Oh I totally get where you are coming from, I could have written a good deal of that myself.

I'd offer you a hug if I could.

I completely agree that labels, words for boxes we put people in... should as additive, in a good way, as possible, descriptors, not restrictors.

But I also believe they should be accurate, and thus, we unfortunately still do live in a society, and we thus to at least some extent have to keep playing this word game.

I view a term like Autist simply as a matter of fact classifier, and while I won't force others to, I more or less use it as a self label, when it is relevant to some discussion.

My approach is 'take the word back' so that Autism Speaks and idiots who think the measles vaccine gave their kid Autism aren't the only morons using such words, proclaiming to represent me... us.

We can speak for ourselves actually, we're not all a bunch of invalid r-tards, and whether or not we like it, we are an extremely misunderstood and at risk minority group in much of the world... if we let others do all the talking, we shouldn't be surprised that they continue to get a lot of things very wrong.