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This is something I have seen being talked about a lot lately, and I was considering some changes to some wikiHow articles in the Autism Spectrum category. I wanted to run it past first before doing anything, so tell me what you think.

The word “Asperger’s”, which is used is some wikiHows, has been under fire a lot recently, so I was wondering if we should phase it out on autism wikiHows. The reason I am suggesting this on the forums is because there is a lot of autism articles, and I would not want to make any changes without a consensus, especially because I know there are some users who dedicate a lot of time into writing autism-related articles. It may also involve title changes or merging articles.

There are two main reasons for requesting this change:

  • The first is that there has been a lot of controversy of the word “Asperger’s” being used interchangeably with “high-functioning” or “mild” autism. It can be seen as categorising autistic people as “Us VS Them”, as well as implying that some autistic people are better than others. Just Google “Aspie supremacy”.
  • The other reason (and this is the big one), is that Hans Asperger, who the condition is named after, was a Nazi as well as a eugenicist with some very anti-autism ableist views . This wasn’t known at the time that the condition was named, but new evidence has came to light over the years, with this becoming more well-known. Gradually this word is becoming less accepted and many people consider it offensive, due to it carrying a lot of ableism and anti-Semitism.

I do understand that this term is still frequently used, and may be quite searched for, but I don’t think that this erases the fact that many people, especially autistic Jews, consider this word highly offensive and feel it glorifies its namesake, who was a literal Nazi . For this reason, I believe that there should be some changes to the terminology used in some articles, to reflect people’s best interests.

Here is what I suggest:

  • Avoid using the term “Asperger’s” in articles, edit pages which use this term.
  • Either retitle or merge articles using “Asperger’s” in the title. The most widely accepted replacement for “Asperger’s” is “low-support autism”, however this can be a bit of a mouthful, and it seems a bit unnecessary, so it may be best to just say “autistic”, meaning that some articles may get merged, for example an article such as Recognize Asperger’s in a Toddler could be renamed “Recognize Autism in a Toddler”, with some edits to the article. But an article such as Be a Good Friend to Someone Who Has Asperger’s Syndrome could be merged with Be a Great Friend to an Autistic Person .
  • Perhaps some mention of the issues behind the term “Asperger’s” in the article Write About Autism

TL;DR: The word “Asperger’s”, used in many wikiHow articles is named after a Nazi , hence it might be better if we phase it out in our articles in response to the controversy surrounding this label (as well as just doing the right thing). Many autistic Jews have expressed concern with this label.

Sorry for the rambling. I don’t want to make any changes without the go-ahead from other editors, especially ones who frequently work on autism-related articles, so let me know what you think.

P.S. I am specifically asking about what we do on wikiHow, this is not a general chat thread. If you want to know more, you can Google it (trigger warning, of course).

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I’d be in favour of changing this, aside from the general ethical implications which I think you’ve covered well, Asperger’s has been removed as a diagnosis from the two most commonly used diagnostic manuals: the APA’s DSM-V (2013) and the WHO’s ICD-11 (released in 2018, international standard from 01/01/2022). In both of these manuals, Aspergers and PDD-NOS have been subsumed into the broader diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, as such, it’s more medically correct to use ‘autism’, particularly in the case of ‘recognise…’ etc. articles as, for the majority of practitioners, Asperger’s no longer exists as a new diagnosis

If we were to make these sort of changes, I think it would probably be valuable to include a note in the intro/add additional methods/etc. (as appropriate) to flag up that Asperger’s is included to make clear for those who are more familiar with Asperger’s as a term, and/or who have a diagnosis of Asperger’s and prefer that term, that Asperger’s/what would previously have been diagnosed as Asperger’s is still included

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Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think we should keep the changes limited to editing article text and not merge or retitle anything yet.

I understand the desire to phase it out and I’m personally not opposed to removing most mentions of “Asperger’s” on articles that don’t specifically mention Asperger Syndrome in the title. But I actually suspect the term is primarily under fire on social media, and doesn’t necessarily reflect its real-world use yet. “Asperger’s” or “aspie” is still used colloquially even now, and I’ve heard of people still being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome because the doctor was old and/or had internalized ableism. And Asperger Syndrome won’t be officially phased out as a diagnosis until 2022, so countries that don’t use the DSM may still be diagnosing people with Asperger Syndrome for awhile while people try to catch up.

