Thread by @AutSciPerson

I'm watching Pray Away on Netflix,

a new documentary on gay conversion therapy.

One of the most interesting things to me is how being gay was seen (even by gay people themselves) as a "behavior."

i.e. If you didn't "behave" in certain ways, you weren't gay.

1/

Being autistic is definitely still seen as a set of "behaviors." I think this is why even research perpetuates the myth that you can "grow out of autism,"

as if being "like neurotypicals," speaking, not stimming, and being compliant makes you "not autistic" anymore.

2/

Right after I typed that -

"I based being gay on my behavior, not my feelings. It was my behavior that made me gay, even though I still had feelings."
- person who used to be a leader that told people they could learn not to be gay

Just looking at that toddler checklist that's being used now-

It's all about what the toddler does or doesn't do, not what they experience. Do they look at you, do they respond to their name, do they want comfort, do they point?

Of course people think autism is only behaviors.

Parents are taught from the beginning that being autistic means doing something, not doing something, or acting out.

Rather than being autistic as part of an internal experience and how we think and process stimuli.

This is why words and framing on autism matter so much to me.

It matters whether you say "Does your child become anxious in new environments?"

or

"Does your child run away or cry in new environments?"

One is an internal experience, and one is a set of actions that someone with that internal experience may or may not do.

And it's also why people think there's some way to "look" autistic.

Autistic people must be sitting alone in a corner, or holding their ears, or crying, or rocking, or constantly looking away, or looking "aloof," or talking in complete monotone.

They think it's a behavior.

And that's why there's an entire industry, Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy, devoted to getting rid of what non-autistic people classify as "autistic behaviors."

Because if you as an autistic person don't "look" autistic to non-autistic people, you're not autistic anymore.

And to non-autistic people (and hell, even some autistic people because our society is crap),

That's good because it means you're setting your autistic child up for "success." Because they won't be ostracized or bullied and they'll have good job prospects because you can talk.

They're "helping" them by changing their behaviors and therefore making them "less autistic" (the traits are quantifiable because you have a checklist, right?)

and I see the same narrative of "helping" in this documentary.

Everything an autistic person does is autistic. Even autistic masking is autistic. Even autistic coping mechanisms are autistic.

Non-autistic people need to stop picking and choosing what is and is not autistic and labeling compliance as better, less autistic, or neurotypical.

About people who left the conversion therapy organization:
"The organization tried to say - oh, those are the outliers."

Ever heard that one before? #SayNoToABA

They don't give a timeline, but what happened to that specific gay conversion therapy organization:

They sat down with survivors on a news show, and the person who ran it could no longer deny that they were hurting people.

I wish survivors of ABA were believed in our society.

That being said, there are still many organizations promoting gay conversion therapy especially for transgender people.

I guess my point is:
Conversion therapy and ABA are very harmful and abusive for the same reasons -
Telling people there is something wrong with who they are.