See the person not the disability! ...Why?

"Person With Disability, NOT Disabled Person! Person first language is less demeaning!" is something you hear a lot of Non Disabled people insist on, especially when it comes to Autism. "Not autistic! Person With Autism! See the person- not the autism!"

BUT the reasoning behind this is incorrect and often very secretly-ableist in the case of autism. This is another of those cases where ableism is happening even though people don’t realize it.

For those of you reading along, let me explain this:

Point 1:
It isn’t a thing I have, I am not “a person With it”, I would be a corpse Without it.
A Person with Diabetes is a human individual who Has diabetes. If you take the diabetes away they will be happier and healthier.
People who think autism could be taken out of an autistic do horrific things to us to try to make that happen- they want to cure us of how our brains work. To take the autism out of me, I would be a dead body.

Point 2, and the really creepy part when you see what you’ve been told your whole life:
People reason that the girl with autism should be called that because the girl should be first not the autism… why? because the autism is….. bad.
“See the person not the condition.” Where does this kind of thinking come from? Why don’t you want to see my autism, people? See me, not everything about me and how I think and live? Why not? What’s wrong with seeing my autism? What’s so horrible? Why won’t you see me as I am, instead of with a qualifier about how I still count as a human?
Person First Language is sadly based in the assumption that you should NOT see the Disability. That it is a tragedy to be hidden or ignored. That I am human in spite of my disability, not Along With it.
So, unless someone asks for person first lang, (and they’ve probably been told to do so, sadly) please try not to use it.