I want to clarify a few points about my thread about the Sia movie because I think in my long thread, I still wasn't clear enough on a few points. I'll try to condense them to one thread at a time.
1. I wanted the point of the thread to be about how we as a community were addressing the issue was often using talking points and language that doesn't reflect the best language for nonspeaker rights.
2. Many of the things said about Sia were things that are tacitly ableist and can cause harm.
3. I wasn't trying to defend Sia or the decision to not cast an autistic, but to point out that harmless or disabling aspects of her own disability were being used in ableist ways.
4. Messaging about Rainman and Forest Gump was not simply criticizing that abled actors played the roles, but were insulting real autistic traits they portrayed.
5. The film does champion a concept that is radical and challenging to the mainstream, and that is the presumption of competence. It also appears to unapologetically normalize AAC.
6. She did cast many autistic actors and based the movie on someone she loves. She had autistic consultants. I do wish that an autistic would have played the role, but many were implying she didn't listen to any autistics.
7. While speaking about nonspeakers, I felt like there was a real need to listen to them about their disabilities and the motor planning and executive functioning and sensory issues that make many things difficult for them. I felt like we need to try harder to understand them.
8. Autism Speaks is manipulative and self-serving, and they insist with a very scripted speech that they're the representatives of the majority and we are the "small but vocal minority."
9. We all need to better understand, read, listen, and platform nonspeakers more. It's very hard to get speaking autistics to invest in that, and I'm not sure why. There are films, books, YouTube channels, orgs, blogs, and FB pages for nonspeakers that we should platform.
10. I feel like we were undermining a very important message (presuming competence) with the way we were discussing the film. The decision to cast a nonautistic is disappointing, but that very critical message needs to be discussed.
11. Sia did respond poorly. But also I felt like we needed to look at some of the ableism and just the sheer mass of messages and their content and give some room to recover and make it right.
12. Communication First issued a statement with a brilliant idea: to add an introduction to the film from nonspeakers who express and discuss important issues in communication rights and representation. Also an apology to the community for the response. That would be great.
13. I don't have answers and am not saying anyone is wrong or that I'm right. I'm saying that I would like to see us use this as an incentive to work together and pool our resources to center nonspeakers and fight together to shut down the group of ppl who actively oppress them.
14. We need to all be educated on the big barriers to Justice for nonspeakers, and then we need to take our grievances about this film and the broader industry and mobilize that justified anger to help fight for and with them. We can be very powerful when United.
15. I'm sorry if anything I said was invalidating. Every autistic person is justified in their grief and this world is traumatic. We deserve to author and star in our own stories. The world needs to know we are here and listen to us, not dismiss us as angry and trolling.
16. Also, two people have pointed out that nonspeakers did interact in the thread. I tried hard to follow it all, but I didn't see that. I will add or RT any nonspeaker responses to this thread if I see them. I am trying to follow it.

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More from @NeuroClastic

21 Nov
I want to apologize for my responses to the Sia movie. Nonspeakers had replied, but I didn't see it. It was erasing their input by asking people to listen to them. I also should have used my personal account and not the publication account. (cont)
My personal perspectives are very affected by my experiences & are not universal among our contributors. I am really sad for all the constant pain & erasure & misrepresentation autistic people experience. I definitely don't ever want to invalidate any of that. We deserve better.
I (Terra Vance) will do better to use my personal account to respond to things that are not an issue that is pretty universal among our contributors and apologize for not doing that. I made mistakes and missed things that were relevant to inform a full and fair reaction.
Read 4 tweets
21 Nov
I’m having a hard time with the discussion about the movie, Music, written and directed by @Sia. First, everyone is referencing NonSpeakers as “non-verbal.” NonSpeakers are nonspeaking because they are apraxic, and that means they can’t coordinate their movements to speak.
They often also can’t coordinate their bodies. They do things without being able to control themselves. Asking them to act in a movie where they have to do very complex ordered tasks would be overwhelming.
It can take a NonSpeaker a week to write an article because of the difficulty of spelling to communicate. But when we publish articles by nonspeakers, nobody reads or shares them. They are our lowest traffic demographic despite that I put 10x more effort in promoting them.
Read 32 tweets
20 Nov
Thread: I’m going to put a trigger warning on this for attempted suicide, but is good news. A couple days ago, I announced to Twitter what had been told to me: that someone I cared about profoundly had died from suicide. He was an autistic 22-year-old.
That was what the family was told. He had tried to save someone from an abusive situation, but it resulted in him being shunned and scolded and written off as a troublemaker. But what he did was brave and heroic, which I’d been saying daily. I was afraid this would happen.
But, and my details are incomplete right now, he is ALIVE. What happened (I think. Will confirm) was he was on a ventilator for his family to say goodbye, but he continued to breathe when they took him off the vent. He was triaged for 18 hours, & finally his vitals stabilized.
Read 8 tweets
14 Nov
The people behind #CommunicationRights are not obstructionist behaviorists. @NeuroClastic has speech language pathologists, psychologists, educators, OTs, MTs, researchers, neuroscientists, & nonspeakers who communicate through AAC, spelling, & sign. #ActuallyAutistic #Autism
These people may have an aggressive approach to bullying autistics & our allies out of our own narratives & using their white (that's all white people) privilege to maintain the #monopoly on #Autism, but they are NOT allies. They are #oppressors. We can and do communicate. See?
We have orgs, individuals, & initiatives championing #CommunicationRights. @U4CommChoice @Communica1st @ekverstania @autselfadvocacy @awnnetwork_ @ReachEveryVoice and so many more. It's 2020, and we are #nonCompliant with a #Behaviorist agenda that parades itself as #science.
Read 22 tweets
7 Oct
Let me explain why autistic people may perform better with robots. It’s not their “Easy to read” social cues, it’s because they’re honest and predictable. They aren’t going to give an exasperated sigh or treat us like we’ve verbally assaulted them by expressing a need (cont)
They’re not going to call us into the office and tell us they have “concerns” because they misinterpreted our responses. We aren’t going to find after six months of mistreatment that someone has been harboring a grudge because they misunderstood OUR subtext. (Cont)
They won’t assemble in groups in the break room and stop talking when we walk in. They aren’t going to think we are angry at them if we don’t wrap every instruction up in platitudes or remind them they’re a good person if we need to ask them to do something differently. (Cont)
Read 21 tweets
7 Oct
@NSF @VanderbiltU @Cornell @Yale @GeorgiaTech This is the most disrespectful and dehumanizing thing I’ve ever seen, and that’s a high bar. Somebody needs to do a survey of autistic suicidal ideation after reading about this. Disgusting. neuroclastic.com/2020/10/06/5-m…
I assure you that our ability to tolerate suffering is monastic already and that your testing of our patience is already a Sisyphean marathon you can’t fathom. Maybe the reason we are underemployed is because your nonsense is a parody straight out of Swift’s Laputa.
To be autistic is to be the narrator in Gulliver’s Travels. There are not enough words to express how abjectly fucked this is. You want us to act like human beings? Start with treating us that way.
Read 11 tweets

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