I love language, it's one of my special interests. Like most autistic persons, I have a pretty interesting relationship with language. I am American and learned English in America as well, so there's those differences to consider also. Some of the words and language preferences I list below are widely accepted, and some were created, adapted, or advocated to be used primarily by me. I'll try to be as concise and precise as possible.
I originally planned to make this, like, alphabetical, but then I thought some topics and concepts should take priority and then it just devolved from there. I apologize. Please use the "find" feature of your browser if you're looking for something specifically!
I'll continue adding to the list as I continue writing and creating –Zero @ March 8, 2022
Identity-First vs. Person-First Language (IFL vs. PFL)
For as long as I have been alive, the Disability community has followed the leadership of the Deaf and Blind communities in using and preferring identity-first language when speaking of ourselves in English. This means we refer to ourselves as being a disabled person or an autistic person, not a person with disability or a person with autism.
There are many reasons why, but please know that *many* disabled and autistic persons will be triggered or offended if PFL is insisted upon for them. Even if they are not offended, the general consensus is we prefer identity-first language. For specific individuals, how they prefer to be referred to should be followed, but whenever we are referring to a general person, a specific person whose preferences are unknown, or a group of people, we should follow the convention of using identity-first language and push back on any insistence otherwise.
Functioning Labels and Autism "Levels"
I oppose functioning labels. The relevant saying from the Autism community is:
"High-functioning" means your needs get ignored; "low-functioning" means your abilities do.
Autism is multi-dimensional, the spectrum is not a scale from low to high. Most autistic persons need individual solutions and support and attempts to broadly group us together really call to mind for many of us how the Nazis tried to figure out which autistic kids would be able to be productive-members and which should be euthanized. It calls to mind the continued attempts to "clean" the human genome of us through genetic testing and eugenics, as though our ability to be productive or our needs for external support determine whether we should live or die.
Lethomathica
Lethomathica is a term I created to more specifically refer to the common memory issues of neurodivergent persons, especially ADHDers and autistic persons. There is a lot of disagreement about how to refer to our memory issues. Many find "malformed object permanence" to be infantilizing; "impaired working memory" does not cover enough of the types and consequences of our memory issues; and both are using pathologizing language.
"Lethomathica" is formed similarly to "lethologica", the technical term for tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. "Letho-" means "forget" and instead of "logica" which means "word", I use "mathica" which means "knowledge". I feel this calls to mind how our knowledge and memories still exist, they are just out-of-reach until they are triggered or worked through a path to get to.
Jingoism
Jingoism is supposed to refer specifically to nationalistic in-group vs out-group dynamics, but I never really saw the point to reserving the word specifically for nations. Then, you also have the fact that other words meant to more generally refer to such dynamics are also an example of colonialism. Anyway, I use "jingoism" to refer to these sort of negative group dynamics.
Persons vs. People
I grew up learning "people" is the plural of person. That's not exactly true. "People" is a group of persons. In the same way that "herd" is a group of lions. There's a saying in the Autistic community, "If you've met one autistic person, then you've met one autistic person."
Unless something I am saying can be applied to the Autistic People as a group, I tend to default to "autistic persons" to explicitly make clear that I am not speaking over the experiences and thoughts of others. Autism is a multidimensional spectrum condition with many different presentations. The Autistic People are not a monolith and we have a wide range of experiences, backgrounds, and every other difference imaginable.
ADHDer
How I refer to ADHDers. ADHD already has a pretty terrible name and it's way difficult to say in identity-first language, but this is how I handle it.
Autistic Conversion Therapy Torture
Also known as ABA or "Applied Behavioral Analysis". Created under the same principles and by one of the same persons as gay conversion therapy torture—Ole Ivar Løvaas—ABA seeks to separate autism from the autistic through operant conditioning, i.e. through brainwashing. It has been shown to be ineffective by the American Department of Defense in the largest study on ABA and is known to contribute to depression, trauma & PTSD, suicide, and more. It is a major point of contention between Autistic People and anti-autism organizations like Autism Speaks.
Due to lobbying by anti-autism groups, ABA is frequently the only insurance-approved support provided for autistic children in America. ABA regularly consists of hours longer than an adult's workweek for each child and is a major industry earning millions of dollars for the groups providing the "treatment". ABA violates all four major principles of bioethics.
Partly because of the difficulty in getting therapies and supports approved by insurances and also partly because many medical professionals recognize the horror of ABA, some non-horrible forms of therapy market and code themselves as ABA, but are not ABA. A surprisingly robust and helpful wikihow article on evaluating ABA therapies as harmful or not can be found at this link: Wikihow: "How to Tell if an Autism ABA Therapy Is Harmful".
Autoethnography
Autoethnography is a form of writing in which we examine our lived experiences and anecdotes to try to more broadly connect and analyze the community we exist in. It is a popular form of qualitative research in the Disabled community. Ethnographies are an accepted form of research, but one of the precepts of self-advocacy is "Nothing about us without us". We are the best persons to tell our stories and how we are impacted and live. Rather than ethnographies of others, we reflect upon and connect our own stories, so autoethnography. This is the primary method I use to compose my articles and speeches.
Tilt
Tilt is gaming slang. An example of being "on tilt" in gaming could be when someone in a poker game gets irritated and starts making bad plays. I specifically use "tilt" and "being on tilt" to mean pushing my scales closer to meltdown. If I am on tilt, then I am meltdown-adjacent. If I am tilting or if something or someone is tilting me, then I am not able to self-regulate as quickly as I am being disturbed.
