Tag: hate against the neurodiverse

fullhalalalchemist:

when we say we’re tired of politics we mean that we’re tired if being scared, tired of being worn out, tired of anticipating the next hate crime, tired of seeing what shitty piece of legislation “conservatives” and even liberal people come up with next, tired of not being taken seriously, tired of our lives apparently not mattering to people, tired of so so so much.

ruffboijuliaburnsides:

did-you-kno:

If you’re trying to figure out whether
someone has a fake smile, look at their
eyes. When you have a genuine smile,
the corners of your mouth upturn, your
cheeks raise, and the skin around your
eyes crinkles. Known as the ‘Duchenne
smile’, it happens involuntarily when
you’re truly happy about something- so
a smile without eye crinkles is a good
indicator that someone was forcing it. Source Source 2 Source 3

ahahah oh boy science no.

i learned to fake that part of the smile when i was fuckin 14 and miserable, if i smile you ain’t knowin it’s fake unless i want you to.

Also, the info in the original post is super fucking ableist against people who have different expressions for whatever reasons. Autistic people, blind people, people with muscle or movement disorders or paralysis that affects the muscles of the face, etc., often have different patterns of expression. For example, autistic people often have smiles that look ‘fake’ to neurotypical people. It’s not that we’re not happy or genuine. Right now, my five year old nephew (moderate to severely deaf, probably autistic too) smiles with only one half of his face. The other eye and half of his mouth he screws up tightly like he’s wincing. That’s just how he smiles. Sure, there are times he expresses with his whole face like a quote normal person unquote, but nine times out of ten, it’s his quirky, atypical smile/grimace. And that’s fine. He’s a happy neurodiverse kid.

Also, tangentially, fuck all that noise about ‘eye contact means you’re not lying’. No, eye contact means nothing. There are a hundred different neurobiological, social and cultural reasons why people don’t do it. Body language and facial expressions can only tell you a small part of the story when you don’t know the person and their background. Just stop judging based on science invented by sadists who liked torturing homeless people in the name of ‘research’. (Google Duchenne, I’m not exaggerating.)

i.
“but you don’t look autistic”
i know, it’s shocking
i’m sure you were expecting scaly green skin
or another pair of eyes hidden beneath my bangs
but take a look
two legs, two arms, on pair of eyes
i look just like you
i look like a human
because that’s what i am
autism does not have a costume
our wardrobe isn’t embroidered with puzzle pieces and the color blue
funnily enough
like everyone else on this earth
people with autism are all different
our experiences are not stagnate across the globe 
and just because i can disguise my stims
doesn’t mean i am more or less autistic than someone who cannot
and believe it or not
saying that is not a compliment
ii.
yes
autistic people can have jobs
we can be loved by someone other than our family members
we can drive
and go shopping
not all of us are nonverbal
and while most of us cannot handle the horrors of eye contact
and certain stimuli 
once again
we’re all different
try not to act so surprised when we’re able to appear just as neurotypical as you
iii.
“oh, so you’re like Rain Man?”
if this is your way of implying that you can drop a bunch of toothpicks on the ground and then ask me how many there are
kindly fuck off
iv.
“autism is a disease and i’m sure they’ll find a cure for you”
we are not sick
we are not suffering
illnesses are contagious
you can’t catch autism
it isn’t going to spread if you get too close to me
this isn’t rocket science
it isn’t that hard to understand
you either have autism
or you never will
and more importantly
there is nothing about us that needs to be cured
v.
instead of listening to a fear mongering
hate spreading
poor representation
unsupportive
harmful group that markets itself on our existence and feels the need to “fix” autistic people
why not just listen to autistic people instead?

Five Myths / Things You Should Know About People with Autism
(cc, 2017)

sleepy-hylian:

queen-val:

mrs-transmuter:

elaxisfae:

lolhooplacatz:

crazyeddieme:

just-a-penis-with-a-dream:

kibblesundbitches:

unaspi:

bluechirri:

fishyinspace:

supervengers:

cishetsnotinvited:

transheadcold:

nauticus:

friendly reminder not to support lindt this easter season, or apparently ever again, because they support autism speaks.

