Not all behavior is communication, & everyone from autistic advocates to professionals to researchers who neglects to learn about & understand the lived experiences of nonspeakers with severe apraxia & motor disinhibition are causing harm, no matter how "trauma-informed" you are. Imagine people thinking the pinnacle of your capacity to understand is reflected by your toddler-like noises. Imagine automatically saying "yes" when you mean "no." Imagine people thinking you actually want to engage in compulsive behaviors you don't want to do.

Here’s what was said in Irish parliament referencing our org and its founder: “There are advocates who are vocally against systemic ABA in the US, such as Terra Vance, who runs NeuroClastic. She has a boycott-ABA approach in the US,[…]” Cont. “[…] but she also recognises that outside the US there is a very different culture. She has stated that behaviour analysts seem to be the only people being held to account, but also that they are the only people who are listening.” (Cont)

NeuroClastic is working on a response to the discussions held by the Houses of the Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters on Thursday, May 4th, in Ireland. This is currently Terra Vance, org founder. I want to share some thoughts that won’t work their way into our reply. Our org is probably the highest profile autistic-led org in the world. Our articles on ABA are probably the most heavily cited autistic perspectives. We have over 150k followers across social media, the vast majority being autistic.

Neuroclastic is preparing to respond to the discussions held by the Houses of the Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters on Thursday, May 4th, 2023, in Ireland.

The topic of discussion was the consideration of rights-based behavior analysis and support (cont). This meeting was called after behavioral analysts challenged the findings of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters release in Feb 2023 that concluded that & PBS do not align with United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and human rights.

Okay, let’s talk about how a Nonspeaking Autistic writer, Gregory Tino, just published a children’s book called The Autistic Boy in The Unruly Body, and how it’s the #1 new release on Amazon’s “Autism and Asperger’s” category. But first, a #NeuroInclusive story about #Apraxia We made this #NeuroInclusive story with Gregory’s permission, using illustrations from his book. 86% of autistic people have clinically significant apraxia/dyspraxia. That’s a motor planning— not motor ability— disability.

For the victims of institutional violence, and especially if you’re autistic and do not understand the source of the hatred that gets directed at you or how people can even imagine such cruelty, the physical abuse is often not the worst.(cont) #StopTheShock #JRCSueMeToo It is the terror—the abject torture— of not knowing when. You have to be hyper aware of everyone’s moods at all times and try to adjust your behavior to their unpredictable ire that seems to come from somewhere you’ve never accessed. We talk a lot about the electroshocks at JRC.

In Saratoga County, NY, the police were called by a @Target employee on Black teens, siblings. Police harassed & became forceful & violent with a 14 year old autistic boy who was holding candy. He kept saying over & over, “I have money.”#AskingAutistics #AutismAcceptanceMonth Officers tackle the child. His 17-year-old sister is screaming, "he's autistic!" over and over. She is manhandled and aggressed against and ARRESTED. Police put felony assault & a resisting arrest charges on her. The autistic boy was not arrested because he committed no crimes.

Thread: It's going to take a while to unpack this, & a strong trigger warning for #ActuallyAutistic people, but seeing the trajectory of this complaint process to @BBC @BBCTwo and the responses regarding dangerous restraint is the substance of nightmares. againstrestraint.com/2022/01/29/the… The videos alone will drudge up your darkest PTSD, so don't watch them if you're not in the right headspace. When you have lost people to restraint, it hits even harder. This documentary pushes restraint and GROOMING and GASLIGHTING as a BEST PRACTICE!

Connie had bought into the toxic and ableist narrative of scarcity mindset. It is based on the narrow view of disability that means people are disabled based on how easy disability is to see from the outside.

https://twitter.com/NeuroRebel/status/1397153531648413698

Connie believes there is a very narrow way to be disabled, and when someone isn’t disabled the way that her child is, then they are a threat to the scarce resources her child may have access to. This is partially true. Resources are hard to obtain if you don’t seem obvious enough

How do you feel about being tagged in a comment thread on twitter to have someone say something along the lines of “This person you follow is a problem and I hope you’ll do the right thing,” meaning to unfollow. Is it coercive or helpful? Frankly, I hate it. I am not following a few thousand of my closest friends. I follow people because they said an interesting thing one time and maybe it’ll happen again, or I liked their profile picture, or I just hit “follow back” because I do that. I mainly follow autistic ppl

Let's look at the harm of not listening to activists. From this platform, we have been talking about the injustices in Virginia Beach against neurodivergent and Black residents. We have dedicated a large amount of our resources and time to focusing on Virginia Beach. On neuroclastic.com/freematthewrus…, we have highlighted-- solely using evidence from the prosecutor's office and @VBPD, the glaring human rights violations and mismanagement of handling Matthew Rushin's case.

