For the most part they seem to be pretty interchangeable, but some people do prefer one over the other. There are also many of us who actually do not prefer any term like that at all, and actually just prefer “blind,“ as a much more straightforward, functional definition that doesn’t feel as clunky. For me, personally, “visually impaired“ and similar terms come with too many implications of visual strain and all of the terrible school officials that forced that terminology on me, when nowadays I can just ignore my eyes and be a lot happier, no matter how much residual vision I have. It feels too much like being called a broken sighted person, so I am much happier being a full and complete blind person.
A little bit of clarification:
Personally, I do not like any of those terms like “low vision“ or “visually impaired“ or “optically precluded“ or what have you, because frankly, most of those terms were created by sighted people, the sighted people who categorize and label is based on how much residual vision we have, creating a twisted hierarchy of “normal“ and “functional“ entirely based on how much vision we have left, something that is entirely false and incredibly damaging to every blind person’s psyche.
It does not, and I repeat it absolutely does NOT matter how much residual vision you have in the slightest. Every single blind or low vision person is capable of the exact same things, and more vision does not make you better or better off or more capable and less vision does not make you worse and worse off or less capable at all. A totally blind person can do everything just as efficiently and effectively as somebody who barely even crosses the threshold into legal blindness, because with the right skills, tools, confidence, and resources, any level of blindness can be reduced to no more than a mirror inconvenience, and that is entirely true.
So frankly, I don’t believe in the visual hierarchy, and while I used to use terms like “visually impaired“ as my primary identification when I was younger, those days were very much the days fraught with internalized ableism and painfully low self-esteem and a desperate desire to cling onto whatever vision I had left, thinking more was better no matter what. I didn’t know a lick of braille, I never left the house by myself and refused to go out at night, I used ridiculous magnification system after ridiculous magnification system to read at a crawling 30 words per minute, but I thought because I “didn’t need a cane“ that I was fine and wasn’t “really blind“ and would never be like those REAL blind people. They were pitiful and I wasn’t pitiful. And more often than not, it seems most other people who use those terms tend to also be using them with similar motivations to my younger self, and it is an incredibly common story.
This isn’t to say that people are not allowed to use the language they want, because people can have all sorts of reasons for choosing the words they do, and they may not be choosing them out of internalized ableism and may have completely different motives. And even if they are using those terms because of internalized ableism, that is a journey that they will need to take for themselves and they may not be ready for the word “blind“ and it is not a journey you can force the ending you think it should have on too. Everyone is at different places, and part of being a community is taking everyone where they are and allowing them to grow at their own pace.
But I, personally, am not fond of those terms, and will not typically use them on this blog and I’m not especially comfortable being referred to with them. I have residual vision, as many blind people do, but I am a very capable blind person who is no better than any other blind person with any less vision than me. I am not fond of using terms created by uneducated sighted “professionals,“ and I am not comfortable reinforcing the visual hierarchy, so I much prefer to remain universally with blindness in all areas of life.
Whut? Optically precluded!? Is an actual term that people use?! What silly terms will non-disabled people come up with next!
For deafness, someone once told me they had seen the term “audiologically incapacitated” which I think is one of the more silly terms I’ve seen for deafness.
Tag: words
Save Trans Words!!!
I just read this piece where Julia Serano (trans activist and author of Whipping Girl) writes, “[T]here is no perfect word: Every term will have its detractors, and so long as trans people are stigmatized in our culture, some people will use these terms in disparaging or exclusionary ways.”
She coined the terms word-sabotage and word-elimination to talk about this.
Word-elimination, as you might guess, is when people rally against a particular term. Usually because they find something about it offensive, or inferior to their preferred term. It’s “don’t use this word.”Word-sabotage is similar, but indirect. It’s when people “sabotage” one term by talking about how this other word is better – in ways that imply negative things about the first term. Or when people decide that one word sucks and is terrible because another word is so great or inclusive.
One example she gave was that when the term “trans*,” with the asterisk, became a popular way to be inclusive, people started saying that “trans” (without the asterisk) was exclusionary. Even though both terms had been used in the exact same way. And, of course, as the asterisk rose to power, people started critiquing it as well.
But she also comes up with the term saving words. Because here’s the thing: words about controversial communities change a lot. We’re constantly under attack, and we’re constantly evolving.
