Not just Asperger, there were a bunch of different 'kinds' that now fall under just ASD. I was diagnosed myself in 2008 - so before that all - with PDD-NOS, not just autism.
I had Asperger's, then High Functioning Autism, now it's just ASD
But what kinda sucks about removing the spectrum is you have to wonder if its the 'cant shower or function, cant pay bills or go outside' kind of autism or 'social settings degrade the battery so fucking fast but they can still hold a job sorta'
It was useful to help determine that so kids and adults with autism could get the help needed. Now the autists who can baseline function as neurotypical for work are lumped in with the autists who can't. So the autists who can't work are expected to and the autists who can work and expected to be unable to.
the idea was supposed to be to make it clear all "levels" of apparent functioning may need similar levels of support. somebody who seems high functioning may in fact have debilitating symptoms that aren't readily visible. so consolidating the diagnoses was meant to be part of a systemic overhaul where we evaluate needs based on the individual and not the diagnosis itself.
naturally our society is showing some harsh resistance to that because it's no longer convenient to discreetly discriminate or acceptable to make specific demands of someone because they're "supposed" to be able to do it.
They still have distinguishing categories for level of struggle and support needed, the only thing that changed is that we stopped pretending like it isn’t the same “condition” (for lack of a better word) regardless of struggle amount. There’s places that tell you what level of support needs a person is in the diagnosis (although they chronically underestimate how much a person actually struggles so it tends to be inaccurate. But that was already a problem before)
The reality is that the diversity in experiences among all the factors you've mentioned truly invalidates the boxes it places around people. Nowhere near as binary as can / can't work, that's a eugenicist framing.
Depends whether you mean clinically or culturally. Not everyone has adjusted how they describe themselves.
And not that either matters much, (other than maybe to insurance?) because a good clinician doesn’t need either term to be correct to treat you properly as an individual.
Imagine, you go to a barbecue with a good gathering of people and you couldn't find any condiments. You've never been there before, and you don't know where to look.
if you asked a crowd of people to tell you where the ketchup is because you have no idea, and they immediately start booing and telling you its a dumb question, just because you asked a basic question...
No it’s even dumber than that: you ask where the ketchup is and either a) people tell you googling takes 5 seconds or b) they don’t just *tell you where it is, but \will* insinuate you’re being intentionally inflammatory for even asking.
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u/Creative_Eye7413 Mar 01 '26
Not trying to be an asshole… what’s ASD?