I’ve become obsessed with my kindergarten graduation. Initially, the video was painful to watch: I am stimming, I am ticcing, I am moving — in ways that visibly differ from my peers. But lately, I am resisting passing. When I teach, I talk through and about my stims. I fire my rubber bands across the [...]
Tomorrow (Sunday, October 9) is Autism Speaks’ annual Walk for Autism in Columbus. And tomorrow our local chapter of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network will unite in protest against Autism Speaks and their lack of community support, their high rates of executive pay, their lack of autistic representation, and their unethical advertising practices. I’m so [...]
In many respects, I think the subject heading says it all. I hear this a lot lately, primarily from undergraduate students who find autistic self-advocacy reprehensible and/or incomprehensible. In fact, at our protest this fall, someone actually came up to us and said, “If you can self-advocate, then you’re not autistic.” Way to disempower much? [...]
I wake up every morning wanting to blog. And then I don’t — mostly because being ABD (i.e., being in dissertation mode) has required a rather lengthy adjustment process. I like dissertating, so far anyway. But it’s life-consuming. Our local ASAN chapter protested Autism Speaks earlier this week. I created the following YouTube video, which [...]
A delayed post on my end, but I have my candidacy exams as an excuse. (I’ve completed the written portion, and I move onto the oral this Thursday, yikes.) On October 11, I helped to lead an ASAN protest against the Autism Speaks walk at Ohio State’s campus. As I now have the benefit of [...]
