This is a post by Bianca Cepollaro (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University), Marta Jorba (Pompeu Fabra University), Valentina Petrolini (University of Bologna).
The word ‘autistic’ has recently been reclaimed, especially within neurodiversity movements. We can observe how it is used with pride in political slogans (e.g., “I am autistic and I am proud”), online communities (e.g., r/AutisticPride on Reddit, whose description reads: “a bunch of proud autistic folks”; #autisticpride hashtag on X), blog posts (e.g., “Autistic as a reclaimed word”), popular articles, and activism.
But this idea of “reclaiming” the word ‘autistic’ is surprising, if you think about it. Reclamation usually involves slurs—i.e., derogatory terms that target people for their belonging to some category, like for their nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and so on. So, this raises the question: Is ‘autistic’ a slur? And how is it being reclaimed? In a recent paper, we address these two issues.
Is ‘Autistic’ a Pejorative Term? Surely, ‘autistic’ has pejorative uses, of at least two kinds. One of them is meant to derogate ingroups (that is, group members) and is reminiscent of prototypical slurs. ‘Autistic’ can be used to derogate a particular individual because of their neurodivergence, thus humiliating the whole category at once. This is what we observe in accounts like this on Reddit: “My friend keeps poking at me for being autistic … When I try to say something he’s like ‘shut up autistic’ and doing the autistic screeching thing”; “Someone insulted me today by saying ‘You really are autistic.’”
Another pejorative use of ‘autistic’ targets alleged outgroups (i.e., people who are taken not to be autistic). In these uses, this term is supposed to insult an alleged non-autistic person by ascribing them the negative properties stereotypically associated with autism. These uses communicate the assumption on which they rely: that having properties associated with autism is bad, and that it is especially shameful for neurotypicals to display them. We can find various uses of this sort. For instance, take the gamer forum NeoGAF, where a user dismisses something the original poster (OP) said by replying, ‘OP is autistic.’ In this example, ‘autistic’ does not derogate its direct target because of their autism: it is assumed they are not really autistic. Rather, these uses convey that there is something wrong with being autistic in the first place. These uses present autism as a negatively connoted condition that people would not want to apply to themselves.
But alongside these pejorative uses against ingroups and outgroups, ‘autistic’ also has many non-offensive uses that merely refer to people who are autistic. This suggests, we think, that ‘autistic’ is not a slur. While slurs are basically always derogatory, across uses and contexts, ‘autistic’ can, but need not, be used pejoratively. Overall, the negative connotation of ‘autistic’ seems to arise from context (including widespread assumptions, stereotypes, tone, prosody, or emoji and emoticons), rather than from the lexical item per se.
How is ‘Autistic’ Being Reclaimed? Let’s now move to the second question that we explore in the paper: how is ‘autistic’ being reclaimed, assuming that it is? Linguistic reclamation is a coping strategy that consists in taking a term of abuse against one’s group and using it as an expression of pride instead. It is a subversive act: speakers refuse to surrender to discrimination and prejudice, and to the existing linguistic practices. Indeed, this is what the proud uses of ‘autistic’ seem to be doing. Reclaiming the label ‘autistic’ is a way to characterize autism positively, a way to take control of one’s group narrative. Think, among other examples, of Greta Thunberg’s famous tweet in 2019: “I have Asperger’s and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And– given the right circumstances– being different is a superpower. #aspiepower”. Reclamation also presents autism as a central part of one’s identity: it is not that someone ‘has autism,’ but rather, autism is part of who they are. They could not possibly be the person they are without that. And this is also why they should be proud of it. For these reasons, we find it plausible to conclude that indeed ‘autistic’ is being reclaimed.
However, the reclamation of ‘autistic’ is peculiar on several grounds. For one thing, as we have noted, it reclaims a term that is not a slur to begin with. Rather, it is a term that has pejorative uses in context, against which reclamation reacts. What is more, the reclamation of ‘autistic’ also reacts to the introduction of alternative expressions (like ‘person with autism’) that are perceived as offensively euphemistic, no matter how well-intended (for an examination of identity-first versus person-first approaches to autism, see Jorba, Cepollaro and Petrolini (2024)). Those who reclaim ‘autistic’ feel that allegedly politically correct uses of ‘person with autism’ actually suggest that there is something intrinsically bad in being called ‘autistic.’ After all, no one would be bothered if they are described with positive labels (say, ‘handsome’ or ‘brilliant’) or even with neutral terms, like ‘librarian’ or ‘neighbor’. On this view, ‘person with autism’ perpetuates a condescending way to address and treat autistic people, and reclamation challenges the idea that there would be anything undesirable with identifying as autistic. This means that in the case of ‘autistic,’ at least two different phenomena open up a path to the proud self-ascription of this label. The first phenomenon is very typical of reclamation: A term is used in a pejorative way, and this motivates the need for speakers (usually ingroups) to react against verbal abuse by repurposing the same term with pride. The second phenomenon is more specific to ‘autistic’ but also highlights a further function of reclamation that is not exactly repurposing pejorative labels, but rather reacting against the euphemistic use of ‘person with autism’ and the pejorative connotations that it allegedly carries.
Note that we can observe similar tendencies in other communities, like the Deaf community, where many people prefer to be called ‘Deaf’ (capital D —cf. ‘Black’) rather than ‘people with hearing loss’ or ‘people who are deaf,’ for similar reasons as the ones we illustrated for ‘autistic’. This further suggests that these linguistic changes do not entirely depend on the specificities of ‘autistic,’ but rather exemplify a more general (and interesting) tendency—one that challenges the existing taxonomies and widespread assumptions about pejorative language, derogation, and reclamation.
These observations encourage scholars to make room in their taxonomies for terms that are not prototypical slurs, but can be used pejoratively. They also illuminate a distinctive function of reclamation, i.e., rejecting certain euphemistic expressions by representing some ways of being and living as positive and legitimate. We hope that this work will open the path for future studies on further examples (possibly terms like ‘schizophrenic,’ ‘sociopath,’ ‘psychopath,’ or ‘narcissist,’ among others).
To read more, check out our paper, Cepollaro, B., Jorba, M. & Petrolini, V., (2026) “The Case of ‘Autistic’: Pejorative Uses and Reclamation”, Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 13: 7. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.7173
Bianca Cepollaro is associate Professor in Philosophy of Language at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Milan), where she conducts theoretical and experimental research on hate speech and counterspeech.
Marta Jorba is Serra Húnter associate Professor in Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities, Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where she conducts research in philosophy of mind, of psychology and psychiatry, focusing mainly on inner speech and mental health, as well as in theoretical questions on intersectionality studies.
Valentina Petrolini is associate Professor in Philosophy of Science at the University of Bologna, where she works primarily in philosophy of psychiatry and psychology. Her work focuses on the boundary between normal and pathological states, as well as on epistemological debates surrounding diagnosis, classification, and identity.
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