I have once again managed to neglect my Autism News posts for a few months, so now you folks are getting a NICE BIG ONE.
Posts about how people treat us:
- Lydia Brown on ableist sexual harassment
- C.L. Bridge on special interests
Posts about personal experiences:
- Leigh Merryday on inexplicable tears (I can definitely relate to having emotions that are stored up to be released later!)
- M Kelter explains how he experiences music
- Kerima Cevik on using YouTube to communicate
- Finn Gardiner on executive dysfunction
Posts about online advocacy and the politics of language:
- Amy Sequenzia on people who use “person-first language” but still don’t “see the person”
- Alyssa Hillary on choosing between different problematic terms with different problematic histories
- Chavisory on “alienating allies”, and how there are two different things that phrase can mean
- Real Social Skills on responding to callouts
Posts about American politics and core disability policy:
- ASAN statement on the defeat of ACA repeal (in September…)
- ASAN statement on the more recent attempts to dismantle the ACA with executive orders
- ACLU statement on proposed changes to the Americans With Disabilities Act
- Sarah Jones on the ADAPT protests
Other pan-disability and policy stuff:
- Christopher Knaus explains how NDIS disability insurance is being rolled out too fast in the UK
- Russ Choma on how airlines and the Trump administration are delaying implementing improvements to how US airlines handle wheelchairs
- Mac McClelland on what happens to Americans who are found not guilty by reason of insanity (TW: institutionalization; medical/psychiatric abuse; descriptions of violent crimes, including sexual crimes and crimes against children.)
Media and reviews:
- Elizabeth Cassidy explains why having characters who meet all the diagnostic criteria for autism isn’t the same as having realistic autistic characters
- Eric Deggans summarizes autistic people’s reactions to “Atypical” and “The Good Doctor”
- Maxfield Sparrow writes a nuanced review of “The Good Doctor”
- Sarah Pripas reviews “Dina”, a documentary about an autistic couple getting married
- Nicole and Meadow Panteleakos review “A Boy Called Bat”
- Chavisory explains the problem with portraying autistic characters as naive. (This is one of those “I think I knew this, but I didn’t have language to say it” type posts for me. It’s a great description of a pervasive problem in a way I haven’t seen before. I might start linking to it in Autistic Book Party reviews once in a while.)
Misc:
- Bec Oakley has a good 101 post about fidget tools
- Jessica Wright on autism and anxiety
- J.R. Jackson explains why authors living on disability payments might not want to be paid for their writing
- Maxfield Sparrow on how to explain death and dying to autistic children. (This is really good and detailed. TW for death, obviously, and a couple of other things listed at the beginning of the article.)