And we tend to turn around and attack the people who are still using the old words. Even when we don’t actively attack them, we’re doing it by implication. We tell everyone not to use FTM and MTF, or trans*, or lots of other terms, when tons of trans people still embrace those terms. And so newbies and cis people come along and assume that those people are exclusionary, or have internalized transphobia, or are practicing some kind of lateral aggression, or are just bad and wrong.
But she explains it better:
“But more importantly, the people who use trans-related terminology the most (by far!) are other transgender/trans/trans* folks. And whether intentional or not, attempts to undermine some specific trans-related term will have the effect of undermining those transgender/trans/trans* individuals who use that term in their activism and/or to describe their experiences.
“It is really easy to condemn a word: to take offense when people say it, to tell others it is disparaging or exclusionary, and that they should not use it. But it is not the only path (or even the best path) moving forward. Perhaps instead, we could try saving words, by calling out the negative or narrow assumptions that sometimes latch themselves onto trans-related language. When someone uses a trans-related term in a disparaging or exclusionary way, perhaps we should challenge the misappropriation of that term, rather than surrendering or undermining the word itself. It is not the words themselves, but the negative assumptions and sentiments behind the words that are the problem—so perhaps they should be our primary target.” (emphasis mine)
I’m all about this. The ideas behind new and changing words are usually great and important, and they’re also often the same ideas that were behind the old words.
We all have different associations with specific words, and usually when it’s a negative association, we assume that the person speaking has the same association and that they’re expressing something bad. What if we all supported each other by listening to and talking about what we each mean instead?
This.
this is very timely BC this is an older post but I have been thinking about it a lot lately
Like, how long before the discourse is “don’t say nonbinary people are trans, that word is only for binary dysphoric people and always has been”
(I’d give that one about a year at the outside, since so many people already think nonbinary people by definition don’t experience any kind of dysphoria ever, and don’t transition ever, and people already say things like “trans and nonbinary people”)
how long until “it’s transphobic to call it transitioning, or to say you want to transition! you’ve always been that gender, you’re not transitioning to it”
how long til “it’s transphobic to use they/them as generic gender-neutral pronouns, because those really are the pronouns for nonbinary people, and you’re implying they could be used by anybody”
(I know the last one excludes neopronouns. I just think a lot of people would use it as a convenient tactic to marginalize and erase neopronouns)
Just want to point out that I’ve seen people already making the argument that the word trans is only for binary dysphoric people.
yeah, I might be splitting hairs here. Because I’ve seen it too, in the form of truscum claiming that nb people just plain aren’t trans – that those of us who transition are “confused” and really binary, and those who don’t shouldn’t be allowed to because they’re “not trans” (??????)
I was thinking that we hadn’t reached “nonbinary people are their real gender (or genders, or genderless) and can transition, but trans isn’t an umbrella term, it only means the binary part of the community.”
But that’s not really all that different.
I’ve seen every single one of these arguments, even the pronouns one. In fact, a while back, there was a blog dedicated to replacing “them” pronouns with their own so-called “universal pronouns” (and appropriating from another religion – Buddhism I think – in the process). I have no idea if that blog is still around or not.
On topic, though, I agree with this post entirely. As long as those same people don’t apply it to people who don’t want it applied to them personally, it should be fine for people to use the terms they see fit. After all, we all should have the right to define our own experiences and language, no?
Perhaps that’s a given, though? Or at least one would hope.
-Ryan
my personal opinion is that nonbinary people are inherently included under trans and there’s no need for the asterisk to be there (we’re represented by the white stripe on the trans flag after all)
but i’m not going to flip shit (anymore, haha thank god i smartened up) if someone uses trans* with the intention of including enbies (plus there are nonbinary people who don’t ID as trans, this includes them)
language is important and in a perfect world we’d be able to seriously sit down and talk about all these words, and even come up with stable definitions- but that’s not really how language works. Words evolve and change and fall in and out of use over time.
People on here love to talk about stuff like who is and isn’t “allowed” to use x or y term or which terms are Valid and which are Problematic but I’ll tell you right now ask a fairly supportive cis person how many genders they know and they’ll probably say male, female, nonbinary/agender/genderqueer/both/neither, and maybe genderfluid.
