Election Erection Suggestion (LOL) I’ve been seeing lots of election coverage in the media and they’ve all been saying the same thing, but my friend Bill Mauk posted this to youtube and I thought it was hilarious. He is suggesting that once we elect a new president we have to erect it in our yard as a symbol of patriotism so we can all recognize him/her! Here’s the link to the video if you would like to check it out (or laugh your ass off) I agree with you 100% about the use of the word retarded. Not all people with that diagnosis are the same. I was on the spectrum for a lot of my younger years and I wasn’t retarded (except for my grammar which never seemed to get better…) but I am autistic and have some issues with my short-term memory and long-term memory. Thank you for being more articulate in your choice of words and not just using ignorant language. One other thing I would like to add is when people keep saying, “it’s just a word.” Is that all it is? Is calling a human being, non-human, is that just a word? I don’t think so. The word you’re using to describe this human being is not only inaccurate and harmful (to my brain), it also says a lot about you. That word also speaks volumes about what you think of people. That word is hurtful. It is not a simple matter. And it is not “just a word.” I’m not saying you should never use it, because in many cases it’s necessary and necessary isn’t bad. But when you use it and when you are hurt by it, that is not okay. I’m thankful you shared this with us. It helps. Thank you. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’m trying to do the work. I want to learn how to live with it better. How to treat people better. I want to help my wife and family (wife, family, not by helping them take care of me.) You should find a group that you can get support from. I find the LINK community very helpful for my needs and the LINK family is awesome. It was through the LINK community that I found out about The AQ Network. And I highly recommend joining it. They’re a lot of great resources and they do a lot of great things for our community, like helping with the LINK conferences, etc. It’s also a place to meet other members of the AQ community and interact with them. It’s a great place to learn about autistic issues and just connect with other humans in general. 😀 Thank you again for sharing this and thank you again for saying something. Even though the words hurt me more than the actual issues, I’m thankful for you sharing what’s going on in your head. It helps me be able to understand you better and better. I think the use of the term retarded is a “trigger” for many people with autism, but not all. It is a trigger because it brings back memories of being told we are lesser, when many of us are very successful and independent people, yet this one word is something that is so ingrained in our society. I do not know what caused the original article to take the title it did, but I think it’s important to recognize how that article made some people feel, because that is going to come back as a trigger for someone else, but may be much different for someone else than what happened to me. People’s use of this term can be extremely triggering. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a very different disability than being retarded. The only real similarity between these two things, and you’re absolutely right, the only reason it’s listed with disabilities, is because people have trouble understanding it. It’s very difficult to understand, to explain, and to empathize with. I have never had a disability of any sort. And so when I was younger, all I knew was that I was different and I kept that in a back room, a locked, in a safe box. That’s because in order to get treatment and get my needs met, I needed to have an autism diagnosis in order for my father to continue to get me the services I need. My father is a child psychiatrist. I’m sure there are children out there with Autism who have wonderful and loving fathers who have loved and nurtured them all their lives. In order for us to get that, someone like my dad had to say that we had a disability and needed to be treated. (Which is why so many kids with autistic spectrum disorders have a mother who is a psychologist/child psychologist, even though the child had no help from anyone…). I also need to be treated in order to have the proper therapies and education I need in order to be able to become the person I want to be, a woman with a successful career. And yet because of this one term, I had to share the back room, the locked box, and get away from my father for all of those years (the things that happened to him are very hard for me to write about even now). But my father is a wonderful man, who got me into college and law school. I love him more than I can say. People have to remember that because I was called retarded for so long, it created a disconnect in me between who I wanted to be and who I was. It’s very hard to overcome. I had to overcome it in order to become a woman who has a career and a personal life and friends. It’s very hard to be both of these things. I am still working on it. I am still improving. But now I can look back and I can say, yes, I am a woman with autism and a successful career. But that is not the sum total of who I am. I am not my disability. And if I tell you that, what is the difference between what I am saying and when I was called retarded for so long? Nothing? So how then does one say the word without the pain it brings up? What makes it worse is that as a teenager, I believed that was my lot in life. I was going to be called retarded. That’s what I was told by my father. That’s all I was ever told. There were no other options. To be honest, as hard as it was for me to bear, I thought my life was good. It was good for me to have a childish and fun life, to get things wrong and to learn from it, to fail and be glad for it. And that made me happy. I was very fortunate. But I know that many autistic people do not have the luck of having a father like mine. Many autistic people do not have a supportive family. Some of them do not even have a supportive friend. And so they are completely lost. They do not even know how to function in the world because they do not have anyone who understands or can empathize with what they are going through. And this is very bad. These are horrible things to live through. The term retarded really needs to go away. It is absolutely incorrect and a misnomer to call any human being anything related to this term. It is also very harmful to create a division in society between ‘normal’ people and those people who don’t fit into ‘normal’ society. By saying that a human being is non-human based on a disability, it does a terrible job of saying that being disabled is bad. To be disabled is not a bad thing, just as to be tall, as to be a woman, or to have a heart, are not bad things. We are human. Just because I was born with autism does not mean that I am any less of a human than anyone else. If anything, it’s the opposite. Anyone who understands what autism is, or any other disability really, should see that we are all human and should be treated as such. This creates more division than it does unity. Thank you for this post and what you have done. I know my first reaction was, “Why? I am an amputee, what’s the big deal?” My first response is always fear, I get lost in myself and get confused by my own thoughts. You have opened my eyes and given me more of a positive view of myself, especially after losing a leg. Keep doing what you are doing and keep sharing. Thank you so much for this post! My son has Autism and when I read that the “R” word was offensive, it broke my heart for him. I appreciate you not only not using the “R” word to describe Autistic people but for educating others as well. If we take a moment, I believe, we can see this very differently. Let’s first establish that I don’t like the word Retard. I think, in all reality, all we can really do is talk with people and hope they’re compassionate and empathize with us and with other disabled folks like my husband who have to navigate a world that doesn’t always accommodate and understand him. Empathy and compassion are what drive us forward, without them it would be much more difficult. The term Retarded is no different than referring to a blind person as ‘blind’ or a Deaf person as ‘deaf’. We should not see people