THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autism news and resources: from autistic people, professionals, and parents
Those who would deny people access to their most effective method of communication because of concerns about the potential for false accusations should, as Rua Williams recently wrote, “ask [themselves] why a false accusation is more harmful than the ability to accuse.”
TPGA is observing Autism Acceptance Month by featuring accounts from autistic people about the differences accommodations (or lack thereof) make in their lives. Today, British autistic filmmaker and author Carly Jones outlines her “Top five understandings previous Autistic generations did not have, that the next Autistic generation must have as standard.” Carly Jones www.facebook.com/olley.edwards Carly and her family [image: A laughing white woman with long dark hair, lying on a striped blanket with her three children.] 1) See autism as a real disability Disability is not a dirty word, though it feels that way to some — we are all too often encouraged to see disability as “less than” “inferior,” or “disadvantaged.” I see disability as someone having a different experience of the world than is “typical.” Although Theory of Mind (lack of pre-installed knowledge that other people’s thoughts, wants, and agendas may differ from one’s own) is noted as…
Nicole Nicholsen womanwithaspergers.wordpress.com Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s Autism and Empathy website started me thinking about the whole empathy question in regards to autistic people — again. In my first post about autistics and empathy, I mentioned Theory of Mind issues as one of the possible reasons why there is a perception that autistic people lack empathy. With what I had read about Theory of Mind at the time, I’m now reexamining the concept and wondering if I had gotten it slightly wrong, especially in light of the recent challenges that other autistic writers have made to the prevailing ideas about autistics and Theory of Mind. The Sally-Anne Test The prevailing idea about autistics and Theory of Mind goes something like this: having good Theory of Mind means that a person is able to determine the contents of both one’s own mind and the minds of others; conversely, autistic people are unable to…
Elizabeth J. Grace www.tinygracenotes.com You can read in Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking about the shall-remain-nameless professor who said in front of me and many others in graduate school that autistics did not know what it was like to be themselves because they had no theory of mind, so one had to read research about them done by others in order to understand them at all, (which presumably if you were one of them, you never would anyway — this part is logically editorialized by me). There was another professor who said in a large class of aspiring special education and psychology researchers, “Except for Grace, the idiot savant, who doesn’t count,” because I recalled more than seven allegedly random numbers which were not actually random, but had a clear pattern, and he hadn’t told me ahead of time that the object of the exercise was to demonstrate that nobody…
Lydia Wayman www.autisticspeaks.wordpress.com If I knew what to say, I’d tell you a million little things that I’ve acquired in my brain over the weeks and months — and lifetime. If I could, I’d tell you that I’m so over age appropriateness. You say Disney and American Girl isn’t age-appropriate for me? Well, excuse my language, but I say you can shove it. I would, if I could, ask you what is the point of encouraging age appropriate interests? Is it to make friends? I have many, even more than I can keep track of sometimes. Is it so that people will like me? Hate to break it to you, but people already do like me (not everyone, but, well, obviously, right?). Is it so that I can be normal? And to what end, I would ask? If I’m comfortable with it, you should be comfortable with it, and that’s…