Note For Anyone Writing About Me

Guide to Writing About Me

I am an Autistic person,not a person with autism. I am also not Aspergers. The diagnosis isn't even in the DSM anymore, and yes, I agree with the consolidation of all autistic spectrum stuff under one umbrella. I have other issues with the DSM.

I don't like Autism Speaks. I'm Disabled, not differently abled, and I am an Autistic activist. Self-advocate is true, but incomplete.

Citing My Posts

MLA: Zisk, Alyssa Hillary. "Post Title." Yes, That Too. Day Month Year of post. Web. Day Month Year of retrieval.

APA: Zisk, A. H. (Year Month Day of post.) Post Title. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/post-specific-URL.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

I've been at SDS

SDS is the Society for Disability Studies, and it had it's annual conference. I'm actually still there, I get home Sunday night, but the presentations are done. It's been cool.
There was stuff on disability rights, there was a panel that I was on about intersectionality stuff and Autistic culture, I got a chance to talk to a bunch of scholarly people. Robert McRuer doesn't actually hate me. [I have anxiety issues. My first presentation at a conference ever, I criticized the use of the word "crip" in his book because of historical exclusion of cognitively disabled folks from the broader disability community, and how choosing a word that needs stretching to apply to a group that has historically been excluded isn't awesome, even if it is stretchy and mostly has/is starting to stretch. He... was at the conference. Not on my same panel, thank goodness, but at it. 太尴尬了!(SO awkward!) And I was thus convinced that he hated me. Which is totally not how it works in academia, but still. Turns out he actually thinks I'm pretty cool.] There was a silent auction. I'm coming home with three books, two T-shirts, and a pile of papers I didn't have when I got here. I learned stuff. I made connections. I may have gotten myself invited to participate on a different panel for next year. One where the title and description is less self-narrating zoo exhibity. (The stuff I actually talked about wasn't self-narrating zoo exhibit. But the title was a little bit like we were representing Autistic people to the broader disability community.)
There was some cool stuff. There was a paper about the representation of autism that was pretty cool, critiquing the whole "unimaginative genius" and "savant" set of representations. There was the panel I was on. A friend of mine was on a panel for emerging scholars (students, generally) who were doing disability studies research. His presentation was good, and I have a copy of the paper he's writing with an associate professor. Dr. Grace offered to help me get my paper on the erasure of Queer Autistic people finished up and to help me find a place to publish it, too. Since I don't have much in the way of organization or remembering to keep working on a thing that I don't have in my face, that could be very helpful. It depends on if my paper gets accepted for the Inspire virtual conference, I think- that would give me a solid deadline to get it done by, which means it would happen. Without that, I could forget about it and then it would be not a thing. That would be bad, since I think it's important and I think it fits in well with disability/queer theory. There's a lot of places the problem comes from, and I want to cover all of them. Caretakers, parents, staff, queer communities, sometimes even the disability community. It's... complicated.

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