Today is a very big Autism News post! Partly because I procrastinated harder than usual, but also because there is genuinely a lot of autism stuff in the news, especially as we gear up for the Awareness/Acceptance Month of April.
Since everyone is lighting it up different colors for autism right now, we should probably start with Real Social Skills’ post on what autism awareness means to them.
There was a lot in the news lately about euthanasia, murder, death in general, and other medical problems for disabled people. Everything in this section has a TW for these and related topics.
- Charles Lane from the Washington Post on euthanasia of mentally ill / autistic people in the Netherlands
- Nightingale of Samarkand on how doctors devalue disabled people’s lives (a good follow-up to the above article)
- Kerima Cevik on the murder of Cynthia Busch
- A Swedish study shows that autistic people have a considerably shorter life expectancy than average
- Feminist Aspie has a good critique related to this study
- Saskia Baron on problems with how high-support autistic people are treated by medical doctors
Meanwhile, autistic self-advocate John Elder Robison wrote a book about his experiences with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.
- Here is a post by Robison about his book, and on the difference between “having feelings” and “reading social cues”
- Sonia Boue lists objections that many autistic people are raising to the promotion of TMS in Robison’s book
- This interview with Robison responds to some of these objections, and goes into more depth on Robison’s feelings about the potential risks and drawbacks of TMS.
Posts about adult diagnosis:
- Corinne Duyvis on being diagnosed with autism
- An interview with Anlor Davin about adult diagnosis, Zen, and other things
- Andrea Michael on late diagnosis and impostor syndrome
Pan-disability posts for the SFF crowd!
- Annalee from The Bias presents The Geek’s Guide to Disability: a good summary both of some recent controversies, and of the Disability 101 background that you might need in order to understand what’s at stake for people here.
- Corinne Duyvis on regard for human life in apocalyptic fiction
- A Disability in Kidlit roundtable about magical disabilities
Other pan-disability posts:
- Erin Human on why she says “disabled”, not “special needs”
- Feminist Aspie on food policing
- Clarissa Krikpe on community living for people with high-support/ developmental disabilities. (Note: There is a lot of parent-centric language in this article, but if you can deal with that, it has some pretty interesting information.)
- Karen Hitselberger on why the “How Do You See Me?” campaign doesn’t work
Misc:
- Dani Alexis Ryskamp on the importance (or lack of importance) of eye contact
- Dani Alexis Ryskamp on pushing oneself
- Alyssa Hillary on autistic development
- A discussion of NeuroTribes by M Kelter, Michael McWatters, and Dr. Deborah Budding
- Kerima Cevik on how she stopped caring what causes autism