But I don't care to use the word disabled in describing myself. Being unable to keep my mouth shut in the face of something I don't agree with doesn't qualify as a disability. My sensory issues aren't anything I ask for accommodations for. That I prefer to spend more time away from people than the average bear is not a disability. And in the context of autism, it's hard to use the word disabled and not have people place limitations on what one can/can't do. So, I don't use the word. And just consider myself different.
I recognize that there are people deeply offended by people like me, who are at the higher-functioning end of the spectrum and refuse to consider themselves disabled. (They see us as impostors.) There are also many people who take offense to the term lower/lesser functioning, and resent the use of terms like "severe autism". They consider this language to be demeaning. Autistic twitter is quite the landmine for semantic wars of this sort.
You can function obviously, but not as society expects you to or even in way they can understand. For that reason, you receive the label of "has a disability".
The term "disability" is unfortunately as much a reflection of societal norms as it is genuine medical diagnosis.
As I understand it, the problem with using the expressions "lower / higher functioning" is that it evokes the idea that problems of people with "lower functioning" are a strict superset of problems of people with "higher functioning".
In reality, it's more like there is a set of symptoms, and some people have a larger random selection, and some people have a smaller random selection, so it is possible to be "higher functioning" but fail at X, or be "lower functioning" and fail at everything but X. So the "higher/lower" is more about how much your specific set of symptoms disrupts your life, but it doesn't imply which symptoms are present or absent.
But people who see the "lower / higher functioning" as two sets of symptoms will judge you by presence or absence of one specific symptom.
(Also, with some symptoms, how much they disrupt your life depends on what environment you live in.)
> Autistic twitter is quite the landmine for semantic wars of this sort.
Twitter seems to evoke the worst in people in general. The explanation I wrote here would almost certainly be also considered highly offensive by someone.
I'm probably guilty of not viewing this as disabling because I'm treating the term too concretely, as if a disability has to be something "physical" that might require special accommodations. But yeah, I suppose my challenges in understanding the game of love are disabling.
As an aside, I'm really disappointed it's all under the umbrella term of ASD now. People are generally more aware of the differences now but no thanks to that.
0. I like ASD better because aspergers sounds like ass-burgers TBH and once explained it makes people understand immediately that you have various degrees of it.