Using a social perspective to autism, I would appreciate if there were a way to classify someone as autistic without calling it a disorder. Yes, we have difficulties, but from a social perspective, a lot of them come from society being structured to meet the needs of allistics. They get guidance, acceptance, and ultimately privilege of a world that is designed for them, while we have to try to meet their expectations. From this perspective, we’re not disordered, but oppressed/marginalized. How does that make us disordered?
I agree that there are different levels of functioning, and that some individuals might meet criteria for a disorder due to autism spectrum characteristics, so that would be valid. However, many individuals would function quite well in a setting that was designed to raise, educate, and accommodate autistic brains.
Anyone have any insight or ideas on this?
A disorder is something that makes it hard do function in current society. There are some autistics who would have difficulties in nearly any society but one could argue that it’s mostly due to comorbidities. Now the key to not being disordered for the rest of us is changing society so that we can live without being disabled by our environment. That change won’t happen without massive organized protest and it won’t be easy.
That’s such a good point! One could argue that an autistic person has trouble socializing not directly because of their autistic traits, but because allistic society has bullied them enough to develop social anxiety. In this case, the actual “disorder” that is preventing socialization is social anxiety, but the root cause was allistic bullying. Should allistic culture change to accept and embrace autistic traits, then there would be no problem, and the autistic person wouldn’t be considered disordered. Is that in line with your argument?
Those are not the only problems caused mainly by an overly allistic culture but, yes that’s the direction I was going with my argument.