Thread by @ekverstania

These 'experts' want autistic children to be accepted in society someday, but they cannot even accept what thousands of speaking and nonspeaking autistic people say about what what works best for them.

Based on what they are modeling for parents and for society as a whole, how on earth do they expect to succeed in reaching their magnanimous lofty goal?

#NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

Here's the challenge, O Magnanimous Autism Experts! This is for you!

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1457574521263771648?t=ttwY5W3aErwto32_Gm_4Ng&s=19

These are subtweets, by the way. I've just come from this event where I posted way more in the chat than was probably good for me or for anyone.

https://twitter.com/karen_muriuki/status/1459449379530674178?t=ttwY5W3aErwto32_Gm_4Ng&s=19

One of the questions was about an autistic guy who keeps pushing the woman his parents decided he should marry out of his room, and they wanted to know from the expert why he may be doing that.

They giggled upon speculating that it may be sensory, relating to... Well, they didn't say it, so I said the quiet part out loud: "Stop laughing about sex!"

Although that's hardly the point. Argh!

Why do people know the word 'sensory', but they don't know 'consent'?!

Imagine what this poor rejected bride is going through too.

Oh. I broke my thread.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1459548453776801793?t=ttwY5W3aErwto32_Gm_4Ng&s=19

Reconnecting the thread.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1459550118294790147?t=ttwY5W3aErwto32_Gm_4Ng&s=19

Basically, much of the talk was about ABA, although that term wasn't used once. It's just that everything was ABA techniques and a big focus on speech.

Whenever I said something about listening to nonspeaking AAC users, people who'd heard of AAC said something about "we can talk about devices in another session and get in an expert on that".

And then I would say, "No, listen to nonspeakers, and also, I didn't say 'devices'."

This happened in various ways about five times.

Something I particularly like about @karen_muriuki is the way she knows her #CRPD articles. She can always pull the right one into a conversation.

Yeah, this is common everywhere in ABAland.

https://twitter.com/karen_muriuki/status/1459555512283013129?t=ttwY5W3aErwto32_Gm_4Ng&s=19

It's one of the first things the diagnostician should be telling parents.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1390968230664151044?t=ttwY5W3aErwto32_Gm_4Ng&s=19

So, dear 'autism parent', which is it?

"I want that when my child grows up, people will treat him with respect."

"I want that when my child grows up, he will be treated with contempt."

The way you treat autistic adults is your answer.

Did you want a third option?

OK, here goes:

"I am so embarrassed to have an autistic child that I will try to save face by praying for the autism to leave, and people in my religious community will respect me for having a bigger faith than all of them combined!"

So you basically care more about looking cool among those people than you care that people should accept your child?

You devote half of the seminar to communication for autistic people, but when actual autistic people start communicating, you don't want to hear what they say.

I've been suspecting with horror since the week of my diagnosis twelve years ago that the reason you pathologise our love of logic is so that you can gaslight us to accept that we're the problem when you do such utterly hypocritically illogical things.

You know this thing where you say, every child is a gift from God, but why did God give me THIS child?

Let me tell you how that question fills me with rage, although I am not sure I'll manage. I'll try.

I hated this question since I was little, before I even knew I was autistic, when I used to read about children born with birth defects in a popular family magazine.

I often imagined that I too may someday have a disabled child, and that I would just thank God for the child and be a mother. I was about 10 or so, thinking these thoughts.

Fast forward a few decades. I know I'm autistic now, and most of my friends are autistic. Most of them were abused by their parents. I repeat: MOST OF MY AUTISTIC FRIENDS WERE ABUSED BY THEIR PARENTS.

So let's take that question, "Every child is a gift from God, but why did God give me THIS kind of child?" and ask it the other way round: "Parents are a gift from God, but why did God give me parents like these?"

See how complicated it gets now?

Now everyone wants to fight with God, and everyone feels guilty for thinking bad thoughts about God, and they go through convoluted prayers and tears and blah blah blah drama and philosophy and soul-searching and attempts at being humble and faithful, which doesn't help anyone.

Stop complicating everything and stop making it about you! God didn't "send" you this child to "teach you" something. This isn't a digital support bot at the bottom corner of a Web site, this is a human that needs YOUR support, that needs you to create a loving home environment.

Or maybe I shouldn't even use the word 'loving', because that word has been appropriated for every abuse under the sun for so long. Maybe we need a different word for what's needed, something that doesn't result in autistic children growing up with cPTSD.

When you look at autism research, you will find a LOT focused on 'parent perspectives' and a LOT focused on 'sibling perspectives'. Where is the research on autistic people's experiences of their caregivers and siblings? Why couldn't I find any on that?

Maybe you, the autism experts, don't want to read the survivor stories, maybe you don't want to know that the key ingredient that is keeping you in business is destroying autistic people's health and sanity and relationships and lives.

Maybe you don't even know the word.

The word is ABLEISM.

When you're talking about disabled people, it's a synonym for CONTEMPT.

The antonym (opposite) is RESPECT.

This is not about how much you care, or how much you love disabled people. Those words can mean anything you say they do to you.

By your actions you will be seen to have either respect or contempt for disabled people.

Patronising friendliness isn't respect.

Making an autistic person an 'ambassador' isn't respect.

Let's go back to these two things. This is the test. Are you doing this yet, Autism 'Experts'? Do you respect autistic people yet?

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1457568233486159873?t=BYxoGtOwit-cTRovxVIxyA&s=19

You say you're working on communication, but you're not. You're destroying communication.

Based on the evidence, I'd say that what you're interested in is validation for your beliefs, and oral endorsements from autistic people.

That's not communication.

So why is THIS video relevant even in Africa? Because there are so many BLACK AFRICAN parents and therapists who are not listening to BLACK AFRICAN autistic people.

https://twitter.com/BeingKaylaSmith/status/1295702604534685697?t=d0G-ymFvVT1CaITTg4nibg&s=19

Here and there someone has read a book by Temple Grandin.

Here and there someone knows of Kerry Magro, and they want to believe that if only they love their child like his parents loved him, and if they persevere in prayer, then their nonspeaking child will be transmogrified into someone presentable like that.

There's that word again. Love. Love, side by side with ableism and internalised racism.

Where does all this nonsense come from? I assure you that while Africa has its own special cultural variants of ableist misconceptions, THIS poppycock wasn't invented in Africa.

https://twitter.com/karen_muriuki/status/1458462799445831683?t=d0G-ymFvVT1CaITTg4nibg&s=19

I'm not asking you to listen to a handful of brandname white autistics. I'm telling you to listen to as many autistic people as possible, starting with the Black Autistic Africans right here in Africa who care about you and your children.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1457568233486159873?t=W44saLQu5PUovXoOW4eCcQ&s=19