Thread by @ekverstania

The core element needed for anyone to adopt ABA for use on vulnerable autistic people is #ableism. The cult of ABA believes that ABA helps autistic children. To provide this 'help', it is important to strip the subject of their agency and to get them into self-preservation mode.

https://twitter.com/aoife_mctiernan/status/1457025183928172545

While most ABA practitioners no longer use slaps and electric shocks, all ABA regards the work of Rekers & Lovaas as part of the evidence base in support of ABA. Rekers went on to use behaviour modification against gay and trans people, while Lovaas continued with autistics.

Today there is an international movement to #BanConversionTherapy and #BanABA.

People indoctrinated into the practice of ABA strongly believe that there is a scientific basis for what is in fact a pseudoscience.

https://twitter.com/aoife_mctiernan/status/1457025162809909254?t=16oQut002CIMmPUmsabfIw&s=19

The 'evidence' that exists in thousands of supposedly controlled studies is marred by conflicts of interest, ethics violations and bad science, like small sample sizes, having no control group, etc. Thousands of trials have no adverse events tracking.

https://twitter.com/aoife_mctiernan/status/1457025170053423106

"Behaviour support", or "Positive Behaviour Support" (a formal derivative of ABA) rely on extrinsic motivators to achieve behavioural targets which in the case of autistic subjects are in de facto practice not set by the so-called client.

This video explains the thinking behind positive reinforcement in behaviour modification for autistic people.

ABA as is typically imposed on autistic people, does NOT involve informed consent. There is no autonomy.

https://twitter.com/rcondillac/status/1457366549640196102?t=r6nGqmj1mrGmcpTBrQp8Og&s=19

It's not just "a few bad apples". The key word here is PERVASIVE. frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

The oversight and governance of ABA lies in the hands of the abusers, so there is no reliable mechanism for reporting the extreme levels of abuse which are possible within the ABA industry.

Asked what the mother in this harrowing account could have done differently to get help, many BCBAs (formally certified ABA practitioners) were saddened, but said they had no idea what the mother could have done to save the child. neuroclastic.com/mothers-aba-ex…

The child now has a feeding tube to deal with the severe eating disorder caused by the abuse.

Despite extreme differences in underlying genetically related struggles of autistic children and adults, the ABA cult continues to apply its one-size-fits-all approach to disabled children with widely varying support needs. mdpi.com/2075-4426/11/1…

Although ABA grew from the abuse of gender-nonconforming and disabled children in laboratory and institutional experiments, this multibillion dollar industry has also found applications in the management of corporate staff.

Problems with the assumptions underlying business ABA are expounded in some of Alfie Kohn's articles.

Kohn is considered radical for daring to state in academic terms what people harmed by these approaches have experienced themselves.

alfiekohn.org/business/

If you support ABA for autistic children and you want to ensure the continuation of the profession to save face and reinforce your commitment bias, ensure that you continue to make spiritual, financial and evangelical investments in the main prerequisite for ABA: ableism.

Create positive reinforcement opportunities for INTERNALISED and LATERAL ableism so as to leverage the Stockholm Syndrome of survivors and turn them into allies in promoting the abuse.

To grow ABA internationally, try to prevent countries which have not yet done so from signing or ratifying the #CRPD as the CRPD could become a powerful weapon against your cult.

To keep your position of power, do all that you can to undermine the mental health of abuse survivors. Ensure that you reinforce the stigma of mental illness among legislators and administrators, so that they will dismiss the expressed concerns of vulnerable people.

To maintain your position in the torture industry, roll out graded exposure to pain and suffering to 'desensitise' people suffering from conditions such as hypokalaemic sensory overstimulation. Do not treat the biological basis of the condition, as this could provide true relief.

As an ABA expert with a PhD in abuse, you are likely to want to dig in your heels rather than leave the profession as so many less experienced people have done who were able to retain a natural connection to true empathy for those they abused.

