Disability Terminology Debate

You can ignore the parent comment. It's become fashionable these days to not use certain descriptive labels in a traditional manner because a certain class of people feel it's dehumanizing by "reducing one to one's condition". For instance, someone isn't "diabetic" they're a "person with diabetes", because the diabetes is just something they have it's not who they are. You're not "autistic", you're a "person wit

There is a pretty significant distinction between "retarded" and "autistic", in that the former (as commonly used) is pretty much purely derogative, but the latter here clearly means something like "technically correct but not suitably communicated" - a much more nuanced attribute.Yes, we could probably get by without using medical conditions to illustrate points we make. But that doesn't mean every such use is damaging.

"autist" is generally regarded as derogatory, BTW.

When I was a kid people often used the words "mulatto" and "midget" in a socially acceptable way. Now we say "mixed race" and "little people." I don't see these becoming stigmatized because they are technically true and difficult to construe as a slur. I see neurodivergent this way.

I've kind of taken to calling it a 'disorder' when talking to others, as that quickly carries the "I can't do this thing that you can" message. I can see how 'disorder' might be insensitive or offensive to others, but I really didn't care about the semantics in my case. Wikipedia calls it a 'condition' which seems like a better term.

It’s just semantics. There are negative connotations associated with calling someone “normal” versus “abnormal”. I’m sure you’re polite enough to not describe people in wheel chairs as “abnormal”.The non-controversial terms that people use related to issues like autism are “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent”.

They describe quite different phenomena, both in terms of the actual state of being and how they're deployed as a slur? "autistic" seems to be more like "nerd" used to be a slur (but also sometime identity badge) before the rise of SV billionaires.I've never heard "autistic" applied to anything other than people (and possibly animals, for humour) for example, in the way the r word was used as a stronger version of "dumb".Anyway, I think peo

Isn't there is an actual difference between blind and visually impaired tho? The way I understood it blind people are a subset of visually impaired people, but not all visually impaired people are blind in a medical sense.So the reasoning behind such language might be to include people who are not technically blind, but still require similar consideration, assistence, infrastructure and so on.Language is odd here. The public used to call neurodivergent people "retarded" till

Some, maybe all, of those words used to be diagnoses of intellectual disabilities. I don't think laymen distinguish them much at all; I was never taught to do so. If the goal is to deter everyone from showing contempt for lack of intelligence (though I don't think that's going to happen) I don't see another word with the same connotation as progress. Am I overlooking something?

I'm so sorry for your loss. I agree with what you say about "disordered", the language is hostile.In a less morbid area, I feel the same way about ADHD - "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder". For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this.In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?