izzy May 17, 2022

https://autisticnotweird.com/autismsurvey/

Autistic Not Weird made a new survey!

Some highlights:

-The non-autistic control group felt overall more socially isolated than the respondents of the 2018 survey. #Actuallyautistic respondents, however, did not.

-BUT autistic people were more likely than the control group to agree with the statement that "I found the lockdown harder than most people". Overall, both groups tended to disagree or strongly disagree though.

-ca. 84% of autistic respondents feel the need to mask in front of non-autistic people. Only ca 20% feel the need to mask in front of other autistic people.

-ca 65% of diagnosed autistic people approve of self-identification/ self-diagnosis. So did 48% of non-autistic caregivers

-Among autistic people, non-autistic caregivers, and non-autistic autism professionals, identity-first language (autistic person) was preferred. The preference was strongest among autistics (ca 91%)

Results and Analysis of the Autistic Not Weird 2022 Autism Survey - Autistic Not Weird

Advice and insight from a former teacher with Asperger Syndrome

Autistic Not Weird
Show threadizzy May 17, 2022

-When it comes to language used for #actuallyautistic people, autism professionals are more likely to disagree with autistic people than caregivers are

-The majority of respondents disagree with the usage of the term "low-functioning". The disagreement is weakest among autism professionals (ca 9% use the term)

-The acceptance/ usage of the term "Aspergers" has lessened significantly (from ca 51% in 2018 to ca 19% in 2022)

-ca 62% of people who went through ABA strongly disagree with its usage

-ca 82% of autistic respondents disagreed with a cure. This percentage was the same among nonspeaking autistic respondents with learning difficulties.

-Only ca 51% of non-autistic caregivers disagreed with a cure for their autistix children

-74% of autism professionals disagreed with a cure, but only 20% of ABA practitioners did

Show threadstarcideMay 17, 2022
@ijyx this is all really interesting thankyou. Id been wondering if I should still be using 'aspergers' (its my official diagnosis around 2017 in the uk) or if I should be using 'autistic', a few years back there seemed some contention if they were actually on the same spectrum or not. Has thinking moved on?
Show threadizzy 

@starcide I don't think the debate was really about whether they're "the same spectrum". it was more about

-AS being named after a nazi (who also might have plagiarized Sukhareva, a jewish russian woman who should get credit for discovering autism instead of Asperger and Kanner, seeing as she discovered it 20 years before they did. But well)

-AS being an overall outdated term

-The line between AS and "classical" autism being very arbitrary (and often not possible to differentiate between in adulthood or even late childhood)

Recently more information has come to light about Hans Asperger's involvement with the nazis (I believe that actually was in 2018? Point is, a paper came out a few years ago about it) which is probably what caused more backlash against the term than there was before

May 17, 2022 at 2:35pmWeb
Show threadstarcideMay 17, 2022
@ijyx thanks for the answer, I don't think I fully knew about this stuff, I think I'll switch to autistic then rather than aspergers/aspie.