(Same for sexualities: they’ll say gay, straight, bi, potentially pan and ace)
Gender and sexuality are amazing and diverse experiences, of course people are going to make tons of words in an attempt to describe theirs. Can it get confusing and complicated and risk freaking some people out because they can’t find a label that fits them just right? Yup. Does that mean we should do away with the whole system entirely?
Nah.
So some words will be more popular. Some will only be known by insiders. They’ll change as our collective understanding of gender and sexuality changes. Try to keep this in mind when you hear someone using outdated terms; sure they could be a dick, but they could also just be ignorant, or y’know, from a time when that was the Correct Word.
Normally it’s seen with older people but with how fast information spreads now you can have people less than 10 years apart with completely different lexicons about gender + sexuality.
Basically, chill and try not to jump on someone just because they used a word that you think is Wrong.
(disclaimer: words that are slurs should obviously be used carefully, and only to refer to people who are comfy being called that word. people, especially older people, may make this mistake, be kind but firm in correcting them. and if they’re just being assholes, let ‘em have it if you feel safe to do so)
^^^
This is a really good addition and one we agree with. A lot of things are said here that we wanted to say, but didn’t know how to quite put into words.(Thank you.)
especially the part about how fast it changes. @rainbro-stache at 37 years old, once said to me: “did you know that FTM is outdated now?!” I was like “yes bc I’m on Tumblr” but like… We used to be able to say things like “on the FTM spectrum” to indicate that someone was not binary but shared life experiences with binary trans guys. And the same for MTF.
And now we’re stuck with things like “AFAB/AMAB,” which describe the person solely in terms of what they were born with (and doesn’t overlap well with a lot of intersex experiences).
Or “transfem/transmasc,” which… to me implies that people on one spectrum are inherently “masculine” and people on the other are inherently “feminine” or “femme”? Which I fucking haaaaate: because I’m fairly high femme… because butch trans women and butch “transfems” need support and visibility really badly… and because where does that leave people who are gender fluid or agender?
Right back in “what’s important about you is what binary box we want to assume you’re in,” that’s where.
/rant
What fascinates me about the “trans*” thing is that I was on tumblr around that time, and I very clearly remember people being really excited for that at first! People loved it and really made a case for using it all the time! …and then, suddenly, somehow, all the same people who were praising it were saying that it’s terrible and no one should use it because “trans is already inclusive of non-binary people, if you have to make an extra show of being inclusive then you’re not really.” The turnaround time seemed to be like…a few months, too?
What’s even worse is that it actually ended up making the whole thing very Americanised, because a lot of British documents and guidelines (for things like the NHS and helplines and other decent trans services) STILL use “trans*” and make notes about its inclusivity. So it’s like the official guidelines are trying to be helpful, and then people are seeing on the internet “actually they’re not helpful, that’s SO outdated and they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
So yeah, this sudden rushing around, creating and then abandoning terms is just…wow is it not actually helpful in the slightest.
Omg yes. I’ve seen posts, that flatly state that anyone using “transgendered” inevitably turns out to be an ignorant bigot. And… maybe if they’re cis?
But for years, in the late 90s, we used both transgender and transgendered. I remember vigorous debate about this on several trans listservs. I still have a trans anthology FROM 2006 where at least one, maybe several, of the authors calls themself “transgendered” in their own bio.
I was rooting for “transgendered” myself. I know, we lost, the community has clearly gone with “transgender.” But I am not a fan of the unilateral “this word and everyone using it is Problematic” bullshit. (Especially since I’ve also seen that said about MTF/FTM, and there are still a LOT of trans people on Tumblr using those terms for themselves!)
Like, I love discussion about what different words imply, what connotations different people have with them, what people personally like to use and why.
It’s when we get into “and therefore this term is Right and these terms are Wrong and if you use them you’re also Wrong” that it gets… “Problematic” to me.
Squabbling about how you’re allowed to talk about your own disability has that effect. If I can’t even make it past “I” in a sentence to the relevant part of my oppression, the disability, without someone insisting I’m using the wrong words, effectively what we have is people making it difficult to talk about disability at all.
That’s the point when people outside of social justice spaces do it- “Don’t call yourself that! Use handicapable! Differently abled!” Those are attempts to stop people from having meaningful conversations about disability, because they insist that the relevant part of any conversation about disability should be focusing on assuaging abled people’s anxiety about disability.
