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 [...]
During my second week as a new faculty member, I was involuntarily committed to the psych ward at the university hospital. I would say that I make this statement against my better judgment, but such a sentiment presupposes that I have better judgment. (Which, according to my ex-doctors, I don’t.) My commitment had a slow-motion [...]
Something transcendent happens to autistic people when we turn 21: We disappear. Unfortunately for me, however, I’m 27, still autistic, and still living and breathing on this planet. Yes, my friends: I have been left behind. My parents made the mistake of not aborting me. And ABA, CBT, talk therapy, support groups, anti-depressants — none [...]
Yesterday, June 18, was Autistic Pride Day. As I sit in my apartment today, surrounded by half-filled boxes and piles of (overdue) library books, I find myself repeating a line, a line that brings frustration and distress. In the past few months, I’ve had run-ins with folks from Unpleasant Autism Organizations That Want to “Save [...]
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? [...]
