Friendly Neighborhood Sasshole

About the term “high-functioning autism”

crown-of-weeds:

Yessss I finally got one of these.

Sorry followers, this is a disability blog today, we should be back to normal soon.

Why do I apologize for that.

For the uninitiated, “HFA” is shorthand for “high-functioning autism” or “high-functioning autistic,” and it’s a really common and really problematic thing to say. I try not to get into the nitty-gritty of disability politics on this tumblr (trust me, what you’ve seen before is NOTHING,) but this is an issue that comes up a lot in people commenting on Kurt Hummel Is Not A Cat, so I figure that, now that I have an excuse, I’ll talk about it.

So. Why is it not cool to call an autistic person “high functioning?”

Read More

^ Required reading.

This entry was published on 11 June 2012 and has 437 note(s).
It was tagged: autism, autistic, functioning level labels, functioning labels, functioning levels, autistic resources, autism resources,

Notes

  1. phoebephoenix reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  2. ashashangri reblogged this from crown-of-weeds and added:
    Thanks for this post! It really helped me understand some of the language the people in my brother’s classroom use.
  3. tulipy reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  4. faketransgirl reblogged this from crown-of-weeds and added:
    looking back through goldenheartedrose’s resources b/c someone was asking for autism rights/activism resources and i ran...
  5. skierank reblogged this from crown-of-weeds and added:
    This is a great read.And this makes me pissed off at the DSM-V coming out because I’ll have to use it when diagnosing my...
  6. sassily-lackadaisical reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  7. opus72 reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  8. ravenofwar reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  9. spasticcharge reblogged this from frogsandrosbifs
  10. frogsandrosbifs reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  11. obligatory-stupid-name reblogged this from crown-of-weeds and added:
    Quick comment about the new DSM (which now that I’m thinking about it is kind of disturbing) I got told by a school...
  12. stubborn-string-bones reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  13. spaceships-in-the-club reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  14. teoka reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  15. gatochick reblogged this from crown-of-weeds
  16. dameggers reblogged this from crown-of-weeds and added:
    Helpful information is helpful! I have been wondering for months why they changes Autism in the DSM V (Which I am super...
  17. casuallyakward reblogged this from ill-baruch-your-cohen
  18. ill-baruch-your-cohen reblogged this from crown-of-weeds

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