So we should be very careful within our own spaces to not turn around and do that to each other using new and seemingly different reasons and terminology to excuse it.
hey guys friendly reminder from your fave Canadian that esk*mo is a slur so please don’t use it!
I see it usually in the context of “esk*mo kisses” which may pop up when people talk about their ships and their headcanon, but it means “snow eaters” in cree and is a slur against Inuit people so please just don’t use it!
and I would appreciate if u reblogged this because people outside Canada don’t seem to know this for the most part
Also if you want to refer to ‘‘eskimo kisses’‘ and not use that term the Inuit term for it is ‘‘kunik’‘. It’s a traditional greeting usually between relatives or a child and an adult, although it’s a little different from nose kisses so most Canadians call it ‘‘Inuit kiss’‘ and I’ve heard other people call it ‘‘bunny kisses’’. Either way there’s no excuse to use ‘‘eskimo’‘ in this context or another.
While Inuit might be the most widely accepted term in Canada, please keep in mind that the proper term in the United States is Native Alaskan as there are more cultures and groups than just Inuit. I myself am Yup’ik and Tlingit. Neither of which are Inuit. Similar maybe, but not the same. My great grandmother on my mom’s dad’s side was Alaskan Dene. There are so many more than people than just Inuit.
Yesterday an ADHD ask blog i follow said that special interest is for anybody to use, and it isn’t autism exclusive. They use it in place of hyperfixation every time, even when referring to other people who have already used the word hyperfixation to describe their interest. I told them it isn’t okay since they’re allistic and they told me that i’m wrong and it isn’t autism exclusive but i thought that the term special interest IS autism exclusive!! am i wrong???
Special Interest is exclusive to autistic people as we have been pathologized for our special interests.
Hyperfixation is the community wide term, and was coined specifically so people with ADHD could talk about the shared experiences around having hyperfixations/special interests without appropriating special interests.
– Os
That “special interest” is autism-specific and people with ADHD should say “hyperfixation” instead is not a consensus of the autistic community, and the human brain is not actually configured according to our political distinctions in terminology.
My opinion is that the ADHD blog (whose author I know personally) was correct, and autism-asks is incorrect.
Neurodivergent people should be able to use the words that accurately describe what we are experiencing. (FWIW, I am autistic, I do not have ADHD.) Some people with ADHD experience interests or passions in a way that isn’t substantially distinguishable from the way in which autistic people experience this phenomenon. They may not be pathologized for it in exactly the same way, but that isn’t what determines whether the experience itself is pretty much the same thing.
And like a LOT of people are diagnosed with ADHD (whether correctly or not) before they’re diagnosed with autism (whether instead of or in addition to ADHD). Their “hyperfixations” do not suddenly become “special interests” when their diagnosis changes.
And a lot of people who don’t qualify for any specific diagnosis experience isolated features of autism, because autism is caused by the combined effects of lots of common genes. 90% of mothers of autistic kids, whether they’re autistic themselves or not, experience some kind of sensory processing anomaly.
They deserve to be able to call those experiences what they are, in a way that enables them to make themselves understood. Nobody is helped by falsely separating out the allowed language for who is experiencing what, if they are substantially the same thing.
I do not know how things got this way, but I think some folks could stand to…learn to appreciate that some neighborhoods of the autistic and ADHD communities think of these topics a little differently than they do. People with ADHD who subscribe to this way of talking about them are not in the wrong.
(And some of us with autism hate the term “special interest.” Honestly, ADHD’ers can have it for all I care.)
I am kind of done with gatekeeping tbh going on like… My opinion is to agree that the ADHD blog was correct. I’m autistic and have ADHD so like… definitely not a consensus in all parts of the autistic community that it’s “appropriating” “special interest.”
As a person that has a great deal of difficulty with words – yeah, I am done with people trying to gatekeep them.
If a word fits what you mean to say please use it. Making up new words for each subset of humanity makes communication HARDER not EASIER.
Words have meanings, not owners.
I generally agree. It’s describing the same damn symptom. I’ve heard that “special interest” is an ableist term from an abusive therapy so that’s why its autism exclusive, but I’ve never seen any sources for it so _(シ)_/.
Actually, the term is REALLY OLD. Was not originally related to anything specific – no diagnosis or anything. Clubs and social organizations have been using it since before autism was a diagnosis (see Mensa, for example). Most older social organizations have “Special Interest” groupings of some sort, aimed at attracting people who have some really strong attachment to specific topics. It was not used by the abusive groups BECAUSE of that affiliation with respected organizations – they do not want to imply the members of elitist clubs are ‘bad’ in any way – that’s where they get their funding.
