Functioning Labels – What are they good for.

Autistic people are described by functioning labels all the time. They are used by clinicians as short hand, they are used by parents to make things sound better or worse to others, they are used by diagnosticians to try to be more palatable when giving a parent a diagnosis.

The question I ask is What are they good for – cue the music – absolutely nothing.

Well not exactly nothing. I mean it is actually true that the diagnosis of autism is itself a functioning label. As an autistic person I know it is actually a lot more than that. I know with a surety that it is the way I am wired, the way my brain works, the way I think, feel, experience and do life. But the fact remains the diagnosis of autism is the observation and interpretation of functioning and behaviour.

So I think, there’s my answer. Functioning labels what are they good for? – A diagnosis, maybe some funding, perhaps access to some services.

If that’s true, that a label can provide such access then functioning labels good right. Well, yes, but no.

Just one functioning label. The word autism. That’s it. Nothing further is required.

There’s a real reason for this. Autistic function is not static. It changes. And it changes all the time. Not just year to year, not just month to month or week to week, but it can change moment to moment and second to second.

With this being a thing to try to box a person up with a functioning label is just simply a false thing to do. Not only that it treats a person, a human being, as if they were just something to be described, to be assigned a particular label and not treated with dignity respect and not given the same access to basic human rights all human persons are entitled to.

Functioning labels other us. Functioning labels silence us. They are used to say what we can and can’t do. They are used to ascribe a sense of permanence of what we will and won’t achieve in life.

Quite frankly, they are just bullshit.

And the really crazy part of all this, the most common functioning labels we are saddled with, Low Functioning and High Functioning. Well, they aren’t now and never have been diagnostic terms or labels described in the official diagnostic manual the DSM, currently DSM5.

Sometime in the history of diagnosing autism, clinicians seem to have got the idea that calling a child high functioning was kinder or more palatable to the parents. It’s easy to see why that might seem to be the case. But it is of no benefit to the autistic person at all.

In a cruel twist of circumstance, the difference between these two labels has come to mean, in the minds of many, whether or not one has the ability to speak with their mouth parts. To that we must call bullshit.

If the ability to speak with one’s mouth parts, is an indicator of functioning level then quick, someone better go tell Stephen Hawking.

Another cruel twist of circumstance has meant those labelled with low functioning, because of this lack of speech with their mouth, have also been assumed to not amount to anything, treated as if they are a non-person and have their human rights ignored and breached on a constant basis.

This must stop.

When it comes down to the essence. Functioning Labels are not to the benefit of the person to whom they are applied. They are to the benefit of those around them, their parents, therapists, diagnosticians and so forth.

In terms of the autistic person, beyond diagnosis, they are good for essentially absolutely nothin.