Functioning labels (claiming that some autistic people are “high-functioning” while others are “low-functioning”) do more harm than good, not just because they aren’t able to give you an accurate impression of how much support an autistic person needs – but because they’re instead mainly used to either silence or invalidate autistic people. Autistic people who speak up about the issues concerning them are labelled “high-functioning” to invalidate what they have to say as being inaccurate and irrelevant for other autistic people and so-called “low-functioning” autistic people are being silenced and spoken over because they are written off as too ‘low-functioning’ to have nuanced, relevant opinions or even communicate at all. If you have trouble understanding why it’s bad to label autistic people as either low- or high-functioning, please take the time to educate yourself with some of the many articles linked below.
Further reading: “What is functioning labels and why are they inaccurate?”
- “Functioning labels 101 – What’s The Big Deal?”
- “Ask An Autistic – What About Functioning Labels?”
- “The Problem With Functioning Labels”
- “Functioning Labels Are Bullshit”
- “Please Don’t Use Functioning Labels On Me – And Us”
- “So High-Functioning”
- “No You Don’t”
- “Don’t “Aspie” Me”
- “Decoding The High-Functioning Label”
- “Autism Functioning Labels – A Comic”
- “When Autistics Grade Other Autistics”
- “High-Functioning” Is Not Reassuring Me; It Is Reassuring You”
- “On Functioning And “Functioning”
- “ What Mild Autism Means”
Throw Away The Masters Tools: Liberating
Ourselves From The Pathology Paradigm- “You Don’t Speak For Low-Functioning Autistics.”
- “What’s the Difference Between High Functioning and Low Functioning Autism?”
- “More Problems With Functioning Labels”
I also wrote Static Bubbles: The Myths of Functioning Labels on AWN website http://autismwomensnetwork.org/static-bubbles-the-myths-of-functioning-labels/
and
Functioning labels and meaning http://nostereotypeshere.blogspot.ca/2011/12/functioning-labels-and-meaning.html
What’s Wrong With Functioning Labels? A Masterpost.
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