I have seen a lot of “aspies” whining lately about the proposed changes in the DSM. Not productive critique of the new criteria, the medicalization of autistic lives, or the fact that the things most autistic people have truly in common have been left out of the criteria while peripheral things nonautistic people want to [...]

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Tags: aspification, Autism, Autistic Community, depth, Disability, elitism, Functioning labels, hierarchy, Perception, snobbery

I Am Joe’s Functioning Level is a great post over at Asperger Square 8, highlighting the fact that most of what gets seen as “functioning level” in autistic people is how much a person can pass for normal at any given time, in a superficial way, regardless of any other traits or difficulties they might [...]

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Tags: Functioning labels, Links

I was just having a conversation about a difference I’ve observed between various autistic people. I want to note, before I describe it, that it’s not some kind of cut and dried division, nor is it scientific. It’s just an observation I’ve made. It’s not even a matter of “types of autism” [...]

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Tags: abilities, Analogies, cliffs, fluctuations, Functioning labels, hills, Regression

I remember being confused about something that happened during my first Autreat.
After Autreat, someone was talking about how surprised she was to see a particular person having a particular kind of trouble. (I’m being vague on purpose, the kind isn’t all that important and the people involved probably want to be anonymous.) I [...]

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Tags: Cats, expectations, fluctiations, Functioning labels, Services, videos

I have said for a long time that not only is the idea of a unified functioning level misleading, but that perceived ‘functioning level’ is not as far as I have seen related to whether a person wishes to become non-autistic or not.
But I was talking to another autistic person the other day, and I [...]

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Tags: Autism, Cure, Functioning labels