Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes, has won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, a prestigious U.K. award. It’s the latest of many prizes, glowing reviews, and appearances high on best-seller lists for this magnificent work on the history and meaning of autism. It directly challenges all the pity and tragedy narratives, without erasing lived experiences …
In April 2014, Sesame Street announced a partnership with Autism Speaks. Autistic indivduals and their allies quickly organized to push Sesame Street to do better, and not listen solely to a group dedicated to perpetuating the worst stereotypes about autism. The results are pretty good. From an LA Times article on the process: Children with …
I have a new piece up at Al Jazeera America this morning on Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is the mega-charity of the autism world. Founded in 2005, it has an annual budget of $60 million, is known for its ubiquitous awareness walks and has a handsome array of celebrity backers. In some quarters of the disability …
Yesterday I published a brief post on Flowers v. Gopal, in which some rich California folks are trying to declare a neighboring autistic child a public nuisance. I’ll have more to say about the case, including answering the, “but but he wasn’t a nice kid!” comments I’m getting (short version: If he didn’t have autism …
I wrote about Autism Speaks a few weeks ago, and my email box has been lively with parents telling me to “check my facts” or sorrowfully wanting correct my “”unsound and terribly flawed” information. One of the issues with Autism Speaks is that they define Autism as tragedy. Then, when confronted by autistics who are …
Neurodiversity is a powerful concept, taking the ideas of intellectual and psychiatric disability and wrestling them into the diversity narratives. In the diversity narratives, we don’t try to cure or fix, but to accept, understand, accommodate, assist, and hopefully eventually move to a place where we recognize same-ness in our differences. Bringing disability into the …
UPDATE: My NYT piece has been delayed. Still in the works but probably 10 days or so from now, for various reasons. Stay tuned! Today I am going to have a piece in the New York Times about Autism Speaks and a recent parenting dilemma. I thought it might be useful to have some resources here. …
How we talk about disability matters. For example, I have often criticized Autism Speaks and anti-vax groups (not the same – AS is not AntiVax, they have other problems) for the way they talk about autism as a disease needing a cure. I assure you, my autistic friends are not diseased. Moreover, it’s absolutely clear …
In Spokane, a woman stabbed her autistic son in the neck. Here is 100% of the information on the victim (link here): Court documents say the 17-year-old son had several cut marks on his neck and throat, but officials say his wounds were not life threatening. The rest of the piece is about how hard …
On CNN – in “London McCabe’s Death Matters” – I argued that the way we talk about autism, our ideas about the condition, our ideas about disability more generally, shape the worldview that can lead to child murder. The correlation in these cases is not lack of services or money, but ideas about disability. Correlation …