Wowwwwwwww

SIGH.

can someone please explain why autism speaks is so bad?

because they’re adamant that autism is a disease that can be “cured”. They don’t have a single autistic person on their board. Autism Speaks produces advertisements, small films, ect. about what a burden autistic people are to a society. They only spend about 4% of their money on “family services.” They create a stereotype that makes it hard for actual autistic people, like myself, be heard and recognized as actually autistic. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder before they realized that I actually showed signs of Asperger’s. They don’t actually help us. 

That’s the problem with Autism Speaks. 

(tw for violence, ableism, abuse, murder, and death)

It goes deeper than not having any autistic board members. Many of the allistics running the organization promote the horrific notion that you’re better off dead than autistic, and their influence and “activism” only supports the ideology resulting in the continued murder of autistic children and adults by their parents and caregivers.

Former Autism Speaks board member Harry Slatkin, whose wife, Laura, continues to serve on the Board of Directors, stated in an interview with Town and Country while still a board member that sometimes he hoped their autistic son David would drown in the backyard pond rather than “suffer like this all his life.” Evidencing a pattern of similarly violent rhetoric, Autism Speaks is also responsible for the 2006 PSA “Autism Every Day“ in which their then Vice President states on camera that she considered putting her autistic daughter in the car and driving off a bridge, and that the only reason she refrained from doing so was because her other, non-autistic daughter would have been waiting for her at home—her autistic daughter was in the room as she made these statements. Furthermore, the producer of this PSA explicitly admitted that the film was intentionally staged to portray negative images of autistic people and their families.

Only four days following the release of “Autism Every Day,” pathologist Karen McCarron smothered her autistic daughter with a garbage bag. McCarron stated that she murdered Katie because her “autism had not been improving,” had thought about killing Katie, that made an earlier brief attempt at suffocation, wanted to cure Katie, thought killing Katie would make her “complete” in heaven, and wanted to live without autism and thus had to kill Katie. Investigators found that McCarron was obsessed with different treatments for Katie. (See People v. FRANK-McCARRON, 934 NE 2d 76 – Ill: Appellate Court, 3rd Dist. 2010.) Though it is not presently possible to draw a direct connection between Autism Speaks’ PSA and Katie’s murder, this crime and dozens like it only underscore how the kind of rhetoric that Autism Speaks favors only serves to recklessly endanger the lives of autistic people.

(source article)

Autism Speaks also publicly supports the Judge Rotenberg Center, a group home for autistic and neurodivergent students that uses “treatments” like food and sleep deprivation and electric shock to try and train the residents into acting neurotypical. The center has changed states three times in an attempt to bypass regulation against abusive treatment, and their practices have resulted in the deaths of more than one student.

It’s not just an issue of Autism Speaks making it harder for us to get proper diagnoses and treatment. Autism Speaks is actively killing us.

Well shit.

I was eyeing up their strawberries and cream lindor the other day but this is more important than delicious chocolate.

you all need to know this. You really do. Please do not support Lindt or anything that supports autism speaks. Please.

Seriously Lindt makes my favourite chocolate ever?? but My boyfriend is my favourite person ever so looks like I’m gonna go find a better candy maker, one that doesn’t support murder.

ghirardelli > lindt, and not just because of the autism speaks thing.

I have autism and IM NOT JOKING THIS IS IMPORTANT

Exactly. The autism “research” that autism speaks does, reeks very heavily of eugenics.

Okay, but it’s not enough to just not buy this brand of chocolate. It has to be made known exactly what kind if org Autism Speaks is. The reason they spend so much on PR is so that the general public never funds out how reprehensible they are. No non-autistic person I speak to is ever aware of these things.

If you find out an company is partnered with Autism Speaks, contact them. Call, email, write letters. Offer alternative charities. It may not work every time, but the more people you tell, the fewer people will be likely to donate to them in the future.

this post is from 2014, anyone know if lindt still support autism speaks?

https://www.autismspeaks.org/site-wide/lindt

Unfortunately this is an ongoing thing every year.

Autism Speaks Accepts Support From Neo-Nazi Group

perladelsur2000:

emily84:

breakfastwithlucien:

(Link is via Do Not Link)

Autism Speaks is accepting support from Soldiers of Odin, a white supremacist vigilante group, and happily featuring their group portrait on their website asking for $ to fund their shitty autistic-abusing organisation. As A$ are flat-out eugenicists and the organisation’s leadership is in bed with Trump, I for one am very unfucking surprised that they’re chill with their money-making events being full of actual Nazis. So much for their new ‘progressive’ mission statement. Do not trust or support A$.

