Emily Paige Ballou Profile picture
Aug 19, 2019 6 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Everybody, listen.

I know you were taught that person-first language ("put the person before the disability") is always correct. I know. You were taught this when you became a teacher or doctor or when you worked with kids with disabilities.
The problem is that you were taught this by people who themselves were isolated and out of touch from disabled communities.
Person-first language came into being for good reasons. It is not bad or wrong; many people w/ disabilities still prefer it.

But other disabled & autistic people don't, for equally valid reasons.
Discussion about this has been going on in the autistic community for ~20 years at least, but most of the people training new teachers, doctors, therapists, don't themselves have regular, everyday contact w/ disabled & autistic adults or disability pride communities.
"Autistic" and "disabled" aren't dirty words, because we don't think those are shameful things to be.
I KNOW you mean well when you come on Twitter just to snap at someone to use person-first language. But the problem is you've been taught out of date information, and as a result you're often just snapping at disabled people who are using language natural to our communities.

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More from @epballou

Jun 24
Here's the thing... a lot of non-autistic social signaling is based around giving maximum opportunity for saving face.

They're mostly, actually, not being oblique or confusing just for fun or to make things hard.
The thing about the double empathy problem is that it does actually go both ways.

Neurotypical/non-disabled people's social communication is based around slightly different sets of perceptions and priorities. It's not the way it is just for no reason.
Are there bullies and manipulators who are going to use our difficulty reading those signals maliciously? Yes, obviously.
Read 4 tweets
May 1, 2023
Was actually talking about this recently as it concerns trans rights.

It's just not true that the more repressive/restrictive position is automatically the older or more "traditional" one.
The role of the rise of Fundamentalism as a coherent movement in the 1920's, and of the Moral Majority, etc., in the 70's...it almost cannot be overestimated how much these movements contributed to the illusion that this is true. But it's not.
Their outlooks on these issues are not only not the most "traditional" ones; in many cases they are very, very new.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 27, 2023
Look, I also resent "Just get all the words right so you don't get yelled at" style activism. And it must suck to work really hard on something you thought was a good thing only to have it eviscerated on Twitter by people who don't know anything about you.

But...
If some of these researchers are not able or willing or interested in developing a baseline familiarity w/ autistic communities, the neurodiversity movement, what some of the primary controversies are, and what reactions have been to certain kinds of research and *why*...
...Then frankly they should choose another field. And not one involving study of people with a long history of vulnerability, mistreatment, and having their lives and voices devalued.
Read 6 tweets
Jan 26, 2023
With the exception of a couple of notable, standout performances over the past few years, I agree this is a serious lack.
And I will go to my grave defending autistic "coded" characters as important and frequently more whole-heartedly representative of the experiences of older autistic people than, honestly, most of the younger, explicitly identified characters I see these days.
And one of the interesting things you see with autistic coding of older characters is that so. many. of them occur in shows/movies that are effectively period pieces.

And don't get me wrong, I LOVE many of those shows.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 1, 2022
Happy April.

Almost eight years ago, the @nytimes published this article about "The Kids Who Beat Autism."

I still think about these kids a lot.

nytimes.com/2014/08/03/mag…
They'd be in their 20's now.
I wonder how they are.
I wonder if anyone involved here still thinks that they're actually non-autistic.

I wonder if they do.
I wonder if anyone's thought to follow up with them. I wonder if @ruthpadawer has.
Read 11 tweets
Feb 8, 2022
chavisory.wordpress.com/2016/04/27/the…

Because I was just having an interesting discussion with a special ed teacher about this before I got blocked, and because my old post about telling your kids they're autistic is going around again...
KIDS often don't understand things, because they are kids. They haven't been alive that long. But non-disabled kids are assumed to be capable of gaining in understanding.
It's okay if autistic and disabled kids don't always understand things. It's not okay to leave them out of information about their own lives.
Read 4 tweets

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