Thread by @ekverstania

[THREAD] If an enormous number of people end up traumatised by therapists who are doing their work by the book, within the ethical framework of their profession, then maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with that type of therapy.

There are many ABA therapists who, upon hearing of the trauma of ABA survivors, will tell you that "my ABA is not like that" and "you'll always have a few bad apples".

I've heard a few autistic people speak well of their behaviour techs. So the "it depends on the therapist" principle is sometimes true, but not for the reasons you may think.

The ABA therapists who were praised were the ones who departed from the textbook and BROKE THE RULES.

I also want to describe what one autistic teenager has said. He's still in ABA he speaks well of ABA. He says it helps him. Unlike most of the therapists praised by autists, HIS therapist seems to be going mostly by the book.

And...

...his mother has fired a lot of therapists before finding this one, because most of them were unaccustomed to nonspeakers setting their own goals, and couldn't work with that.

Now, before I get to his story, lemme tell you a different story about something else.

Leyna had so many boyfriends before she met Jared, but none of them treated her well. When she married Jared, she knew she was with the kindest, most caring person she'd ever met.

Fast forward five months.

"Are you and Jared OK?" asks Leyna's bestie, Raine.
"I mean, is he good to you? Because it feels like there's something that's... off."

"He's the best man I've ever been with," says Leyna. "He's fine with me making my own goals, he wants the best for me, he has high standards and believes I can achieve much more, he keeps raising the bar for me."

"Raising the bar? In what way?" asks Raine.

"Well, you know I have chronic fatigue and frequent urinary tract infections, right?" said Leyna. "So when we were still dating, I often needed to go to the bathroom like, three or four times during a meal at a restaurant, and he was completely understanding,"

"Right, and?"

"Also, if I had a long day with a lot of Zoom meetings, it's like my speech dries up, so sometimes we'd just sit there doodling with a pen on the paper serviettes and pass it to each other, you know, like hearts and I-love-you and stuff. And he was cool with that. No talking."

"Right, and?"

"Well, now he doesn't honour my bathroom breaks anymore and he expects me to raise my head, look at him and talk. Using my voice. To push myself."
"He what?"

"He knows I want to be a television newsreader, it's my own goal, so... it's difficult, but... He knows so much about media, he wants the best for me, it's how he's coaching me. I've grown a lot already. It's not what you think, Raine. Why are you looking at me like that?"

So now let me get back to this story. This one is the true one. The one about the newlyweds is fiction.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1515411268798144521?t=5TW7hti0_U7xZbP4ZL-zSw&s=19

In the true story, the teenager, M. struggles with incontinence. He's a multimodal communicator and among other things, he uses a sign language, which his ABA therapist understands.

He was thrilled with this therapist when they started, and he wrote on the blog that the therapist let him set his own goals.

At first, the therapist allowed his frequent bathroom breaks and was fine with him switching to his sign language when other modes of communication became difficult.

Now, he has to EARN his bathroom breaks, and he's not allowed to ask for them by signing. The signs get ignored. Bathroom breaks are allowed only if he uses the communication method which the therapist deems to be important.

Some days are harder than other days, because he has PANDAS as well, and then everything requires even more effort.

His mother pays the therapist.

While he's frustrated about how his therapist did one thing in the beginning, then changed the rules (with pressure on his already difficult bladder and limited communication choices) he feels that the therapist has his best interests at heart.

They're working towards agreed goals, after all.

So he's asking other nonspeakers about their own experiences with ABA, apparently hoping to pass on the message that with the right therapist (a therapist like his), ABA can be good after all.

His mother feels that ABA should only be done to a nonspeaking autist once he's able to consent; and because many ABA therapists aren't accustomed to working with a consent prerequisite, it's hard to find a good therapist.

What's happening now, they both say, is with consent.

So why, if this is all consensual, do I feel like something is so very wrong here?

Should I tell you ANOTHER story about ABA, where the autistic client ALSO says ABA helps them? This time it's a person who speaks, and they're paying for the therapy themselves to improve their social skills. The story doesn't have much in common with M.'s story, except for a...

...key word: allowed.

In explaining how nice the ABA therapist is and how much they are respected as a client, this young person says, "I am even allowed to say when I need a break."

Is this normal in any other consensual therapy?

Like, when you're talking about visits to a psychologist, or to an occupational therapist, is it a special feature that makes it (re)commendable if the client is "EVEN ALLOWED" to say that they need a break?

Whose consent are we ACTUALLY talking about here?

And no: fewer bathroom breaks were not the goal. They were a thing that the therapist decided upon in pursuit of different goals.

https://twitter.com/abouthalfthree/status/1515451717403672577?t=6MM9h9IDbZaWe8G1YtOeyg&s=19

They did not agree on this change in modus operandi.

