have diabetes aren’t “diabetics” in respectful usage but instead are “people with diabetes.” But developmental conditions and those related to the brain are a trickier territory. With a nod to Francis Crick, if your brain is you and you are your brain (with some guidance from your endocrine system and your environmental inputs), then how appropriate or even rational is it to separate the person and the condition? Many people want to say “person with autism,” but to a lot of autistic activists, that phrasing is silly, like saying “Person with Brain.” For them, autism and brain and themselves are all one and the same. Autistic activist Jim Sinclair wrote in 1999 about instead using “identity first” language. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network also features an essay by autistic activist Lydia Brown, elaborating the concept. That doesn’t mean, of course, that every autistic person prefers that phrasing, and it’s always best to go with what any individual with a condition expresses as their preference.
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