this is old news but I'm just writing it out for myself

I call myself ASD both because I have multiple diagnoses (PDD-NOS, Asperger's, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder) and because I don't believe there is a quantifiable difference between PDD-NOS, Asperger's, Autistic Disorder, and NVLD. This is not to say that there aren't vast differences between ASD individuals; there are people who are verbal and people who aren't, people who are prone to violence and people who aren't, people who are extremely upset by loud noises and people who don't care that much. I could go on forever--obsessiveness, form or presence of stimming, executive function, feelings about being touched. And passing, of course. Plenty of these differences are super important when you think about the kind of help the person might need. But calling these differences NVLD, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, and classic autism (or, more commonly, Asperger's and autism) is messy and impractical. If every ASD person is just one of those four things, then why do I have so many diagnoses, and how come people often call themselves (or are called) a different diagnosis than they actually have?

If you aren't familiar with this, it often comes in the form of verbal people with autism or PDD-NOS diagnoses being called or calling themselves "Asperger's," or nonverbal PDD-NOS people being called "autistic." Also, I have noticed that when people with Asperger's do things that seem "low-functioning," like what Francisco Hernandez did, they are more likely to be referred to as "autistic" in articles. Because Francisco doesn't talk much and his problems are more about anxiety and dissociation than they are about the stereotypical idiot-savant obnoxiousness, he is not being called Asperger's as much as he would if he'd, say, been kicked off a subway for talking nonstop about calculus. I took a class on ASDs and the TA described Asperger's as "active and odd" with classic autism as "passive and aloof." These different labels divide ASD people into verbal, obsessive, active, annoying, gifted (i.e. they don't really have it so bad?), and nonverbal, "without skills," passive, blank, violent, etc. But it should be obvious from how much everyone fudges these labels that one label is almost never enough to describe a whole person.

Like Francisco, I'm pretty passive; I struggle with executive dysfunction and shyness more than I exhibit grandly inappropriate social behavior. (Although I guess this hasn't always been the case.) But of course I'm verbal, and (I think) I pass very well. I guess passing means I'm high-functioning so I should be called Asperger's. But Asperger's makes me think of someone noisy and argumentative; actually, Asperger's makes me think of someone male, someone cold, someone confident, lots of things I'm not. So I then want to fuck around and say "developmentally delayed" or "I'm young for my age" or "I have a processing disability" or "I have a brain disorder that does such and such" (and then I just list whatever symptoms are relevant right then).

But fucking around is tiresome. But Asperger's sounds wrong. But PDD-NOS is maybe an exaggeration because I was so young. And NVLD seems like dodging the issue by using a term that isn't associated with ASD (in fact, I'm pretty sure it was invented just because people didn't want to admit their kids had ASD).

And besides, why should I have to fuck around? What would be so bad about just saying I'm an ASD person who is verbal but has some speech processing issues, a lot of executive function problems, some social anxiety, a lot of stimming, no big sensory issues anymore, and decent if atypical social skills? Isn't it stupid to even indulge the idea that some people are Lower Functioning Across the Board (with functioning meaning about eleven different things), and aren't all these labels kind of stigmatizing to Kanner/some PDD people and simultaneously implying that AS/NVLD/some PDD people aren't really disabled, and are just sort of cute and annoying, and don't need that much help? And that we shouldn't care about each other? Whatever. So anyway, I call myself ASD to avoid inaccuracy and to express my loyalty to all kinds of different humans.