Thread by @scrappapertiger

So I just finished reading this book: trauma, stigma and autism, by Gordon Gates. My counsellor leant it to me & today asked what I'd give it out of 100, knowing I had a lot of issues with it. I'm dithering at around 50 rn, and not sure if I'm being overly mean or kind.

Asides from the off-putting (to me) subtitle about "loosening the grip of shame" (just overly-dramatic for my tastes), my overall sense of the book is that while it's one of v few that covers an extremely neglected but important area...

that impacts huge numbers of #ActuallyAutistic folks, I'm very frustrated to find its framing of autism deeply flawed and problematic.

Gates is autistic himself & a therapist, and while he dedicates a chunk at the start of the book to why the divide between Aspergers and ...

Classic autism is unhelpful and flawed, he then spends the rest of the book using this very divide, albeit with his own renaming: "ASHFA" & "CLAWHS" - "Aspergers Syndrome / High Functioning Autism" & "Classic Autistics Who Need High Levels Of Support" respectively.

I can see that he is being careful in places not to speak presumptuously for those with higher support needs, but I think he ends up instead speaking somewhat presumptuously for both groups (that's leaving aside that the divide itself isn't exactly valid).

My main issue with his framing here is that he seems overly focused on 'ASHFA' folks' struggles arising ONLY from rather stereotyped social difficulties and differences, rather than a broader difference in processing the world.

He seems to, troubling, allude to the idea that only 'CLAWHS' have sensory issues, for example, and not really consider the idea that invalidation about how we react to our environments, as well as other humans, might be a big part of the stigma.

While he talks extensively about the painful impact and trauma of stigma and invalidation in interpersonal interactions, etc, I still feel that to a large extent he centres the 'deficit' on the autistic person, rather than on a communication & empathic mismatch with the majority.

The biggest omission in this respect is that there is NO mention at all of the double-empathy problem, even more surprising given how recently the book was published (January 2019!) & the fact he cites @milton_damian, but only in relation to something else entirely.

He does repeatedly makes reference to difficulties autistic folks encounter against socio-normative expectations, but without the DEP framing & without acknowledgement of the other parts of autistic experience (sensory, monotropic ways of thinking, etc)...

he's really missing a huge part of the picture.

The most useful bits of the book, imv, are where he talks about concrete strategies for the individual, especially those derived from his own experience. There's some really good stuff there that I think can be valuable.

But with the problematic framing, I worry that it's a massive missed opportunity in really getting to the heart of why so many autistic people struggle with the impacts of these kinds of trauma, and can be misleading for therapists who don't have a more progressive view of autism

So, rather annoying read, with some good bits. Again given that so little is written about this topic, I can't help feeling like this is a huge missed opportunity, and very frustrating.

(folks who I remember tweeting with about this... @common_lime, @LoomesGill)

The author strikes me as someone who is struggling with being used to a more outdated framing of autism, trying to make it less so, with lived experience adding to that nuance, but the outcome feels inconsistent & just not really *there*.

Slightly stupidly I handed back the book today without thinking that quotes from it might be useful. It's possible I need to borrow it again if I feel motivated to write a more in-depth review.

Also @MxOolong will attest that I spent a lot of time yelling at this book in annoyance while reading it.

Oh another thing about this book is that while he does draw some experiences from a range of other autistic people (his clients), they are mostly men, and generally the views seem to lack diversity, incl in his interpretation of views from other groups.

Oh @Kabieuk I probably also talked with you about this book.