The attempt to say it is “only for autistics” is just gatekeeping to try to make being autistic some exclusionary thing – and as a nonverbal autistic, I say no – do not try to make my life harder just to grab at some bit ‘exclusionism’ you (general) can use to feel special.Honestly, ADHD person chiming in, the reason, the only reason, I use hyperfixation, is because the way I experience my hyperfixations does seem to be substantially different from the way people experience special interests.
For me, hyperfixations are intense while they last but can end up dropping themselves for the next shiny thing much more easily than it seems from out here that special interests can. (I say drop themselves because I’m not consciously doing the dropping.) They can also go latent for weeks, months, years, decades. The infodumps seem to be shorter, too. I *need* to tell you about my hyperfixation, but only for a minute or two. My hyperfixations are marked by brief, fiery intensity, where I have very little control over how incredibly focused I am on them, but they might end or pause at any time. This makes sense, as they are the subjects of my hyperfocus.
Examples:
Babylon 5 – I know a whole heck of a lot about it, can recite a lot of it, keep coming back to it…but I might go years without watching an episode. If someone brings it up, or I feel wounded inside and need reliable comfort, though, Babylon 5 comes roaring back. I go through cycles of hyperfixation with Babylon 5.
Second Life – When I did it I did it for hours a day. I loved it intensely. I did cool things with it. I shut out the world when I was on it. It was all I wanted to talk about. Then it stopped running well on my computer and I found other things to do and *poof* hyperfixation gone.
If an ADHD person has a special interest, they should probably be allowed to describe it as a special interest. However, if I say I have a hyperfixation, I don’t mean special interest, and I would be frustrated if someone labelled it one.
Is why I said “If a word fits what you mean to say please use it.” in my first response 😀
Telling people what words to use based on which subset of which divergence they might have and the color of the sky at the time they are speaking is making word salad out of what used to be perfectly useful terms.Words have meanings, not owners.
One thing I do want to clarify.
I use “special interest” when answering the “hyperfixation” asks if I think that’s what they’re talking about, because I’m not always sure. “Hyperfixation” was proposed as an umbrella term, which means it could be used in place of “special interest” OR “hyperfocus” OR “obsession” OR any other term related to these kinds of phenomena.
In the previous uses of the term “hyperfixation” in the psych literature, it was used to mean exactly the same thing as “special interest.” This just adds to my confusion when people use it in asks. Like, I totally understand where @teasugarsalt is coming from, and that use makes way more sense to me than the way ADHDers are being told to use it.
When someone writes in asking about a “hyperfixation” I answer it the way I think the person means, and I use the corresponding term that seems to apply for two reasons: first, to make sure I’m understanding correctly; and second, to make sure the person knows the other terms are okay to use. Because a lot of people who use “hyperfixation” do so because they’ve been treated badly by other people for using a different term.
I use “special interest” for myself, as well, and sometimes when I’m answering an ask about “hyperfixation” I end up talking about my own experiences with special interests. This is another clarity issue.
The proposal of “hyperfixation” in 2015 muddied the waters way too much and I don’t think anyone has actually figured it out yet. Also, if you use “hyperfixation” in general company you may get blank looks. “Special interest” will get everyone nodding along.
Autistic community issues: Gatekeeping edition
Hi. This is re: the special interest terminology kerfluffle. I am an autistic person with ADHD. I have a request. Could you stop telling me that I have to use two different words to describe the same experience I have that I have no idea which “diagnosis” it comes from? (By the way, brains are not partitioned like that, so my neurology is affected by both, sometimes in very interchangeable ways that you don’t know which one is which!)
Related – the autistic community, as @alliecat-person points out here – has a pretty long history, some of which I have put together at @ourautistichistory, and some of which is probably lost as domain names expired or the list servs went defunct. But the moderator of @actuallyadhd, who has ADHD, has been involved with list servs and later platforms of the autistic community since 1994. She is an autistic cousin, which is a decades-old term that refers to someone “who is not NT, is not quite autistic, but is recognizably “autistic-like” particularly in terms of communication and social characteristics.”
