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Argument, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Functioning labels can describe how others see autistic people, a Sydney panellist said
In short
At the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, a panellist with lower support needs asked not to be called high functioning, and another speaker asked how autistic people with different needs could stop pushing against each other.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
A panellist on the first Sydney panel of the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium made a direct request of everyone who talks about autism in terms of function. The panellist identified as someone with lower support needs and acknowledged not being able to represent the whole autistic community, however much the aim was to raise awareness, and then asked people to drop one label. “please don’t call me high functioning. I’m not high functioning. I’m just doing me.”
The objection was to the comparison the label invites. Someone with higher support needs, the panellist said, might have a support worker and go out on one outing a day, and that could be a good day for them. Holding down a job, in this account, did not mean the panellist was doing better than that person, and the two could not be compared. The panellist called for education inside the autistic community, outside it, and among psychologists and practitioners who talk about functioning as though there were only one way to function.
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Sources the story draws on
- The misnomer of 'high functioning autism': Intelligence is an imprecise predictor of functional abilities at diagnosis (opens in a new tab), Autism, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 221 to 232; summary page by The Kids Research Institute Australia
- Experts set out future of autism care and treatment in new Lancet Commission (opens in a new tab), King's College London
- Autism in Australia, 2022 (opens in a new tab), Australian Bureau of Statistics
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