Video Released By Autism Speaks Outrages Autistics

If this video does anything, it makes the autistic child look like a lost victim of a plague that wasn’t caught in time, the parents failures for not ‘catching it in time’ and the autistic community a group of pariahs. It uses scare tactics and I feel veiled threats that feel to me more like a marketing campaign than a personal expression of the creators (the spin that I’ve read AS has put on this). Sure. Express yourself… your anger and pain as a parent… but don’t post it on “Autism Speaks” because if you’re not on the autistic spectrum, you aren’t speaking as part of the broad diversity of autistics… you’re speaking as a parent of autistic children (according to AS), and your voice shouting loud, full of fear and negativity, merely silences us, victimizes us in the eyes of society, marginalizes our potential contribution to society, and creates a culture that can seek to further exclude us for our difference. Watch the video… do you want the child, as portrayed, playing with your children? That child is portrayed as tainted.

Autism Speaks presents us as puzzles and broken children… not the puzzle solving remarkable individuals history suggests we are.

Groups Outraged Over Video Released By Autism Speaks

A group of leading disability organizations is calling on Autism Speaks’ benefactors to end their support for the organization. The move comes in response to a video distributed by Autism Speaks which critics say depicts people with autism as less than human and burdens on society.

The video, which aired at Autism Speaks’ World Focus on Autism event earlier this week in New York, features two parts.

The first part shows young people with autism as a voice-over declares, “I am autism.” The man’s voice continues by describing autism as a disorder that works “faster than pediatric AIDS, cancer and diabetes combined,” will ensure that your marriage fails, will bankrupt you, cause you not to sleep and make it “virtually impossible” to go out in public without experiencing embarrassment or pain.

The second portion of the video features more hopeful images. The voice-overs declare that through love for their children, parents and others will work tirelessly to overcome the challenges autism presents.

In response, disability advocates are now coming together to condemn the video, which they say is part of a pattern of behavior by the nation’s largest autism advocacy organization.

In a letter being prepared for open circulation next week, the group of advocates say the video is a “fundraising tool” that relies on “fear, stigma, misinformation and prejudice against autistic people.” The letter will be sent to Autism Speaks donors, sponsors and supporters and it will be posted publicly, organizers say.

Already the American Association of People with Disabilities, ADAPT and TASH are among the organizations that have signed on to the letter organized by the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. Other organizations are now reviewing the document….

The group of advocates go on to ask the public to no longer support Autism Speaks and instead find new ways to support people with autism and other disabilities.

“Autism Speaks believes that its bottom line will be helped by portraying autistic people as less than human,” says Ari Ne’eman, president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. “This is really damaging if you’re trying to get your child included in school or if you’re an autistic person trying to find a job or get included in society more broadly.”

When asked about the video, Autism Speaks representatives tried to distance the organization from the short film, which appears on the group’s Web site and includes home videos solicited through the organization….

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Mirrored from Lemmingworks.

iNudge

iNudge Rules. It reminds me of the great leonide.de exploratorium of years ago that I was obsessed with. This is my little version of patterns. You click on the boxes in the right column to see the patterns, and in the lower left is the volume curve. If it is dark but the button below it is pressed, I’ve muted that channel. You can click on the button and that pattern will turn on.

This is great as it allows children to create riffs and share them, and other people can mod them as well… does just what it says… allows children to explore sounds and music patterns.

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Mirrored from Lemmingworks.

How A Feminist Found Her Sexism

On The Issues Magazine: Summer 2009: How A Feminist Found Her Sexism by Helen Boyd seems like a very open and honest self-exploration on topics and issues that people don’t often or don’t often have to challenge… Thanks to KM for the ref to it.

It’s been a surprise to find out what a sexist I really am. I’ve been calling myself a feminist for two decades, and surely was one for the two decades before that.

I’m a woman who found myself with a female husband – the man I married is trans and currently transitioning to living as female in the world. She has been doing so socially for some time and only now has decided to make it official with a name change and all the legal ballyhoo. I’ve been surprised by a lot of aspects of this process, not least of which is our relationship surviving it.

She was always more feminine than me, even when she lived in the world as male
People can’t and don’t just change their sexual orientation because they want or need to, and partners of transgender people are no exception. I can’t magically become a lesbian, no matter how useful that would be. I am seen as one by most other people when I am holding my female spouse’s hand.

If I were categorically heterosexual I wouldn’t have managed this transition at all, which is one of many reasons I think of myself as simply queer.

I never played a heterosexual woman very convincingly, but I tried. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t expect any sexism in my own attitudes about gender in relationships. I was a tomboy growing up. As an adult, I was always a little too forthright and ungiggly for most straight guys. I preferred buying my own dinner and drinks in order to avoid any expectations later in the evening. I didn’t play along, reflecting them at twice their natural size, as Virginia Woolf once so famously put it in A Room of One’s Own. That said, as the woman in a straight relationship, you’re assumed to be the more feminine of the two of you – even if you aren’t.

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Mirrored from Lemmingworks.