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 … Read more
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 … Read more
peers, autists, human companions: lend me your cognitive architecture (ears are not enough). what we now call “autism” originally described a way of thinking that its own framers acknowledged that everyone experiences. If “autistic thinking” is something that everyone experiences, where is the line drawn between “everyone” and the autistic person? Is everyone temporarily autistic … Read more
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 … Read more
How Making Sense of My Child’s Cannabis Use Helped Me Understand The Beauty of Human Adaptation Does Domestication of the Human Species Really Represent Our Shared Future on the Planet? My almost-adult child is a gifted and challenged person, navigating the transition to adulthood in post-industrial American society. They’re a systems thinker, who aces every … Read more
In part one, I explored my mother’s life and work, relative to the social conditions she experienced as a low-income, self-directed woman navigating the public health and housing systems, and asked whether, viewing her life through the arc of 76 years of continuous productivity in the fiber arts, different decisions could have been made resulting … Read more
I’m not sure we should even be studying autism in the United States. My mother just turned 82 today. She has faced challenges in every measurable area of her life, that I won’t go into—that’s a different story. Her diagnosis has changed with the trends of the healthcare industry, and she has only recently been … Read more
Saying that autistic people who question the current paradigm of neurodivergence are seeking proof of a superpower does real harm. Diagnostic criteria are a snapshot. To refer to the snapshot as reality, without considering the hand that crafted the lens it was taken with, and for whose benefit, or what it distorts, cannot be seen … Read more
this is one kind of harm caused by the abled/disabled binary when it is applied as a permanent designation to people: it erases from view the environment that enables or disables a person, and it makes invisible all of the ways that the environment is designed to enable the abled person. it functions to other … Read more
Two people in a boat. One can row, but cannot navigate. The other can navigate, but cannot row. If we view each as a whole, each has both an asset and a liability—each is both abled and disabled. If we view the relationship as a whole, we can describe things differently. If participation and cooperation … Read more