To ignore that fact, along with @alliecat-person‘s note that these kinds of words have not been considered exclusive to the autistic community from the start – which is roughly three decades ago – is negligent. A community should know its history, and we need to know our history to work for change.
And it tells people that we are not a community that welcomes people unless they share our specific neurotype. It tells many people who are wondering if they are autistic that we are a community who will not welcome them. That may make them afraid to approach us, or learn more about autistic community and autistic culture. It tells people we are a community who is willing to gatekeep, and that is not what I want people to think of the community I love and fight for.
Hi, autistic tumblr.
I’ve noticed that some of you are telling other people with disabilities that they shouldn’t use the term “special interests” to describe their personal experiences.
This is not a good look. It’s especially bad when you’re telling this to @actuallyadhd. A few facts about the blog’s moderator:
-She has AD/HD (duh).
-She has been involved with the autistic advocacy community as an ally and “cousin” for literally decades. (If you don’t know what a cousin is, read up on some of the earlier history. Our community has been around for a while!)
-She volunteers her time to answering questions from people with AD/HD, a population that includes many autistic people.
Yet some have you have chosen to fill her inbox with complaints and mark her as an enemy because she holds the autistic community’s historic position: that the words autistic people use to describe our experiences can be used by everyone. By doing so, autism becomes less stigmatized and medicalized.
Can you stop, maybe?
Yesterday an ADHD ask blog i follow said that special interest is for anybody to use, and it isn’t autism exclusive. They use it in place of hyperfixation every time, even when referring to other people who have already used the word hyperfixation to describe their interest. I told them it isn’t okay since they’re allistic and they told me that i’m wrong and it isn’t autism exclusive but i thought that the term special interest IS autism exclusive!! am i wrong???
Special Interest is exclusive to autistic people as we have been pathologized for our special interests.
Hyperfixation is the community wide term, and was coined specifically so people with ADHD could talk about the shared experiences around having hyperfixations/special interests without appropriating special interests.
– Os
That “special interest” is autism-specific and people with ADHD should say “hyperfixation” instead is not a consensus of the autistic community, and the human brain is not actually configured according to our political distinctions in terminology.
My opinion is that the ADHD blog (whose author I know personally) was correct, and autism-asks is incorrect.
Neurodivergent people should be able to use the words that accurately describe what we are experiencing. (FWIW, I am autistic, I do not have ADHD.) Some people with ADHD experience interests or passions in a way that isn’t substantially distinguishable from the way in which autistic people experience this phenomenon. They may not be pathologized for it in exactly the same way, but that isn’t what determines whether the experience itself is pretty much the same thing.
And like a LOT of people are diagnosed with ADHD (whether correctly or not) before they’re diagnosed with autism (whether instead of or in addition to ADHD). Their “hyperfixations” do not suddenly become “special interests” when their diagnosis changes.
And a lot of people who don’t qualify for any specific diagnosis experience isolated features of autism, because autism is caused by the combined effects of lots of common genes. 90% of mothers of autistic kids, whether they’re autistic themselves or not, experience some kind of sensory processing anomaly.
They deserve to be able to call those experiences what they are, in a way that enables them to make themselves understood. Nobody is helped by falsely separating out the allowed language for who is experiencing what, if they are substantially the same thing.
I do not know how things got this way, but I think some folks could stand to…learn to appreciate that some neighborhoods of the autistic and ADHD communities think of these topics a little differently than they do. People with ADHD who subscribe to this way of talking about them are not in the wrong.
(And some of us with autism hate the term “special interest.” Honestly, ADHD’ers can have it for all I care.)
I am kind of done with gatekeeping tbh going on like… My opinion is to agree that the ADHD blog was correct. I’m autistic and have ADHD so like… Hi, yes, defs not a consensus in all parts of the autistic community!
Also, “hyperfixation” means exactly the same thing as “special interest” (just look at what it’s been used for in the psych literature. And “hyperfixation” was proposed as an umbrella term by a Tumblrite in 2015, so people could use it in place of hyperfocus, special interest, obsession, etc. My problem with that is that it is not accurate, and can lead to some misunderstandings. If you write about your “hyperfixation,” do you mean your current special interest or the thing you’re hyperfocusing on right now? They are two different things. Your special interest isn’t necessarily the thing you are hyperfocusing on, though it’s more likely than not. But even so, talking about “breaking hyperfixation” could mean breaking out of hyperfocus OR it could mean changing your special interest.
