StrikerBe yourself and be true to who you are. Don't let neurotypical conditioning define your identity.
m_r_buttsHow alone am I in disliking the word "allistic"? To me it feels like an outgrowth of a persecution fetish, literally defining an outgroup. Especially since it has zero mainstream adoption, where "non-autistic" is immediately clear to anyone.
That discomfort, I believe, is the point. Flipping the labeling game on its head is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable with the label.
And labeling it a persecution fetish is projecting. And saying that the mainstream doesn’t accept it so we shouldn’t either is provocative in a post that says “don’t let mainstream lead you by the nose”.
I don't always get there, but striving for clear language is being true to myself.
LillyPipsupposed to make you feel uncomfortable with the label. That can be used later for empathy.
That sounds manipulative and dishonest. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding. Might you explain how that works, from either an individual or societal perspective?
I agree we desperately need more awareness and empathy, but I don’t see how adding more synonyms that feel exclusionary helps.
Yeah, this is the same approach that labelling majority as CIS-gender is. Sure, smart and empathetic people realize and recognize what it’s trying to highlight, but others will find it offensive and irritating before, if at all, coming to a conclusion.
The problem with this psychological approach is that it’s projecting to bring down others / the out group, instead of attempting to elevate the disadvantaged straight. It creates a faux us vs them tribalism where there was none before.
Does ‘straight’ (or heterosexual) fall in the same category?
It may have before. I wouldn’t know, because when those terms came to be used were before my time.
credit crazyNot to mention it’s pretty similar to autistic. Infact I first read it as autistic and got pretty confused reading the post.
I feel like it can be over used, but generally I like it, it fills a lexical niche for me. I could use non autistic, but that feels clunky. Sometimes it’s useful to talk about non autistic people’s experiences in relation to autistic people, and sometimes I want to talk about autistic experiences in relation to allistic experiences, so I may prefer a term like allistic.
A thing that feels similar to me is the word allosexual, which means not asexual. I guess I would identify as being on the ace spectrum, but not ace (I’m demisexual), so allosexual is often a useful word
Neurotypical is the word most people use instead of non-autistic.
Which is also dumb, assuming there is a “typical” brain.
Although true, neurotypical more means close to average. Don’t think of typical as a single thing, but more an average of collective experiences.
Confirmed, neurotypical people are totally mental too.
Normal is fine. I’ll keep saying normal. I’m not normal, and I’m well aware of that.
🐑🇸 🇭 🇪 🇪 🇵 🇱 🇪🐑“Neurotypical” is the more appropriate word anyway
Yeah I agree with that. I will, however, point out that it means basically the same thing as the word normal. Context does matter as much as being understood as meaning non-autistic.
The whole of human experience is a spectrum, anyhow. Neurotypical just means this small peak of the bell curve society deems ‘normal’, but even then, lots of people in that group wouldn’t be considered ‘normal’ if they were honest with themselves.
Those terms do help people outside that definition, though, because they help identify and contextualise the friction they feel in society, and defining is a crucial first step towards understanding, acceptance, and learning how to overcome obstacles.
These words aren’t really for the benefit of neurotypical people, so they can seem unnecessary. They’re not, though.
(I’d never heard the word in the OP, and I agree it’s superfluous. We already have several words for it.)
not really. Allistic is the opposite to autistic while NT is the opposite to ND. As Neurodiversity covers (much) more than just autism, allistic is more precise when the topic is specifically autism.
starbreakerHow alone am I in disliking the word "allistic"?
I don't care for it, either. I don't really care for "autistic", either. Mainly because when I was growing up, if you were autistic enough to get diagnosed you were autistic enough to get institutionalized. My kind of autism used to be called "Asperger's syndrome" until the DSM-V dropped, and good riddance because Hans Asperger was a fucking Nazi-symp waste of ammo. If I really need a label, "weird" or even "eccentric" will do.
Which foot is the shoe on again?
I wear shoes on both of my feet.
bobor hrongarHow is “non-autistic” not an outgroup but “allistic” is?