Here’s another article explaining this shit in detail.

Of course they would.

Autism Speaks Accepts Support From Neo-Nazi Group

cindymayweather:

“One fun fact I learned while on the air with Keith Olbermann was that humans on the Internet are scumbags. People say children are cruel, but I was never made fun of as a child or an adult. Suddenly, my disability on the world wide web is fair game. I would look at clips online and see comments like, "Yo, why’s she tweakin?” “Yo, is she retarded?” And my favorite, “Poor Gumby-mouth terrorist. What does she suffer from? We should really pray for her.” One commenter even suggested that I add my disability to my credits: screenwriter, comedian, palsy.“

Maysoon Zayid on TEDWomen (x)

neurowonderful:

somecrazybiatch:

neurowonderful:

(Image description: A partial screenshot of a blog post. The title reads “How I reduced screaming and verbal stimming in my child with autism”, and below that is a colour photograph of a hand holding a rectangular plastic “clicker” device.)

[snip]

I don’t agree with everything this lady did, especially the correction of verbal stimming, but I think the basis of this is fairly good practice with any child.  You reward good behaviors and correct unwanted behaviors, which can be done through time-outs, taking away something of value to the child, or simply ignoring them.  People don’t like hearing about methods that sound like dog training, but, as a dog trainer, I’ve seen firsthand that the minds of dogs and children are pretty darn similar, and they can usually be taught in similar manners.  In my child development class, we talked about how some speech therapists will utilize positive reinforcements to encourage speech in autistic children, basically training them to talk.  They started out rewarding any noise, and then slowly specified to rewarding words, and then rewarding sentences.  The clicker seems awful, but it’s actually a good tool to phase out food as a reward, while still giving a reward.  This may have been a really old method, but it worked.  I don’t think this is an attempt to “cure” a child, but to effectively teach them more appropriate behaviors, like communication.  Personally, I would think it’s really important to teach effective communication, for the sake of the child.  Obviously, the child needs something, they’re trying to communicate something, but can’t do so in a way that their caregivers can understand.  Is it so wrong to teach children how to express themselves so that they can fulfill their wants and needs?

I’m going to go ahead and be blunt here.

Read More

Kelly Sue DeConnick Explores Gender Dynamics and Defiance on Bitch Planet

kellysue:

Paste: The way that the word “compliant” is used, and takes on these incredible sinister connotations throughout the first issue…when did you arrive on that?

DeConnick: Everyone who works in the medical field hates me for that choice, by the way. Apparently, non-compliant patients are nothing you want to cheer for. I don’t remember making that decision. This is a thing I see with my daughter. My daughter is a very spirited 4-year-old girl. And with my daughter more than with my son — when my son is, let’s say spirited, it tends to be, “Boys do that; that’s boys.” And it’s chuckled at, if not encouraged. And when my daughter has initiative or is disagreeable or has a different idea about how she wants to do things, she’s a pain in the ass. She’s a troublemaker. She needs to smile and act nice and not disrupt the system. And I want so badly to protect this[, this] thing about my daughter that I most treasure right now: Tallulah does not give a fuck if you like her. I am so proud of her for that. And I know that there are parents that that will horrify. Please understand that we have a saying in our home, that you don’t have to be nice, but you must be kind. And what we’re trying to emphasize is you don’t have to be compliant; you don’t have to just go along with the way of things.

Full interview in LINK. 

I haven’t read Bitch Planet or Pretty Deadly yet, but I have to say I approve of the word usage of ‘complaint’ here. Many people, many of them disabled, many of them female or queer or people of colour, have the label ‘non-compliant’ attached to their files simply because they have opinions about their own medical or psychiatric care that do not mesh with those of their primary physician. This isn’t a benign thing – people’s accounts of their symptoms are dismissed, they are forced into courses of treatment or medications that are unsuitable for them, forced into institutions or even die through improper medical or psychiatric care, all because a physician decided their patient was too uppity and didn’t have a right to independently research their condition or make informed choices about what treatment was right for them. Given that disabled people, women, queer people and POC are more likely to be subjected to these forms of social control by medical practitioners, government agencies and law enforcement, the use of the word compliant rings true to many people who have been subject to the whims of these agencies in the course of their lifetime. Just my two cents, from a disabled autistic queer girl, for whom the world has been difficult, but not as horrific as it has been for some of my fellows.