Google Trends shows that while “autism” is more popular as a search term, the searches for “Asperger Syndrome” or “Asperger’s” have remained relatively consistent since 2004. And an incognito Google search for “aspergers” pulls up articles from WebMD, Autism $peaks (which is an awful organization but unfortunately does have a massive web presence and holds a lot of sway), Healthline, Autism Society, the National Institute of Health, and more sites; all describe the signs of “Asperger Syndrome” even though they clearly mention it’s not an official diagnosis anymore.

It’s worth considering our audience, too - we want to be able to help everyone , not just teens and young adults who are already familiar with autism acceptance and/or the neurodiversity movement. It’s only within the last five years that I’ve seen neurodiversity and autism acceptance gain support on mainstream sites, and it’s not unusual for adults over 40 to be behind the curve when it comes to disability terminology. Looking back at the Google Trends data, many of the searches related to “aspergers” are adults wondering if they’re autistic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some parents or teachers are looking up “aspergers” rather than “autism” simply because they’re not up-to-speed on this. If we remove all our references to Asperger Syndrome, we’re cutting out a lot of ways for older or less-informed people to find our resources, which means they could land on some far less Autistic-friendly sites (and I should point out that we’ve already fallen off the first page of virtually all autism-related Google searches, so we’re already at risk of not reaching these people in the first place!).

There’s also the reality that some autistic people are, unfortunately, dealing with internalized ableism. An autistic person once said to me that (CW/TW for ableism) they thought it was bad that Asperger Syndrome was merged into autism, because it was “unfair” to be putting nonspeaking intellectually disabled autistics in the same box as the highly intelligent speaking ones . I don’t agree with that at all, to be clear, but I also don’t think we should completely shut out those autistics. Being able to guide them to our resources could increase the chances of them accepting themselves and viewing all autistic people as worthy, and there is some degree of truth to the statement that autistics who need less support will have different needs and struggles than autistics who need more support.

I think that if we have a low-quality “Asperger’s” article that’s virtually identical to an existing autism article, then a merge is definitely worth discussing, and that we shouldn’t use “Asperger’s” in articles if there’s no context to it. I also agree mentioning the issues with the term “Asperger Syndrome” in Write About Autism is a good idea. But there are people who don’t know the connotations of the term and/or use “Asperger’s” or “aspie” to describe themselves, and I’d argue that making our resources Autistic-friendly means including the people who are most likely to be looking up articles on “Asperger’s”. Not everyone is involved in Autistic culture or the neurodiversity movement, for whatever reason, and I don’t think we should exclude them on the basis of the terminology they use.

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Thanks for taking the time to reply (and I know it took a long time because I was flipping between tabs to see if you had finished typing), I actually agree with what you said, it’s not something I really considered.

You are probably right in that it is mostly controversial on social media - sometimes I forget that social media is not real life. I understand that currently the term is still widely used, but of course, if there is a decline in its use in the future, this may be revised, but not necessarily right now.

I never really thought about “damage control”, but that makes a lot of sense, especially considering that wikiHow has other articles with a similar purpose, because otherwise people may get their (mis)information from other sources. An incognito search for me has similar results appearing (but fortunately not Autism $peaks ). It might be helpful to have the groups mentioned looking up to wikiHow for information, rather than some of the other dodgy sites you see, with a potentially more old-fashioned perspective on these issues.

I appreciate that you did also specify the parts that may work. There are articles which unnecessarily use the word “Asperger’s”, so that could be something that could be fixed, and there are also articles that fit in to the category of “low-quality “Asperger’s” article that’s virtually identical to an existing autism article”, so there’s that. That is also why I used the term “phase out” instead of “completely remove”, perhaps if we just do what we can while still keeping viewership up. I do absolutely agree that sometimes people have good intentions, but are not up-to-date on the preferred terminology, and they shouldn’t be excluded.

That is the exact reason that I started a discussion thread, because I knew it was likely I was missing out on something, and I think you’ve quite articulately explained your case, I would agree that at present, retitling or merging “Asperger’s” articles may be counterproductive.

(Also, thank you GB742 for adding that extra bit of information, I knew I had forgotten something!)

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