By the way, if you're new to the topic (ABA), here's an article explaining the basics of the method and why the people targeted don't normally support it at all.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1333811534494007296?t=hf0WV93uyP6XaJ7iZ44tVQ&s=19

Legislators usually don't know what concepts like ableism and internalised ableism mean.

It's important that we should help them learn about these phenomena, because as we move towards an ABA ban, the merchants will most likely want to pull in autistic endorsers to help defend their industry.

The majority of congenitally Deaf people strongly support the early learning of a sign language, regardless of whether they view their deafness as a difference or a disorder/impairment.

Similarly, we don't have to resolve the difference-versus-disorder debate in respect of autism before we get consensus on the illegitimacy of ABA.

We just need to get legislation passed that prevents people from being abused.

ABA is a form of #ConversionTherapy.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1465076124371894274?t=U0h_hn4Qch_Mg9uzjpQN8A&s=19

And when we look at the worldwide campaigns to ban the OTHER kind of conversion therapy, viz. gay/trans conversion therapy, we see a handful of 'ex-gay' (and de-trans?) people supporting these practices, in spite of the trauma experienced by so many others.

Yes, I am also aware of the current battle in advocacy in which some gay people, who are against conversion therapy for homosexuality, are making an exception by saying that it's fine for trans people; and the trans community feels understandably stabbed in the back by that.

These disagreements slow down the legislative processes and play into the hands of abusers.

So we can expect the ABA industry to similarly buttress Amy Gravino and other autistic people who openly speak in support of ABA and who use it in their work. (ABAI does this already.)

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1515482976859181064?t=1sO3X5hxrkkYDyleivzVTg&s=19

While I can think of only two nonspeaking autistic people who've spoken favourably of ABA (M. in the account above being one of them), I've encountered several SPEAKING autists (including two or three who were late to speak) who support its use.

All except for one of them have had a specific thing in common: glaringly obvious ableism.

Internalised ableism, lateral ableism and vertical ableism.

But since most people don't know what ableism looks like, it's perhaps NOT that glaringly obvious.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1515482973700857861?t=1sO3X5hxrkkYDyleivzVTg&s=19

Unity is great, but I am not gonna lament disunity and hold out 100% consensus among autistic people as a prerequisite for legislation against ABA.

After all, our government passed a law against beating children even though many parents were angry about this law, and there are also many adults who were beaten as children who continue to say, "Well, I turned out fine."

So based on this precedent, we DON'T necessarily have to make an exception for anyone who uses a similar "I turned out fine" in support of ABA.

We CAN say #BanABA and #YesAllABA.

One of the fallacies used to justify the use of ABA is this one:

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1422543705530060800?t=1sO3X5hxrkkYDyleivzVTg&s=19

This fundamental belief goes largely unchallenged even though there is evidence to suggest that some societal changes are NOT that difficult to effect if people are determined to bring about change and are prepared to invest in them.

While discrimination against gay people remains rife, there wouldn't be a ban against conversion therapy for gay people in some territories now if gay people hadn't gained sufficient acceptance to influence the law. So, change IS possible.

One of the most harmful pro-ABA autistic narratives is the one which several famous well-intentioned autistic advocates have. It is full of false assumptions, and endorses some of the most harmful types of ableism. It goes something like this:

"When I was little, I couldn't speak. I had challenging behaviour. I was misunderstood and mistreated by many people. But my mother believed in me and did everything possible to help me. When I was 10 years old, I finally learned to speak and today I am successful and famous."

And it continues: "Parents, believe in your child. You know them best. ABA isn't right for everyone, but parents who love and believe in their children should be allowed to decide what's best for them."

To an ableist audience, this sounds... PERFECT.

Autism isn't the only disability where the notion that "a loving parent will choose wisely" is used in defense of a human rights violation. Follow @languagefirst to learn how #oralism harms Deaf children.

There are many more examples. "You don't need a wheelchair, we believe in you, you CAN walk if you try."

Ableism is an ENORMOUS spanner in the works of love.

There are several problems with the Loving Parent fallacy, the way it appears in these narratives.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1515667451211620352?t=rjnsfs5ByBzWThujmZE2Vw&s=19

Before I continue, I want to point out that most of my advocacy is done in collaboration with parents of autistic children.

What I'm going to talk about isn't 'anti-parents'. It's about the destructive forces of ableism, and few parents are significantly immune to those forces.

I need to take a break from this now, though, so here's a related thread about some of the problem beliefs which form the basis of ABA:

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1479007357225127942?t=Hxo41NCZIH1qCOOpAit0qg&s=19

And here's some clarification about the therapist who's using their client's incontinence as a tool for coercion. The goal isn't to fix the incontinence.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1515690439453646855?t=z16-wXYlmFkvXGHZPeOw4Q&s=19