Let’s talk about #RejectionSensitiveDysphoria or #RSD (a thread). Or better, let’s have @squishdivergent tell you in this excellent article: neuroclastic.com/2021/03/20/liv… RSD is not a disorder or diagnosis. It is a phenomenon that happens to people with a long history of being invalidated and rejected, people with #complexTrauma, people with certain #mentalHealth conditions, or people with a neurological predisposition.

I was so bummed by #SocialStories that gaslight #ActuallyAutistic kids that I made one that is not traumatic. It’s for ALL kids because it’s not necessary or healthy for minority groups to assimilate against their wishes and neurology. Alt text added to each image. 10 slides #Autism #socialSkills #SocialStories #inclusion

I want to apologize for my responses to the Sia movie. Nonspeakers had replied, but I didn't see it. It was erasing their input by asking people to listen to them. I also should have used my personal account and not the publication account. (cont) My personal perspectives are very affected by my experiences & are not universal among our contributors. I am really sad for all the constant pain & erasure & misrepresentation autistic people experience. I definitely don't ever want to invalidate any of that. We deserve better.

I want to clarify a few points about my thread about the Sia movie because I think in my long thread, I still wasn't clear enough on a few points. I'll try to condense them to one thread at a time. 1. I wanted the point of the thread to be about how we as a community were addressing the issue was often using talking points and language that doesn't reflect the best language for nonspeaker rights.

I’m having a hard time with the discussion about the movie, Music, written and directed by @Sia. First, everyone is referencing NonSpeakers as “non-verbal.” NonSpeakers are nonspeaking because they are apraxic, and that means they can’t coordinate their movements to speak. They often also can’t coordinate their bodies. They do things without being able to control themselves. Asking them to act in a movie where they have to do very complex ordered tasks would be overwhelming.

Thread: I’m going to put a trigger warning on this for attempted suicide, but is good news. A couple days ago, I announced to Twitter what had been told to me: that someone I cared about profoundly had died from suicide. He was an autistic 22-year-old. That was what the family was told. He had tried to save someone from an abusive situation, but it resulted in him being shunned and scolded and written off as a troublemaker. But what he did was brave and heroic, which I’d been saying daily. I was afraid this would happen.

The people behind #CommunicationRights are not obstructionist behaviorists. @NeuroClastic has speech language pathologists, psychologists, educators, OTs, MTs, researchers, neuroscientists, & nonspeakers who communicate through AAC, spelling, & sign. #ActuallyAutistic #Autism

https://twitter.com/bronwynhemsley/status/1327332231480676352

These people may have an aggressive approach to bullying autistics & our allies out of our own narratives & using their white (that's all white people) privilege to maintain the #monopoly on #Autism, but they are NOT allies. They are #oppressors. We can and do communicate. See?

Let me explain why autistic people may perform better with robots. It’s not their “Easy to read” social cues, it’s because they’re honest and predictable. They aren’t going to give an exasperated sigh or treat us like we’ve verbally assaulted them by expressing a need (cont)

https://twitter.com/neuroclastic/status/1313665649395281920

They’re not going to call us into the office and tell us they have “concerns” because they misinterpreted our responses. We aren’t going to find after six months of mistreatment that someone has been harboring a grudge because they misunderstood OUR subtext. (Cont)

@NSF @VanderbiltU @Cornell @Yale @GeorgiaTech This is the most disrespectful and dehumanizing thing I’ve ever seen, and that’s a high bar. Somebody needs to do a survey of autistic suicidal ideation after reading about this. Disgusting. neuroclastic.com/2020/10/06/5-m… I assure you that our ability to tolerate suffering is monastic already and that your testing of our patience is already a Sisyphean marathon you can’t fathom. Maybe the reason we are underemployed is because your nonsense is a parody straight out of Swift’s Laputa.

Today is day three of Suicide Prevention Week, and we are continuing the #NoDejahVu campaign by posting daily with articles and social media posts focused on suicide prevention. We need you to help! (cont) Of all the factors related to suicide, no lists suggest that "being loved, embraced, respected, and accepted" contributes. Being dismissive, embarrassed, or judgemental of people's personal truth and way of existing, their very identity, devastates them. (cont)