The Okay-ish OT

“My cousin is on the autism spectrum, but they're not like  those autistic people who are always flapping their hands in front of their face,"  an acquaintance explained by demonstrating, miming the action of flapping her hands in front of her face. I've heard similar explanations about the differences between high functioning and low functioning autism before, and I thought I'd spend some time talking about the use of this kind of language, how it attempts to differentiate between "good autism" and "bad autism," but actually just ends up hurting all autistic people.  What are functioning labels? A functioning label is usually given to an autistic person by other people, and it is usually used to imply how well they can "function" within a neurotypical world. "High functioning" is often used to refer to people who appear "less autistic" and "low functioning is used to refer to people who appear "more autistic...