I don't like being referred to as a "person with autism". I can't just set it down, it's not something I can remove. It is fundamental to the way I interact with the world, right down to how stim enters my brain. If my brain has types of inputs no allistic person can even approach, and methods of processing inherently different, it is an existence no allistic person can reach. There is no version of me that is not autistic.
A "cure" is the same as shooting me and replacing me with someone else.
The type of person I am is autistic. I am autistic.
I know it is a big trend in leftist spaces to use person first language, but in many situations that just sounds like eugenics to me. Personhood is not some distinct universal experience. There is no “ideal human mind” floating out there in the aether for them to recognize in me.
I get that person first language helps some people recognize that thoughts happen behind my eyes, but if the only way they can do that is by imagining I’m them, I don’t care.
Personally, I wouldn’t have any problem with “person with autism” a priori or in a vacuum, but what bothers me about it is that it is used with the actual intention of separating my autism from who I am, and that combined with the fact that it’s often allistic people promoting it makes it feel like framing my autism as something negative and that I ought to be treated in spite of it rather than framing it as something normal. Which sucks because it is a part of who I am and it feels like they’re just denigrating me for being autistic but in an indirect way.