Are hashtags even worth it anymore?
For the first time in human history, autistic people are extending our neural network so we can organize and be our own power structure. Our manifesto in one hashtag: to ban ABA worldwide.
a group of nerds huddled around laptops and cellphones with a rainbow banner behinds them and an infinity logo that says neurodiversity (AI generated from this prompt)
Under the medical model, autistic people never have, and never would be expected to organize into a collective to advocate for the same cause.
Now, we do things our way, from the stimmy comfort of our caves. The initiative accommodates how we will accomplish this. This culture-based approach is the only way we can make any advocacy fully accessible to us.
Who is maladaptive now? The fresh hell of behaviorists who are rebranding in a hurry. Some strategies they employ are:
- Advertising that ‘we are neurodiversity affirming’
- To help and support neurodivergent students who struggle with behaviors
- Take this class for continuing education credits (CEU’s) to learn from Ms. X who has been working with students on the autism spectrum for more than 20 years.
- We no longer require a referral, and accept cash pay
- We have an app to prompt people with autism based on their heart rate
Shout it out loudly:
- We are not broken, and we don’t need anyone to fix us.
- We don’t want you in our world. We have supportive therapies that focus on our neurodiversity, and not how disordered we present to your judging eyes.
- We have neurodivergent people who are in professional fields competing for your business, and parents seek them out for their specialty due to actual lived experience..
- Autistic people now have PhDs, and have professional license to practice Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, first responder EMT, police officers, and military marines.
- Our happy place is without contact from the world of behaviorism.
- We have current research to suggest that behaviorism is domestic terrorism.
- We need you to simply go away, or dissolve your practice. Go study art or something.
- You will be out of business by 2027, and you will have no way to pay your student loans.
I have observed “Super Nanny” using timers for timeout, for yelling at children to guilt them into the horrible pain they cause their parents, and to withhold food or bedtime until they proved that they unwound. There were several episodes with autistic kids where she infantilized them and instructed the family to be firm, but to tell the NT kids to help discipline the autistic. She never once mentioned to the parents that Autistic kids have at least one biological parent with spectrum traits. I think I’ll go gag now into my stimmy toy bucket.
Did I mention, use the #banABA hashtag everywhere, to keep track of our initiative? Let’s litter the internet until they retreat from the frontlines. We are out, loud, and proud.
Henny Kupferstein 