Thread by @ekverstania

#LISTEN, a short film made by and with nonspeaking autistic people, was launched on Friday to coincide with the US launch of #SiaMusic. (Sia did NOT fulfil her offer to sponsor a short film.) To date, LISTEN has had more than 31,000 views on YouTube.

For a background to the film, visit this page, where you'll also find a downloadable #LISTEN toolkit for training via discussion groups and watch parties. The toolkit addresses a variety of topics relevant to understanding nonspeaking autists.

communicationfirst.org/listen/

#LISTEN is NOT a detailed critique of #SiaMusic. It addresses general principles, and was created to help future authors, filmmakers and playwrights avoid the traps that Sia and her team fell into over the years of making MUSIC.

One of the reasons why the public may have hitherto been unaware of the issues raised in #LISTEN is because powerful players in the autism industry actively work to silence nonspeaking people, who often reveal the abuse they've experienced at the hands of therapists.

Responses to #LISTEN have been overwhelmingly positive, including responses from some of Sia's avid fans who have watched this short film.

#ProneRestraint is no joke. It is traumatic and some children die at the hands of trained professionals. At the very least, the result is usually PTSD. #SiaMusic presents it as an acceptable 'calming method'.

There are currently legal cases being fought to ban prone restraint. Little wonder that organisations and individuals with a vested interest in defending abusive methods have come out to say that #SiaMusic is wonderful, and the restraint scenes are no big deal.

At this stage, I want to quote Ben Breaux, one of the nonspeaking autistic reviewers of #SiaMusic:

"Also very troublesome and concerning is the scene when Music is trying to find words and her well meaning yet quite ignorant “people” severely limit her options—and means—of how and what she can communicate."

"This is not at all a true or accurate depiction of the extent of alternative communication modalities available to her,..."

"...and misleads the audience on the real extent of what opportunities and possibilities are out there for nonspeaking autistics to fully communicate with—and in—the world around them. This is a repeated theme in the movie."

You can read Ben's full emotionally charged response to the movie here:

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1360251135362277381?s=19

Ben did NOT get an iPad shoved into his hand and suddenly he was typing, like, 80 words per minute and writing a sassy daily social commentary for an international news site.

Nonspeaking autists sometimes take years to be able to type without support.

But back to the relevance of what Ben is saying:

There are organisations that are prepared to permit nonspeaking autistic people only the kind of limited communication options presented to Music in the film. Or maybe 50 words instead of 4.

It's what you get if you fail in speech therapy, because people prize speech so highly, that actual COMMUNICATION no longer matters to them.

But it gets worse.

Not only do they limit your vocabulary; they also drill you into the socially appropriate responses to various questions using that vocabulary, which may not reflect what you want to say in that moment at all.

Yes, I meant drill. Repeatedly. Using rewards.

Let me quote someone else now to illustrate what I mean by rewards:

"I think it was the severity of my behaviors that led teachers to treat me like I couldn’t understand anything more than basic English. People looked at data and made assumptions that were wrong, but hard to debunk."

"Teachers would make promises about things they were going to do that usually went unfulfilled. At 18 years old I was being told to touch my nose and touch my head, then subsequently given candy for complying."

These are the words of Jordyn Zimmerman, written in 2017, explaining how she was infantilised before she had access to a robust communication system suited to her specific needs.

Jordyn was an editor on the #LISTEN project.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1360598826025893888?s=19

So when I say that there are organisations out there operating in the autism industry, that want to silence nonspeaking autistic people, I'm not kidding.

Imagine everyone who had these bizarre experiences that Jordyn describes--this is the norm in much of autism industry in the USA, by the way--imagine everyone who had this done to them got the means to talk about what is going on in "special needs" classes.

There are all sorts of Twitter accounts now confidently replying to my tweets saying that "nonverbals" (their word, not mine) have watched #SiaMusic and "approved" it.

Obviously I don't have the insider information that these people purport to have, but I do have questions.

I am also not saying that it's impossible for a nonspeaking autist to give the movie a thumbs-up.

After all, the panel of nonspeakers from @Communica1st who expressed negative opinions about #SiaMusic are not new to advocacy, and none of them are into inspiration porn.

But I have questions in the light of the background I gave above, considering that Sia received input in the past from the pro-ABA Child Mind Institute that apparently approved the restraint scenes.

