>is it really necessary to call all of life's difficulties some kind of disorder? Does making it a disorder some how legitimize someone's struggles?
You tell me, when I grew up being called autistic I tried to hide the disorder and get my teachers to not know I had it. It was everybody else who insisted on the names disorder, and it did legitimize it in their eyes. It meant a LOT of funding money, an extra teacher in the classroom, overall favourable treatment relative to other students. It was alternatively used as a pretence to discriminate against me. It was used to guarantee me accommodations. It was used as a means of getting a poor family money.
Lots of people have lots of different motivations for using that word. What I do know is there isn’t really any scientific basis for the idea that only severe autism is somehow real though.
The word autism does legitimize one’s struggles though, and people recognize that legitimacy. It’s pretty sick.
You tell me, when I grew up being called autistic I tried to hide the disorder and get my teachers to not know I had it. It was everybody else who insisted on the names disorder, and it did legitimize it in their eyes. It meant a LOT of funding money, an extra teacher in the classroom, overall favourable treatment relative to other students. It was alternatively used as a pretence to discriminate against me. It was used to guarantee me accommodations. It was used as a means of getting a poor family money.
Lots of people have lots of different motivations for using that word. What I do know is there isn’t really any scientific basis for the idea that only severe autism is somehow real though.
The word autism does legitimize one’s struggles though, and people recognize that legitimacy. It’s pretty sick.