No, of course. I'm not feeling any hostility from you at all--just trying to give you what I know, having researched these things fairly extensively.
You're correct about HFA not being a diagnostic classification in the DSM-IV. My apologies. I believe I meant that the definition was going to be restructured more according to current symptoms than to patient history.
The truth is, though, that the only significant difference between autism and AS in the DSM-iv is... well, it's basically whether or not you speak on time or not. There's some things about spinning objects, patterns, and so on, but those commonly intersect with AS, in addition to a large number of other symptoms not even mentioned.
I will agree, of course, that low-functioning autism is beyond horrifying, and an entirely different beast.
However, high-functioning autism and Asperger's are qualitatively the same thing in the end-game. A wide spectrum that means a lot of things. I say this knowing that one of my acquaintances was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, AS, and HFA by different people in a similar period of her life--and these are all mutually exclusive diagnoses, dude. The edge is extremely blurry. She's a very compassionate and gentle person with some sensory issues and a weird sense of humor, and successfully attending college. She also has a neurotypical boyfriend. Sure, you'd meet her and go "there's something bizarre about this person," but that's true for many of the non-autistic people I know as well.
Furthermore, they are both titled as part of the "autistic spectrum," or perhaps the "pervasive developmental disorders." So, yes, Asperger's is, in a sense, "part of autism."
The other thing I'm going to say is that whatever I was dealing with fucking sucked. I don't know what you want to call it, and I don't care--but it wasn't just some sort of "Oh, yeah, I didn't notice so it must not be much of a problem" thing. It was something I fought with and tried to hide, day after day, year after year, and which nearly destroyed me. It earned me reams of emotional, physical, and (mild) sexual abuse. I still have to constantly ask myself how someone else would perceive my words and remind myself to read situations, to make eye contact, and so on. Just because it's easier now doesn't mean it was never there.
I don't mean to accuse you of trivializing my troubles, or those of anyone else, but one of the reasons why I don't tell anyone about this in real life is the "you're saying this, and therefore you must be some emo self-diagnosed dork" reaction.
Of course, your action here should also help the remove the other reaction--that being "you must be an emotionally fragile idiot with absolutely no social skills who thinks of me about as casually as you do my desk." So thank you, for the very least, for that.
Bah, I think I may be being unclear here. I'll say this:
I agree that the thread title may be regrettably ambiguous and disingenuous, but there's a lot of complexity and political issues below the surface which complicates the issue substantially.