On November 1st there is an international event which is meant to raise awareness about autism where people will voluntarily abstain from Twitter and Facebook for 24 hours. They will also donate to purchase an applet that signifies they are participating in this event. This is supposed to simulate what it is like to have communication difficulties as an autistic person.
The campaign is called Communication Shutdown and their campaign's homepage is here.
Please do NOT support this event!
Firstly, let me say that, as an autistic woman, I feel this event does a disservice to my experiences and my needs. Abstaining from social networking, even abstaining from social contact in general, does not simulate my lived experience with social difficulties. Full-Stop. All this does is teach stereotypes beget of misinformation and nothing good can come of that.
More importantly as to why you should boycott this event is because who is behind it. The founder and coordinator of this event is the AEIOU Foundaition who's board of directors and staff are completely neurotypical. The campaign's partners are more of the same: Neurotypical organizations which work on our behalf yet without our consent.
There is a major problem when those in the majority attempt to speak for, and dominate the discourse around, a minority.
Furthermore, the AEIOU Foundation and its partners are in the business of providing interventions aimed at making the consequences of our autism less severe. Whether rightly or wrongly they provide a service to help 'cure' the symptoms of our disability. In other words, they have a vested interest in a public which believes we are defective and thus in need of treatment.
This is a conflict of interest and is why the ABA industry, however well intentioned, must never be allowed to advocate on our behalf unopposed.
We need services. We certainly need awareness around and public discourse about our needs. Yet we have a right to speak for ourselves, to center the dialog on our own voices not just on our needs, to consent to our own treatment, and to lead our own struggle for equality. This has been denied to us and it is time that we, as a people, took it back.
h/t: FWD/Forward and No Stereotypes Here for bringing this to my attention.
Hello world!
1 year ago
4 comments:
Thanks for this. I hadn't heard of the campaign, but I'm sick of neurotypical folks thinking they know what's best for us... in fact, I'm sick of folks thinking they know the best for other folks full stop.
...I still don't get why they'd think not having social networks avaliable to a neurotypical person would make them feel like they were autistic. Switching over to a language they didn't understand, slightly like my experience of large groups.
Given that I find it a lot easier to communicate using writing - which is what social networking is - I really don't get this.
Honestly, I feel that the whole abstaining from social networking idea is just a projection of the stereotype that hold that autistic people are unable to meaningfully communicate (at least when it's bad enough to be REAL autism).
Personally, I feel the same way as you with regards to writing. I feel that often I am completely unable to communicate meaningfully on a spectrum of subjects verbally yet do well when writing. A lot of very complex yet abstract concepts fall into this category.
I don't feel that even when I write I'm able to convey things quite to my satisfaction but I feel that with my writing I am able to at least meaningfully, and deliberately, communicate them. I suppose this is more of a limit of language as a medium than a limit of me being an autistic person, however.
I think I actually could communicate how I feel about these folks with these folks, in person, in the same room as them, at a busy conference. With two fingers, raised vertically, though I'm unsure whether they should be on the same hand or different hands.
@Kit: Indeed, this is true. You're not the first autistic person I have talked to who has shared a preference for sign languages for in-person communication. *winks*
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