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Now that we’ve got that out of the way, this news report says that autism and Asperger’s will be conflated in the next DSM. I think this is a good thing. I’m tired of people thinking that Asperger’s is a ‘mild form of autism.’ They are the same disorder with slightly different manifestations. An autie’s lack of language skills can make the disorder to worse to people around him, whereas having the speech abilities that auties lack just makes my life as an Aspie miserable. No one can see that there’s anything different about me, and aren’t interested in explanations counter to what they expect to see.

Furthermore, Asperger’s has managed to get less ‘stigma’ than autism. Let us Aspies give the auties a leg up in that department.