I wanted to end this book with a question to all you guys. I have read many discussions online where people debate whether you should say 'autistic person' or 'person with autism'.
Some say it is part of their identity and therefore would like to be called autistic while other say it doesn't define who they are and therefore refer te themselves as someone who has autism.
Personally, I don't really care what they call me as long as people see me as a person instead of a burden. As you have read in my story I sometimes write 'autistic people' and sometimes 'people with autism'. I hope that I didn't offend anyone by using one of these references.
For me at first I didn't like to be called autistic or autist because I always believed autism was something I had, it was a burden I had to carry with me. Over the years I became more acceptable with myself and my autism. Now I can finally call myself autistic.
That doesn't mean I now hate being called someone with autism. I am content with both clarifications. When I wrote this story I used them both. I let it depend on what fitted better into the sentence grammatically.
Let me know what you guys think. Having autism or being autistic?
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11 Things Not To Say To An Autistic Person
Non-FictionI am a 19 year old girl with autism. As autistic person there are a lot of things non-autistic people can tell you. Some are out of curiosity while others might be intended to offend you. In this book I will discuss 11 things that people with autism...
