alt Hacker News"Have a disability" and "broken" are not synonyms.
There's no judgement or moralizing in having a disability. Autism and ADHD like you mentioned are disabilities.
But the people who have them are not broken. Having a disability means some part of your life is more difficult. But that's very very different from you as a person are broken.
For example, if you can fix the environment and the person can now function equally to someone without a disability, then maybe it's the environment that's broken. If you can fix the social expectation and suddenly the person can function equally, then maybe the society is broken. Even if you cannot accommodate the person's needs, insinuating they are broken is not a great framing -- it creates a sense of pity rather than constructively looking at means to support them.
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What else but pity should I feel toward non verbal autistic people?
> Have a disability" and "broken" are not synonyms
They really are. Like, you can alter the environment all you want but someone who needs glasses to see has broken eyes. Is it super common and do we have a cure? Yes and yes, but it's still, you know, not working. Disabled. Busted. Broken. Whichever word you pick isn't going to change the reality.
What is strange about the disability is when neurotypicals attack autists. It takes less then 1 second for the negative bias to trigger.
If you see a person without legs, do you tell him he is a piece of shit because he can't run? So why harass autistic people?