I hate people.

The title of this essay should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or knows what I have been through thus far. I hate mean old stupid ignorant people.

Hell, the statement “I hate mean people” really needs qualification in the first place. Specifically, what kind of mean people do you refer to? Because whether you like it or not, everyone is mean a certain percentage of the time. The key, however, is understanding the person that the person is being mean to, and why one is being mean to the other. Let us take, for example, an elderly lady who has just stolen a can of dog food from a grocer. Yeah, I can understand that the grocer might be upset, but there is only one kind of police officer who unnecessarily roughs up (to any degree) this old lady who is probably stealing dog food to eat herself. A weak and ignorant one. Hating that kind of mean person is just fine. But when a police officer is mean to a reasonably strong man who has molested, raped, or even murdered multiple children, I think I speak for many when I say that the officer is perfectly justified in his actions.

(Note that this does not mean I totally disregard the right of a suspect to a fair trial and due process. These things are really the only things thus far that make present-day society better than the barbarian poo-pickers we still see remnants of in certain parts of the world. But the police have one of the toughest jobs in the world to do, so it should never come as a surprise when they start to get aggressive with a suspect they have good reason to believe has hurt or violated a child.)

One of the reasons I hate people as a collective, however, lies in the flaws of their misbegotten group thinking. Individuals who commit acts that are really only mildly offensive, but you norms out there think of as being atrocious, are often driven to do so out of sheer desperation. Let us take for example what happens when I try to point out to all and sundry that so-called person-first language is not acceptable and should not ever be used by people professing to be friendly to the autistic and their struggle for recognition of their rights.

Let me be blunt for a second. There is no place where so-called person-first language is acceptable. None whatsoever. If you went to another planet where all living things used language in a way that is modular, it would be unacceptable then.

Allow me to concrete this with examples from my favourite analogy, that of race. In this example, I want you to imagine for a second a man from Mars. He has had no prior contact with Humans, and thus far the only Human he has had any real interaction with happens to be white. And I do not mean white in the sense that most people mean it. I mean people as white as I am.

Yes, Robert Heinlein would be horrified that I am twisting Stranger In A Strange Land this way, but it is with good reason. Now, imagine for a second that your man from Mars goes with you to a business establishment where people of multiple backgrounds can be expected in attendance. A bar, a restaurant, a record store, it does not really matter. What does matter is that one patron is communicating with one of the staff in a somewhat distressed fashion, and happens to be black. The Man From Mars asks you what is going on. You have two possibilities concerning how you answer:

A. Subject X is bad because he is black.

B. Subject X is bad because he has blackness.

Now, in terms of end result, both statements accomplish the same thing. You are telling the Man From Mars that the person he is asking about is a bad person and acting out because he has black skin. But as many a philosopher proclaims, with this kind of statement, the journey is often more important than the destination. The wording has a dramatic impact on what the Man From Mars might take away from the conversation. Note here that I am presuming a certain mindset on the part of the stated Man From Mars.

(Edited for clarity’s sake.) In example A, the unspoken implication of the sentence is that the previously-unseen dark skin colour of the individual getting upset with the staffer for refusing to serve him on the basis of his race is a part of who he is. That it is as much a part of him as being from Mars is a part of the Man From Mars. (Stranger In A Strange Land was originally published in 1961, after all, so this example exchange, after a fashion, was far from unheard of at the time the basis for this analogy was created.) Hence, the Man From Mars might think about it long and hard, and come to the conclusion at some point that you are an incredibly racist cock that he needs to get away from as quick as he can. He might come to the conclusion that you regard people as being inferior to you solely on the basis of a characteristic that they cannot help, and in some environs might in fact be a major advantage.

In example B, however, a confused and inexperienced beholder might be convinced with further effort that Subject X’s dark skin is something that happened to him after he was born, and inside Subject X is a sad white man trying to get out. The Man From Mars might, with some effort or direction, end up seeing you as pitying the black man for something that the two of you now mutually believe is pervasively wrong with him.

If you are offended by that description of what the Man From Mars might be led to think by example B, then good. You see where the problem with so-called person-first language as applied to the autistic lies.

You might have noticed certain language in my description of the results of example B, too. This is also good, because it brings me to a point that people need to get through their heads. So-called person-first language was never chosen by the autistic. Of all of the groups in the world desiring recognition of the fact that their unifying characteristic makes them more, not less, the autistic are probably the single most vocal about wanting to choose rather than having choices made for them. This is because a choice one has made for oneself is easier to reconcile and live with, but it is also a vital component in what every minority group desires: self-direction and self-determination.

Autism Speaks and other curebies do not desire self-direction or self-determination for us. They desire to fleece suckers for money using us as a prop, and to eliminate us from the world completely when they can fleece no more. And in order to be able to do this, they depend a great deal upon the Men From Mars in our situation (that is, everyone who is not them or us) accepting their version of example B when they attempt to foist explanations of us. (Playing connect the dots is fun, boys and girls!)

