Who is Jane Doe, and how do we provide her with justice?
The reason an institution like Cornell chooses to handle a case like Jane Doe vs the Cornell 7 internally has nothing to do with fairness, or protecting boys’ reputations, or even protecting the reputation of the institution. The reason is that institutions like Cornell are specifically designed to manufacture injustice, while obscuring that motive from…
How do we talk about repair, and who’s capable, in 500 characters?
“All autistic people can learn to be accountable for their actions, and to say otherwise is infantalizing and ableist.” Many variations on this theme are making their way through the platforms currently. While on the surface it appears well-meaning and affirming, it’s worth stepping back and considering the claim at face value, and how it…
Population as Organism: Epigenetics, Neurodiversity, and the Problem of the Individual
The Western neuroscience community has recently taken to saying that autism is genetic — a corrective, and a welcome one, to public claims, made from positions of real institutional power, that environmental exposure is the primary driver of rising diagnosis rates. The rebuttal leans on heritability: family studies put the heritable component of autism around…
continue reading So Autism is Genetic: What Does That Settle?
Articulated as personal responsibility — what I hold myself to, not a standard imposed on others. The online public space serves overlapping, non-competing functions — information exchange, community formation, identity articulation, advocacy, and low-cost contact for people otherwise isolated by geography, access, or circumstance. No single function is the “real” one that the others distract…
continue reading A Neurodiversity-Affirming Code of Ethics for Online Participation
ever since i was young, i’ve felt like i was from a different culture, and was dropped into this one by a stork. somewhere along the way, i decided to stick by this, and honor the integrity of my original culture, and not get too deep into this dominant culture that i still feel like…
fitness, in the modern economy, is the ability to engage in any given task, for as little or as long as one is conscripted, without asking what the project contributes to; propelled onward by a belief that the designers of the project have our collective interests in mind; that the project is always becoming more…
Our friend Tammy Zo (Pollard) needs our support. She is homeless, and in grave danger of losing her belongings, many of which are cultural archives and work that she has created herself. The fact that she needs our support is a consequence of our culture’s failure to maintain mutual support networks independent of institutional channels,…
continue reading call to action: mutual support for Tammy Zo
the etymology of the term ‘autism’ derives from an idea that a person with autistic traits is somehow isolated in a world of their own, that others can’t reach. i would offer that this is exactly wrong, and a projection by an observer with a mindset built from a variety of assumptions that prevents them…
The adaptation-to-pathology pipeline, pt 1
This series explores human traits and behaviors that are pathologized in the modern Western office-industrial complex, with the intent to spark cross-cultural discussion, and reassessment of what it means to be divergent. Two gait strategies, same anatomy, different verdicts—depending on what the ground is asking of the foot, and who’s asking the questions. Toe-walking—prioritizing the…
Many traditional cultures around the world—what I would call emplaced cultures—have sustained populations for millennia, within different watersheds, meeting different needs with different answers. Care distributed through community and across generations, calibrated to the place the community inhabits. Western medicine arrives with its own language—what is right and observable in every case across place and…