“Autistic” and “autism” are not dirty words and typical people avoid them like the plague. Meanwhile, “retarded” is a dirty word, and typical people throw it around like a football.
A few days ago, I was talking about autism very casually in a conversation about my childhood. The look on my conversation partner’s face when I said the word “autistic” was a Kodak moment in horror: “So you were autistic?”
Read More:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/haley-moss/why-autistic-and-autism-are-not-dirty-words_b_8925496.html