Autism News: 2017/10/26

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.)