Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities

by Nick Walker

Person-first language is rooted in autistiphobia and anti-autistic bigotry, and its use is widely recognized by most of the autistic community as being a reliable indicator of autistiphobic attitudes. The reason that person-first language is so prevalent in our society’s discourses on autism is that those discourses have always been dominated by the voices and viewpoints of autistiphobic bigots. From the 1930s through the present day, the vast majority of the non-autistic people who’ve written about autism or done any sort of autism-related work have held deeply ingrained autistiphobic attitudes. The language used in their work reflects those attitudes. The use of person-first language when talking about autistic people is so prevalent and so widely accepted that most non-autistic folks don’t think twice about it and don’t even recognize it as the language of bigotry and stigma. The autistiphobic bigotry inherent in person-first language doesn’t become obvious until you listen to how it sounds when you use that same sort of language to talk about members of other historically oppressed and marginalized groups. Here, give it a try: People with homosexuality? Children who have Jewishness? Adults experiencing femaleness? Ooh, how about individuals living with Blackness? Are you comfortable with those phrases? If you read an article in which the author consistently referred to gay people as people with homosexuality, adults who have homosexuality, and individuals living with h...