Thread by @ekverstania

Oh for goodness' sake. This ABA in 2019, and it is STILL an abnormal human rights violation perpetrated by adults against disabled children. They don't treat non-disabled children like this!

https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1114128679376969732

And now for the syrupy people who say, "My ABA isn't like that, we do X differently and we are gently supporting, not trying to change them, etc. etc." -- if you are one of those "good" therapists, why do you call your method ABA, knowing that the term has ALL these connotations?

Like, who are you actually trying to please? "Oh, the government only pays for it if it is called ABA, but actually it's more like play therapy..."

OK, so why don't the Floortime and Son-Rise and a whole lot of other people call their method ABA?

If you are not doing ABA, make your allegiances clear. Say, "Thousands of autistic people protest against ABA and regard it as a human rights violation. We care about human rights, so we will not abuse disabled people. We stand in solidarity with disabled people."

Maybe a lot of people will hate you, because a lot of people don't think disabled people have rights.

Also, if you have 18 years of 24/7 experience at being an autistic child, they disqualify you from speaking about what's good for autistic children.

Whose approval matters?

But whose opinion do you care about?

I know what some OTs and speechies go through professionally: "I hate ABA, but if I speak out against those guys in my city, they will stop referring children to me."

So here is where you come in, #ActuallyAutistic people. Keep lobbying against ABA, sharing survivor stories, and ESPECIALLY the words of nonspeaking autistic children and adults who have been subjected to ABA.

Autism professionals who care NEED AND WANT YOU TO DO THIS.

Why? Because when they speak out, they get accused of professional jealousy and my-method-versus-your-method.

But when an overwhelming wave of #actuallyautistic people urge for ABA to be banned and recognised as abuse, then they can say, "I'm just saying what autistics say."

When you start sharing the words of non-speaking ABA survivors, sooner or later some ABA turf-protector will challenge you and say that those guys are not speaking for themselves - someone else wrote it, or held their hand or gave them signals. (Yes, they say that.)

So you have to know your stuff. You need to understand the body-mind disconnect and you need to understand in some detail how some communication methods work, especially those for apraxic people. You need to know how they are used to work towards independent communication.

Because if you don't understand these things, they will try to bamboozle you. They will say, "You are high-functioning. You don't understand low-functioning autism."

So, if you were not a non-speaking child with high support needs, you need to learn from people who ARE very dysregulated and non-speaking and who need 1-1 support.

Remember that in the USA alone, ABA is a $17 billion per annum industry. These people have a vested interest in silencing disabled people. It's not just differences of opinion. They recruit their therapists young to brainwash them and they scare parents into participating.

The people who do this are not necessarily "bad people" and many of them have 🌸🌺🌼good intentions 🌼🌷🌻.
That's not the point. We can't just set aside our differences while they justify abuse and call it therapy.

So, where's a good place to start? The world is so ableist that most people don't understand how "therapy" can be abuse. The fact that the victim is disabled somehow changes the way they look at the situation.

But some people can at least see for themselves that if you punish disabled people using electric shocks, that's probably not okay.

So, focus your advocacy on that. Understand that autists in the USA are being tortured every day using electric shocks.

It's #AutismAwareness month, right? Make it #AutisticTortureAwareness month. Get people to support the ban against torture.

https://twitter.com/autselfadvocacy/status/1112736329882832896

This torture is called ABA. It's the closest thing to the original ABA developed by Lovaas, the Holy Prophet and Founder of ABA, who developed it to build people out of the bits of dehumanised flesh and bone called autistic children.

Whoever thinks that it is more important to spend government money on lighting up the White House in blue than it is to stop the torture of disabled children is not your ally.