Autistic people want to work as caregivers, but the system makes it difficult for them to stay in their jobs. This is a loss for the clients, who lose an autistic mentor, and for the autistic support worker, who can be both traumatized and unemployed.
Next time you are annoyed by an autistic person’s failure to comply or their different way of doing something or seeing the world, stop and consider the power of positive nonconformity and be grateful for those who dare to be different.
My brother died because of ableism. Because people—including very close family—were terrified to face his neurodivergence, and his disability.
On being angry and frustrated at the celebration at children’s “recovery” from autism, by people who will not actually bear the consequences of losing that diagnosis, for the rest of their lives.
These revelations, about presuming competence, human dignity, and the least dangerous assumption—they don’t apply only to kids who are secret geniuses. They apply to everyone. They are the most important for the kids who really do have intellectual disabilities, who really can’t read or use full sentences and who really do need extensive support.
When people claim that “cure autism now” and the disease model and the Judge Rotenberg Center are not about me, well I beg to differ. The only reason they’re not about me is that I’m old and verbal enough to not be vulnerable to that kind of abuse. Autistic people do not get abused [and/or put in ABA therapy] because they are low-functioning, they get abused because they do weird things.
This study’s results suggest that if an organization wants to evoke negativity from the public, using puzzle pieces is the way to go. Puzzle pieces evoke negativity. However, if an organization wants to evoke positivity about autism, puzzle-piece imagery is probably not the way to go.
When you see a child in an inclusion class, think of Rosemary. When you read this, an article written by a person with a developmental disability, think of Rosemary. These are her legacies, this is what she leaves behind.
