On June 23, I attended the Nisonger Autism Institute, a day-long, invitation-only conference that focused on transition across the lifespan. I’ve been wanting to write on my experience there for some time now, but needed a month in order to cohere my thoughts (and to lower my, um, blood pressure). I should start off by [...]
For starters, you don’t look neurotypical. I should know, after all, what neurotypicals look like. I saw one on TV once. And my cousin’s dog-walker’s kid sister is extremely neurotypical — she cracks her gum and wants to be like Paris Hilton when she grows up. Her poor mother. You’re too well-adjusted to be a [...]
This is something I’ve touched on in this blog, however briefly: the wonderful (or not so wonderful) world of autism and so-called official diagnoses. Among other not-so-pleasant things, autism is frequently depicted as the newest “trend diagnosis,” especially within online circles. We only need look to Dennis Leary’s or Michael Savage’s tirades this past summer [...]
Apparently, there are a lot of people who fake Asperger’s on the internet. Or, at the very least, apparently there are a lot of people who, whether or not they have Asperger’s, use Asperger’s as an excuse for ridiculous behavior. Key word: apparently. Enter Luke McKinney’s The 5 Most Retarded Causes People Are Actually Fighting [...]
I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since the age of eight. The narrative is a familiar one: I couldn’t see the chalkboard at school, walked into telephone poles, made head contact with dodge balls more often than usual. I remember my first trip to the optometrist, a small balding man with a penchant for incomprehensible soccer truisms, [...]