In other words, these people would have been OK with the type of "behaviour therapy" which Jordyn described, as opposed to robust communication access.

Now, Sia did admit that she "listened to the wrong people" and perhaps she meant people like the Child Mind Institute.

But her most recent tweets, shortly before she deleted her account, and the tweets coming now from certain fan/promo accounts purporting to know more of her intentions and agenda, also include something really scary.

It would appear that in her desperation for SOME kind of endorsement and reassurance of salvation from the disability community, she fell for the compliments of some of the most devastating opponents of nonspeaking autistic people's advocacy in the world today.

There are actual autistic people among them, people who've had run-ins with the neurodiversity crowd and who have found refuge among the abusemongers, who provide a welcoming, affirming platform to collectively hate autism and rail against people who use lemniscates in advocacy.

If you're not in the thick of autism politics, then that last tweet won't make much sense to you. 😁

For those who know this stuff, I just want to say that I seldom use the word 'neurodiversity' in advocacy these days, because it means different things to different people and has unfortunately become embedded with bullets from many battles.

I call myself a disability rights activist, and two of my focus areas are health and the communication rights of nonspeaking autistic people. Because of this, I collaborate a lot with parents and therapists who share these areas of concern.

So, when Sia and these other accounts say they still intend to do good, whilst also retweeting the very people who do their utmost to silence nonspeaking autistic people in their revenge battle against the neurodiversity crowd, I have questions about this:

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1361780645064802305?s=19

Who are these "nonverbals" you say Sia consulted, and what means of AAC did they use to express this "approval"?

Note all the deleted tweets surrounding my question to one of these purported insiders who claims to know what the 'nonverbals' think:

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1359384383640240128?s=19

I don't have answers to these questions, but I do have a final thought before I go to bed and end with a Da Capo: I'm pretty sure Sia is in a tough situation behind the scenes. I can believe she genuinely wanted to try to fix the mess she created, to do better, to learn. But..

When there's $16 million invested in your movie (do I have the right number there?) there's no doubt some contractual or at least implicit obligation to not just walk away and say, "Sorry, guyz, beeg mistake," but to protect that investment by going through with what you started.

So Sia can now either act against her newfound convictions by continuing to promote what she believes was a mistake, in spite of actually caring about what nonspeakers say...

...or she can buddy up to the people who abuse and silence nonspeakers, who will help her kill her conscience as she joins them in this, to the dismay of the neurodiversity crowd who give them both lip.

Or maybe, just maybe, there's a third and a fourth option.

But I need to go to bed now.

In the time it has taken me to write this, #LISTEN has had another 1,000 views on YouTube.

Watch it. You may just end up changing people's lives if you LISTEN.

UPDATE

It's been nearly two weeks since the launch of #LISTEN.

With an advertising budget of $0.00, this short film has now had nearly 60,000 YouTube views and thousands more on Facebook. It has been mentioned in Time, Newsweek, the Independent, the BBC and other major media.

More than 13,000 views on Facebook.

More than 54,000 on Instagram.

More than 63,000 on YouTube.

Let's go for new goals: AAC, the kinds that actual nonspeaking autistic people say work for them, for the millions of nonspeaking autists who are still being silenced right now.

Yes, not merely silent; silenced.

Whenever people speak over nonspeakers, whenever they deny them access to the types of AAC that autists say work for them, they are silencing nonspeakers.

When you pray for your child to speak someday, whilst refusing to listen to what nonspeaking autistic people are communicating via other means, you're not a hero. You're not a supernom. You're just a regular selfish ableist.

Who values speech more than they value communication?

Ableists do; oralists do.

There are whole schools, therapy centres , frameworks and early intervention methods designed to support, nurture and convert parents to oralism and ableism.

Create ableist parents. Give those ableist parents the hope of fulfilling their ableist dreams. Validate their ablesist fears and shame.

Doing this won't change the world, it will simply maintain the silence.

Want to change the world? Then #LISTEN.

I learned this recently from a nonspeaking autistic activist, hence my previous few tweets: mostly, it's not the parents who are the problem. It's the therapists, clinicians and educators who push them to unhelpful ideas and therapies.

https://twitter.com/jsilva316/status/1370905407414222850?s=19