If you felt uneasy about the wording I used in example B, then that is for a reason. In my hypothetical example, the hypothetical you might want outsiders like the proverbial Man From Mars to believe that darker skin than the Man From Mars’ expected norm is an illness or disease. You might want the Man From Mars to think that you pity them or sympathise with them for a characteristic that they would gladly be rid of. Imagine how shocked the Man From Mars would then be if he got to talking with Subject X and learned that this man would be incredibly pissed off if they whitened him.

Friends and neighbours, the point here is that Autism Speaks cannot exist without sufficient people believing in their disease model of autism. If the entire planet saw being autistic in the same terms as the autistic do, Autism Speaks would not be able to say word one in public without getting lynched, jailed, fined, or all of the above. They would be to us as the Ku Klux Klan is to the black. The only thing that keeps this from happening is that they are allowed to make their vision of autism shared by persons in power. Take that away from them, and they have nothing. And in order to take that away from them, we must not only stop thinking of autism as if it is a separate entity to us, we must stop using language that was deliberately designed to encourage others to think same.

People offer up all kinds of ridiculous defenses of person-first language. Probably the one that raises my ire the most is the proclamation that the speaker is “putting the person before the disability”. No, you are not. In fact, as the race-based example I drew above makes clear, you are in fact increasing the level of disability. Which when you think about it properly, makes a certain kind of sense. Autism is a unique situation, and therefore deserves unique consideration. By attempting to mash it in with other disabilities and thus deprive it of unique consideration, you disempower us even more than would be the case without your ridiculous so-called person-first rubbish. And this is to say nothing of the fact that autism is a disability only by reversion. If the other approximate 6,953,333,330 people on the planet were autistic instead of the current ratio, you, normies would be the ones considered to be disabled. The same cannot be said of being blind, paralysed, or deaf, so being autistic is a unique situation deserving of unique consideration. (Also worthy of note is that the deaf have told the so-called person-first crowd in no uncertain terms to go and fukk themselves, too.)

I do not hate people because they breed like rabbits without thought for how it might affect future generations. I do not hate people because they worship crap out of herd conformity. I do not even hate people because they worship falsehoods out of having nothing but fear in their hearts. No, I hate people because even when openly, violently confronted with the stupidity of what they do, they resort to defensive name-calling, whining, and even threatening. As I posted on my Fudgebook page this morning:

I want to make this perfectly clear to all of the retards who sent me threatening messages: so-called person-first language is not, never has been, and never will be okay as applied to the autistic. This is because curebies pushed person-first language upon us with the explicit intent of making us or, failing that, those nearest us think of autism as something separate, even invading, to us. The disease model of autism that Autism Speaks and other curebies depend upon the promotion of for success depends on this perception of autism. Take away the public’s ability to view us as diseased, and you take away every bit of leg that curebies have to stand on. Just as you would not think of a black person as diseased or defective, and call them “people with blackness”, solely on the basis of being black unless you were incredibly racist, you will not do the same to us. Thank you.

Quite honestly, if you continue to defend a word choice that has been pushed on us as an act of terrorism by people who want us gone forever from this world, then perhaps it is for the best that this species keeps overbreeding until it forces itself into extinction. Because when people continuously mistake word choices that are designed to accelerate their genocide for a matter of preference, it makes one think about the world they were brought into and think “gee, thanks, mother”.

So in summation, if you are thinking of saying “person with autism” in any context around me, do not do it. Autism Speaks wants you to do it, and anything Autism Speaks wants must be denied simply because they want it.

(Edited to add, Monday January 14, 2013:) ABC Ramp Up published this today. I think the comment I posted, which I shall quote below, says it all:

I stopped reading after the second use of “with autism” in one paragraph. You talk about inclusion and how we must be included in the conversation, and then you go and use this separationist term that implies that autism is somehow separate to and invasive of us.
As I have written many, many times at stillfinditsohard.wordpress.com, separationist language is not acceptable as applied to the autistic in any context. The deaf have so [sic: I meant “said”] no to it, and so do informed autistic individuals. As my latest post on the aforementioned journal states in very angry terms, separating one of the most vital components of our identity from us is an essential part of the disease view of autism. And without that disease view of autism, curebies would not have a leg to stand on.
The messages you refer to both thrive on “person with” terminology, and are a part of the disease model. They live off each other in the curebie’s twisted, disgusting circular logic world. If you wish to be seen as writing about us in a positive fashion, then you _will_ acknowledge in your words that being autistic is an even bigger part of my identity than having a Scottish grandfather or growing up in Parramatta. It really is that simple.

For those who missed it the first time, the article I was posting this in response to can be found here. I urge all autistic individuals to navigate to this page and post something similar in favour of their right to have people stop referring to the most essential component of their identity as if it is something separate. To urge individuals pretending to write from a neutral perspective to knock it the hell off with doing what the curebies want. Because as I have said many times now, “person with…” is part of the disease view/model, and is thus not acceptable under any circumstances. If you want a world where tomorrow’s autistic children do not have to go through so much of their lives in fear, then you will do this.