[pdenton]

Instead of saying you're autistic, say you have autism. What you are is a human being, most likely. Having autism is just one of your traits.

TL;DR Autism is what you've got, not who you are.

[larve]

Many autistic people prefer to say they are autistic. Hopefully it's become clear that I think this way, and I can't just not think this way. Thinking is my main way of interacting with the world, it's not just "a trait".

[naasking]

You can ignore the parent comment. It's become fashionable these days to not use certain descriptive labels in a traditional manner because a certain class of people feel it's dehumanizing by "reducing one to one's condition". For instance, someone isn't "diabetic" they're a "person with diabetes", because the diabetes is just something they have it's not who they are. You're not "autistic", you're a "person with autism", and so on.

It's just a semantic game that is only making communication more verbose for no meaningful gain, as if everyone didn't already understand "autistic" to mean "person with autism".