“Autistics” simply do not exist.
writes journalist Dan Olmsted in an Age of Autism post on the use of the word “retard” in the movie Tropic Thunder. He “really can’t stand” it when the “people with autism” are referred to as “autistics,” and he sees the word as a “corollary of ‘retards’.”
Olmsted refers here to an ongoing debate in the autism community, about whether to use the adjective “autistic” or the preposition/noun phrase “with autism.” Some prefer to say “autistic” to suggest that autism is part of a person; others prefer “with autism,” as it’s thought that this phrase suggests that …read more