c Society, whose director said that referring to autism as a means of conveying criticism of someone’s personal skills risked stigmatising the 535,000 people in Britain on the autistic spectrum.
Carol Evans, a director of the society, said: “Any pejorative use of terms relating to autism can cause deep distress and hurt to people affected by the condition. We as a charity are keen to raise awareness in order that these terms are not used lightly by commentators. To use such terms as a criticism of someone’s social skills only perpetuates the confusion that surrounds the condition.”
Nick Hornby, the best-selling writer whose 13-year-old son, Danny, has autism, joined the attack on Mr Osborne, saying that it was not acceptable to taunt an opponent as autistic.
Mr Hornby, who helped to found TreeHouse, an educational charity for children with autism, said: “George Osborne doesn’t seem to have noticed that most people over the age of 8 no longer use serious and distressing disabilities as a way of taunting people.”
There’s no story here: this is manufactured outrage. Osborne didn’t even introduce the word autistic – it was Mary Ann Sieghart who suggested that the term might apply to Osborne himself, who then, quite adroitly, turned it against Gordon Brown.
Anyway, the term is not inappropriate. It’s a problem of social interaction (not “learning difficulties”, as the article states) which goes all the way from full-blown autism, through Asperger’s Syndrome, to a general social incompetence. It’s a useful shorthand for that whole, particularly male, anorak mentality. In the circumstances it was an effective gibe for a Tory politician to make against Brown.
And should a charity dedicated to autism be promoting the idea that to call someone “autistic” is insulting? Will we be expected from now on to say “socially challenged” instead?
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