I like accuracy. Umbrella terms don’t help with accuracy.
Yesterday an ADHD ask blog i follow said that special interest is for anybody to use, and it isn’t autism exclusive. They use it in place of hyperfixation every time, even when referring to other people who have already used the word hyperfixation to describe their interest. I told them it isn’t okay since they’re allistic and they told me that i’m wrong and it isn’t autism exclusive but i thought that the term special interest IS autism exclusive!! am i wrong???
Special Interest is exclusive to autistic people as we have been pathologized for our special interests.
Hyperfixation is the community wide term, and was coined specifically so people with ADHD could talk about the shared experiences around having hyperfixations/special interests without appropriating special interests.
– Os
That “special interest” is autism-specific and people with ADHD should say “hyperfixation” instead is not a consensus of the autistic community, and the human brain is not actually configured according to our political distinctions in terminology.
My opinion is that the ADHD blog (whose author I know personally) was correct, and autism-asks is incorrect.
Neurodivergent people should be able to use the words that accurately describe what we are experiencing. (FWIW, I am autistic, I do not have ADHD.) Some people with ADHD experience interests or passions in a way that isn’t substantially distinguishable from the way in which autistic people experience this phenomenon. They may not be pathologized for it in exactly the same way, but that isn’t what determines whether the experience itself is pretty much the same thing.
And like a LOT of people are diagnosed with ADHD (whether correctly or not) before they’re diagnosed with autism (whether instead of or in addition to ADHD). Their “hyperfixations” do not suddenly become “special interests” when their diagnosis changes.
And a lot of people who don’t qualify for any specific diagnosis experience isolated features of autism, because autism is caused by the combined effects of lots of common genes. 90% of mothers of autistic kids, whether they’re autistic themselves or not, experience some kind of sensory processing anomaly.
They deserve to be able to call those experiences what they are, in a way that enables them to make themselves understood. Nobody is helped by falsely separating out the allowed language for who is experiencing what, if they are substantially the same thing.
I do not know how things got this way, but I think some folks could stand to…learn to appreciate that some neighborhoods of the autistic and ADHD communities think of these topics a little differently than they do. People with ADHD who subscribe to this way of talking about them are not in the wrong.
(And some of us with autism hate the term “special interest.” Honestly, ADHD’ers can have it for all I care.)
Hi, autism-asks. Are you familiar with the history of the autistic community, particularly our inclusion of Autistic Cousins (ACs), which includes many people with AD/HD?
I’d like to reiterate that the person who runs the blog in question has long-standing involvement with the autistic community.
Many parts of the autistic community dislike this kind of language policing because it needlessly separates our experiences from other people, including other disabled people. This does not advance our interests of de-pathologizing autism.
You are entitled to your opinion, but you don’t speak for every autistic person and you don’t have the right to tell people with longstanding community involvement that they are wrong to use certain words.
people have been debating the political efficacy and ethical concerns of using the word “queer” as a self-identifier, unifying term to describe populations, and/or theoretical framework for decades. these debates are not about two sides, where one side thinks it’s great and the other thinks it’s terrible and everybody in either camp agrees with everybody else in their camp. larry kramer’s argument against the use of “queer” is not at all the same as cathy j. cohen’s critique of queer theory and queer activism and their deployment of “queer”. similarly, the way that michael warner imagines the applications of “queer” is not the same as how karen barad uses “queer” to describe natural phenomena. the way that queer as folk invokes “queer” in its title is different than how the office invokes “queer” as an insult. “smear the queer” uses the word differently than “we’re here, we’re queer”. it’s a difficult word, largely by design when it comes to contemporary applications/reclamations.
any simplistic single history of the word “queer” or of feelings about the word “queer” is already a failure, not only in terms of accuracy, but also just in understanding of how people have come to conceive of “queer” as a thing that cannot be pinned down, easily defined or made stable. whether or not you agree what that understanding, to not include that aspect of the word in your attempt to theorize around it is an unforgivable blind spot. “queer” is complicated, it has multiple histories and meanings, and not accounting for that, especially when talking as if you’re an expert on the issue, is an enormous failure. lgbtq people have rich and complex histories and cultures. if you’re not willing to account for that, then get out of the business of trying to tell our stories.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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