I wrote introductions of two 20-year old Autistic people, Hillary and Rose. Before reading this post, I suggest you read those.
I wanted you to think about these two people.
Remember what you thought?
They're the same person. They're both me. I just selectively decided on different bits of my life to give you in each. The book I'm already in is Loud Hands: Autistic People Speaking, and the piece in it is "I Hid." The single-author book is one on Neurodiversity and Tamora Pierce. The piece that's going into another book is sort of an introduction to the Neurodiversity and Tamora Pierce one, and it's going into FYTortall's book.
I chew on my hands sometimes. I really do. I don't chew hard enough to actually hurt myself, but yeah. Chewing on my hands is a thing I do. My teachers have had pretty varied reactions to my inability to sit still. (I'd fail special needs kindergarten, not even joking.) I've had people completely fail to care, and that's been great. Those are the classes where you'd see me sewing or making chainmail or knitting in class, and I'd be doing really well. Those were the classes I was most likely to get an A in. Not because it was easy and I didn't need to pay attention: because that's what I need to do in order to pay attention. This was AP chemistry. This was AP biology. This was Honors economics in college. I've also had people try to stop me from fidgeting. Those were the classes I didn't do so great in. Often "easier" classes- Hebrew school, middle school unleveled science classes, middle school history classes.
That's the thing. People have mixes of traits. When I taught an autism 101 class at MIT's Splash, I had short, 1 paragraph bios of people and the students were supposed to guess if the people were autistic or not. People guessed that Amy Sequenzia was not autistic. It's possible to manipulate the picture that much. Which was among the points I was trying to make.
So, do you really trust the people who use functioning levels as a reason a person should be ignored?
Note: This is apparently my 500th post. WOOT.
I wanted you to think about these two people.
Remember what you thought?
They're the same person. They're both me. I just selectively decided on different bits of my life to give you in each. The book I'm already in is Loud Hands: Autistic People Speaking, and the piece in it is "I Hid." The single-author book is one on Neurodiversity and Tamora Pierce. The piece that's going into another book is sort of an introduction to the Neurodiversity and Tamora Pierce one, and it's going into FYTortall's book.
I chew on my hands sometimes. I really do. I don't chew hard enough to actually hurt myself, but yeah. Chewing on my hands is a thing I do. My teachers have had pretty varied reactions to my inability to sit still. (I'd fail special needs kindergarten, not even joking.) I've had people completely fail to care, and that's been great. Those are the classes where you'd see me sewing or making chainmail or knitting in class, and I'd be doing really well. Those were the classes I was most likely to get an A in. Not because it was easy and I didn't need to pay attention: because that's what I need to do in order to pay attention. This was AP chemistry. This was AP biology. This was Honors economics in college. I've also had people try to stop me from fidgeting. Those were the classes I didn't do so great in. Often "easier" classes- Hebrew school, middle school unleveled science classes, middle school history classes.
That's the thing. People have mixes of traits. When I taught an autism 101 class at MIT's Splash, I had short, 1 paragraph bios of people and the students were supposed to guess if the people were autistic or not. People guessed that Amy Sequenzia was not autistic. It's possible to manipulate the picture that much. Which was among the points I was trying to make.
So, do you really trust the people who use functioning levels as a reason a person should be ignored?
Note: This is apparently my 500th post. WOOT.
So that Tamora Pierce and neurodiversity book sounds very interesting. Please let us(or me) know when it's finished, because I want it. I would buy that.
ReplyDeleteI can do that. :)
DeleteI need to finish writing it, first, but yes. I can do that.