We spoke with autistic advocate and autism pseudoscience watchdog Anne Borden King about the continued proliferation of questionable and outright fraudulent “treatments” for autism.
Tag: advocacy
Our senior editor Shannon Rosa was invited to participate in the 2021 UC Davis Neurodiversity Summit, on a panel debating the role of the Neurodiversity Movement in supporting and including autistic people with intellectual and communication disabilities.
The autistic community owes it to the next generation to show them that the world has a place for them, and that in this place they will always be welcome. All autistics deserve to accept themselves for who they are.
When people generally said to be incapable of communication find ways of making clear what they do and don’t want through means other than words, this is self-advocacy.
Ivanova Smith @lauralovesian1 My name is Ivanova Smith and I am a proud autistic activist advocate. I advocate at the Washington State legislature! I testify at bill hearings about policies that affect me as a developmentally disabled person. One of the bills I put the most attention to is to shut down state institutions. [Image: Ivanova Smith testifying against a Bill that allow respite to be provided at an institution! They have brown hair. They are wearing black suit with grey shirt and tie. They are speaking into a microphone.] There are four state-run institutions in Washington, and they hold 800 people with Intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD). These used to be called training schools. I have heard the arguments for support of these institutions many times while I have waited to give testimony. I have had to listen to all these arguments on why it OK to imprison people like me.…
Housing for autistic adults is a fraught and confusing topic. We talked with Sam Crane, who explains why group homes can be bad for disabled residents, and why “intentional” housing often means just the opposite for the disabled people who actually live there.
Holly Robinson Peete | Photo: Gatepath [image: Candid photo of actress & author Holly Robinson Peete] Actress, author, and philanthropist Holly Robinson Peete spoke at a Gatepath event near San Francisco last week. She talked about her new book Same But Different: Teen Life on the Autism Express, which she co-wrote with her autistic son RJ and his non-autistic twin sister Ryan, about understanding and including autistic people, about supporting autistic kids with high support needs who don’t have the resources her family does, and why “We need to spread the word about how neurodiversity is another form of diversity.” TPGA’s Shannon Rosa talked with Holly after the event, which was nifty because Shannon worked with the HollyRod foundation during the earliest part of the iPads for Autism movement, including developing a spreadsheet of recommended autism apps, had interviewed Holly, and had featured her writing here on TPGA — but…
As an autistic, the impression I was left with after reading Steve Silberman’s book NeuroTribes was one of enormous relief. The book not only avoids the usual pitfalls of fear-mongering and stigmatizing language that surround the topic of autism, but actually explains the origins of those pitfalls
Part of my imposter syndrome probably has to do with the fact that, in the ’80s, an autism diagnosis didn’t exist for kids like me: I was considered merely an academically gifted, artistic, shy little girl. My autistic traits were explained away or overlooked.
John Elder Robison was a discussant for the Autism Social, Legal, and Ethical Research Special Interest Group at the 2014 International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR). He ended up taking the group to task, stating that the autism science community is headed for disaster if it does not change course on several factors – and noting for context the larger size of the US autistic community in proportion to other minority groups such as Jewish or Native American communities. Mr. Robison asserted that autistic people need to be the ones providing oversight and governance for autism research. He condemned the use of words like “cure.” He pointed out that researchers’ explicit or implicit efforts to eradicate autistic people is a formula for disaster and needs to stop. And he affirmed that memoirs and narratives written by autistic people are more trustworthy than writing about autism by nonautistics. Many thanks to…