To strengthen your abuse business, learn from those who use CBT to gaslight people suffering from ME/CFS and EDS.

Unlike ABA, CBT is not inherently abusive, but when coupled with ableism it provides a powerful means of profiting from people's pain.

The overlap between EDS, ME/CFS and autism provide you with a great opportunity to open a combined practice, where you milk their parents or the government money in ABA when the child is growing up and then continue with CBT as they grow older and pain becomes unbearable.

Never forget to keep your ableist beliefs firmly grounded.

Reinforce them through mantras and other forms of repetition. Provide yourself with rewards for thinking beautiful ableist thoughts in which you save people by keeping the flame of ableism alive.

More importantly even, reinforce the ableist beliefs of everyone who pays you. Without THEIR ableism, you'd have to change your life and abandon everything you believe, and return to the once genuine goal you may have had to be kind to the people you now torture.

Of course, I probably don't understand anything about who really needs ABA, because I am "very high functioning".

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1457701744931115016?t=LT7XUEVXRG4GRRqdPmgDzw&s=19

Nor is anyone else who is autistic and who uses actual words allowed a say in this matter, regardless of the extent of their disability.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1333801441597607942?t=LT7XUEVXRG4GRRqdPmgDzw&s=19

Remember, ableism is a very important prerequisite for ABA, and it's also important to its preservation. If you start to #ListenToNonspeakers, you will undermine ABA.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1360724255906873344?t=zfYQL1Yv3HUE_gTUrNgBdw&s=19

People who are given the means, freedom and safety to communicate, could speak out against abuse.

And they do.

"Our great science."

Keep repeating the mantras to keep the faith.

https://twitter.com/trishi83/status/1457034443395379205?t=_KTjkZHfcbMPi1i239uJ5w&s=19

You know how we often say "Behaviour is communication"? Well, it turns out that...

https://twitter.com/56peggy/status/1457869453685936133?t=ciL3ChoJYx2ez2VdIDOCdw&s=19

...the interpretation of the 'behaviour' can be a bit off sometimes.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1333815289092378628?t=fU8ljelAL2sGGFBqoPUyuQ&s=19

In fact, is 'behaviour' always the right word when we're talking about movement?

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1395751316740362240?t=fU8ljelAL2sGGFBqoPUyuQ&s=19

The 'evidence' in their 'evidence-based' claims: what is it evidence of? Why do the priests and pastors of this cult have so little evidence of the kind that really matters, from the people they so magnanimously 'helped'?

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1441910729578147843?t=fU8ljelAL2sGGFBqoPUyuQ&s=19

How many synonyms are there for #ableism? There's also #ablism and #disablism, and today I learned the French word from @slooterman: #validisme.

How do you say 'ableism' in your language?

What would the ABA priesthood need to do to prove how they're Actually Very Mindful of Human Rights, and not ableist at all?

Well, the #CRPD is based on the principle of #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs, and that doesn't just mean "get more human lab rats as participants in your trial".

Inter alia, they may just need to unblock a few autistic people on Twitter, because listening to Temple, Stephen and Kerry at conferences is no longer where it's at (to use the American slang).

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1441913175138467842?t=fU8ljelAL2sGGFBqoPUyuQ&s=19

But that's not all. Most of the autistic people in the world are not on Twitter.

Imagine all the autism organisations that influence policy were representative of autistic people, as per the @un #CRPD definition of 'representative'. docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/F…

Imagine the BACB, CARD, ABAI and all these other bastions of ableism had to listen to representative organisations.

You can see why it's in the interest of the ABA industrial complex to discredit autistic people as being too high functioning, too insane or too intellectually disabled to know what's good for them.

Because they know that if we had the power, we'd shut them all down.

They have everything to lose by giving up ableism.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1378320758888357889?t=PhJKZU2pRjjteDEeBPfqeg&s=19

Or so they think.

Because they have never seen beyond the hell-hole of injustice which they rule, and they can't conceive of any joy beyond it.