Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck… yep it’s a duck!

The official story goes that Leo Kanner was the father of Autism. As official stories go, well it leaves a lot to be desired because it’s pretty far from the truth.

And the truth is, Autism has no father, or mother, It’s always been with us. Over time some influential people have tried to describe it, tried to work it out and tried, even to own it and decide upon it’s naming and so forth.

If you really want to know some more of it’s story it is worth taking the time to read Steve Silbermen’s Neurotribes, which of course is not perfect but it does do a good job, by a non-autistic person to tell a positive story of autism without the gloom and doom and pathology of other works.

A few years ago, in fact it was right around the time when I was receiving my own diagnosis, or identification, a new version of the DSM came out. I am sure there were more controversies in it than just the one surrounding the way autism was being re-catogorised. But as it goes there was a lot of human capital involved in this particular controversy.

I think there are two key things at play in this whole thing. One is very much centred on a group of neurodivergent folk and how they identified themselves, and fear of that being invalidated. The other is more about the history and so on that surrounded how we came to have autism having multiple names within the same diagnositic manual.

Way back, I think during the working up of the DSM III, a wonderful woman was instrumental in the inclusion of a listing, seperate to autism, called Asperger’s Syndrome. Lorna Wing, this amazing woman who gave so much to people understanding more about this mysterious Autism, coined that term, after a man who wrote a paper, Hans Asperger.

Asperger like Kanner described a thing called Autistic Psychopathy. Kanner demanded it be restrictive and applied it only to children. Asperger felt differently. A third man, Victor Frankl, who is likely given far less credit for the emergence of knowledge about autism, than is deserved, worked with both these men.

The thing that Lorna Wing really seemed to have got her head around, is, that because of the restrictive interpretation of Autism that Kanner had a stranglehold on, many autistic people were unable to get a diagnosis, and therefore support, and many parents would not want their child having the diagnosis of autism as it stood.

And so Aspergers Syndrome was born.

Little would Lorna know, but communities of autistic individuals would latch on to the name, shorten it to Aspie, Aspergian, AspieGirl, AsperGirl, and so on. Little would Lorna know that strong communities of autistic people would grow and flourish.

Then along came DSM5. It kind of changed everything, and kind of left everything all the same. The thing it did was to roll all Autism under the banner of Autism Spectrum Disorder, it would then assign levels of that based around the amount of support needs required for the individual.

Gone were the designations of PDD-NOS and, of course, Aspergers Syndrome.

This in my view, was a good thing. Especially given that the consistency between whether one would be given an Asperger or an Autism diagnosis was spurious at best. Essentially to be given an Asperger diagnosis one would need to have not had a language development impairment in childhood. However, in practice, dependent on the diagnostician, some people would be given Asperger instead as it seemed more palatable, or in turn some were even given the non – existent diagnosis of High Functioning Autism, again probably due to it sounding more palatable.

In reality, whether you have an autism or an Asperger diagnosis you are autistic. It’s just the way it is. Aspergers is autism.

Of course there was an issue for all these strong proud communities that had grown around the idea of Aspergers, Aspies and so forth. What would become of them. Very real questions indeed.

The guidance around this at the time of the DSM5 being introduced was all about ensuring those with an Asperger diagnosis were free to continue to use that as a diagnosis label or to switch to and ASD diagnosis label. In the end it didn’t really matter which one was used, because, as I said, Aspergers is Autism.

Unfortunately, some clinicians continue to use the diagnosis Asperger Syndrome because they just happen to like it. In some cases it’s complicated by the use of the ICD10 which still lists Asperger Syndrome.

What should have happen, and I think mostly it has, is that Asperger as a diagnosis is disappearing, and ASD is being used. This is a good thing, for so many reasons, not least of which, it stops us battling as two groups for the same crumbs of support and effectively penny pinching from each other.

The thing that the establishment of course never considered, and it would be a surprise if they had, was the identity factor. So many autistic people wore Aspie as an identity and felt that was threatened.

But the thing is this is all seperate to identity language. It really has nothing to do with it at all.

If you want to call yourself an Aspie, go right ahead, I totally respect that. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t make you not autistic.

Whether you call yourself autistic or Aspie or anything else is your call, and whether you use identity first or person first language is again your call. I will always have a preference for not using Aspie for myself, and I have my own reasons, just as I will always insist on identity first language for myself. I will argue vehemently for it, but I will also vehemently support anyone’s right to call themselves Aspie or Person with, just as vehemently.

Just as when you see a creature that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck cross your path, you can be fairly certain it is a duck. So too, can we be sure that Aspergers is Autism and not something different. Not something less severe, not a milder form. It’s all just Autism.

Identity is one thing, and it’s important, but it’s pretty much time to stop this kind of arguing and get on with the job of advocating for all autistic people, in order that they can have the very best outcomes in life, rather than wasting time pretending one is not autistic because an out of date diagnostic manual says so.