Controversies about functioning labels in the autism spectrum: Encyclopedia II - Controversies about functioning labels in the autism spectrum - Controversy about the terms in the autism rights movement

Controversies about functioning labels in the autism spectrum - Controversy about the terms in the autism rights movement

In the autism rights movement these terms were part of a controversy over ethical challenges to autism treatment such as Applied Behavior Analysis that came up in April 2004. In response to this controversy, ABA supporters claim that autism rights activists have Asperger's syndrome and are not "really" autistic, so shouldn't be allowed to speak for autistic children. Some of them (such as Lenny Schafer) claim that Asperger's and autism are so fundamentally different that Asperger's should be removed from the autistic spectrum completely.

Autism rights activists responded to this by pointing out that their opponents use the word "high functioning" or "Asperger's" as an excuse to ignore the opinions of people who disagree with them, while using the word "low functioning" as an excuse to say autistics with that label cannot speak for themselves and give pro-cure advocates an excuse to speak for them.

Some people believe the autism rights movement (especially the anti-cure perspective) might make some sense if it only included autistic people described as high functioning or Asperger's Syndrome. Autism rights activists have responded to this by claiming it isn't easy to distinguish between high and low functioning and pointing out that some of them have been called low functioning.

A similar controversy came up again in December 2004 when Amy Harmon published an article in the New York Times titled, "How About not Curing Us? Some Autistics are Pleading".

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Controversy about the terms in the autism rights movement", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki