Society

Taking Flight

My daughter, who isn’t likely to get the GMC Terrain she’s been obsessing about because my husband has decided he wants to buy a Chevy Volt and save the planet, is now a college freshman. ... [Read More]

on 08/11/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

Disabilism and the Demonization of Autistic Children

This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces. �... [Read More]

on 08/6/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

Exploring The Social Model: Accessibility

How do we enable autistics to lead meaningful lives contributing to society as autistic people? How can society be reconfigured to encourage and allow everyone, not only the enabled neurotypicals, to... [Read More]

on 08/2/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

The End of Workplace Bias

As we transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, those who find themselves out of work are disproportionately men. The historical male advantage of physical strength has become alm... [Read More]

on 07/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

Exploring The Social Model: Introduction & Groundwork

The biggest problem I can identify in the conversation about autism today, the issue to which everything seems to boil down to, is the seeming refusal to acknowledge autism as a dis/ability—not a di... [Read More]

on 07/26/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Embracing the Social Model of Disability

I have begun writing monthly articles on disability issues for our local weekly newspaper. The following is my column for July: In my last article for The Commons, I wrote about the distance I often ... [Read More]

on 07/22/10 | No Comments | Read More

Shrink on the Box

When Lili Marlene finds time to watch the tube in the daytime, she doesn’t waste a moment on tripe like Oprah or Dr. Phil or that other rot on the commercial stations. I tuned in to the National Pr... [Read More]

on 07/13/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

“But You Seem So Normal!”

If there’s one statement that makes my head hurt and my skin feel weird, it’s this: I say something along the lines of, “By the way, I have Asperger’s Syndrome.” They say, “Really? I can�... [Read More]

on 07/5/10 | No Comments | Read More

Seeking Familiar Comforts

My teenage daughter, who likes to plan ahead, has decided to pick out my next new car. She insists that a GMC Terrain would be just right for me because it has plenty of space like an SUV, but it get... [Read More]

on 06/30/10 | No Comments | Read More

Theorem of Compassion

The old trope that autistic people are so withdrawn that they cannot connect to the world, and thus they are inherently selfish and disconnected from people … they cannot empathize with people &... [Read More]

on 06/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

The Unbroken Spectrum: Stockholm Syndrome

This series of entries on the“unbroken spectrum” began as an effort to outline just a couple mechanisms which work to obscure the demographic where paler shades of the autistic spectrum shade ove... [Read More]

on 06/25/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

Robots for Therapy and the Lack of Empathy Myth

The idea that autistics lack empathy is one of the more pervasive myths out there, shared by some parents, far too many professionals and the general public, and it’s dead wrong. What some autistic... [Read More]

on 06/10/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

The Unbroken Spectrum: Self-Hatred

A couple weeks ago I sat down to sketch out two mechanisms which serve to obscure the reality that there is no clear dividing line between autistic people and the larger population. What was to be a ... [Read More]

on 06/4/10 | 8 Comments | Read More

The Last of the Wild Autistics

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — my generation is the last of the wild autistics. Many of us were never given any autism-related diagnosis as children. Those of us who did recieve c... [Read More]

on 05/31/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Staring Diversity in the Eye

The French Parliament has passed a resolution condemning the wearing of veils, as reported by feminist blogger Aimee Sea in an article pointing out the tremendous irony in the idea that women must be ... [Read More]

on 05/26/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Strong Women and Social Change

Theory of mind, as Andrew Lehman explains, can be understood as a modern cognitive style that contrasts with the tendency of ancient matrifocal societies—and autistics—to engage in primary process... [Read More]

on 05/6/10 | No Comments | Read More

Is misandry relevant to autism?

Is misandry relevant to autism? If Hans Asperger’s “extreme male brain” theory of autism is correct, then it seems to follow that neurotypical females, particularly NT females of the “empathiz... [Read More]

on 05/5/10 | 7 Comments | Read More

A Changeling’s Alternate Reality Story

You ought to have known better than to walk out of your house, late at night on Halloween, while dark wisps of cloud were briskly blowing across a moonless sky. But your street looked quiet enough; th... [Read More]

on 05/3/10 | No Comments | Read More

Autism and the Uncanny Valley

One of the first pieces I wrote for this site finished with a whimsical suggestion that autistic people were somewhat native to what is known as the uncanny valley, a term that refers to the revulsion... [Read More]

on 04/30/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

The Benefit of the Doubt

Many books and articles have been published on the topic of what makes a marriage or relationship succeed. At the top of my list I’d put willingness to give the other person the benefit of the ... [Read More]

on 04/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

How far can autistic culture develop without excluding neurotypical people?

How far can autistic culture develop without excluding neurotypical people? For many years I have been married (to the same guy). It’s obvious to me that we are both on the autistic spectrum, even ... [Read More]

on 04/26/10 | 7 Comments | Read More

Passing For Neurotypical

Officially, we don’t exist. The hordes of psychological “experts” who regularly comment on the supposed near-impossibility of productive, independent lives and successful marriages among autisti... [Read More]

on 04/23/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

Abortion, Violence Against Women, and Autism

Modern society is changing in many ways that increase the autistic population. Andrew Lehman touched on one of them in a November post discussing the practices of sex-selective abortion and female in... [Read More]

on 04/21/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

The Road Less Travelled

We all know them, there is a certain tribe amongst us neuro diverse people who speak of cure and curse what they might have been but for the ‘demon’ of autism that possesses them. They tend to be ... [Read More]

on 04/19/10 | No Comments | Read More

Tips For Socially Awkward Geeks (According to Stanford)

Or perhaps more accurately, according to a certain student at Stanford. Wait, shoot! I broke the rules! Philip Guo has a write-up of rules for the successful social interaction of geeks. Really hel... [Read More]

on 04/14/10 | No Comments | Read More

Publicist: Must Be Willing to Out Prominent Autistics

Author Michael Lewis, as interviewed recently on NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me: Alright, ah, the first, first investor to make a bet that this whole subprime mortgage bond experiment was a disa... [Read More]

on 03/31/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

I Am ——— . . . Who Are You?

I am told I am “sick,” that I am “disabled,” that I am “abnormal” and that a cure is being searched for for my “condition” and others who suffer from it... [Read More]

on 03/24/10 | No Comments | Read More

Quiet Desperation and the Larger Picture

It’s an odd business, blogging for a constituency that’s not only unaware that you exist and are writing for and about them, but also unaware that they exist and are many enough to make up a const... [Read More]

on 03/19/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

Melting Down an Autism Stereotype

By now, I expect we’ve all seen plenty of articles, books, and other media depicting the “autistic meltdown,” wherein a slight change in routine supposedly triggers some kind of mass... [Read More]

on 03/18/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Diversity and Inclusion: How Society Fails Us All, How We Fail Ourselves

Leave aside for the moment your immediate foray into divisions, into the ideas of a neurodiversity movement. Leave aside for a moment the split into camps of curing and not curing, the false dichotom... [Read More]

on 03/3/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

« Older Entries   Newer Entries »