Comments on: Recommended Reading for December 7

By: Dana

Dana — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:28:05 +0000

The Rethinking Autism: Autistics Speaks video is mine. I made it myself with my own money. I have limited resources and could not afford to fly my autistic friends in to be in the video, so I used voiceovers. I tried to reach out to local autistic people, but rightfully so, they did not really trust the use of autistic adults in videos (whether or not I would make them look like victims or empowered). I plan to do more videos using autistic adults and try to advance general publics perception of autism.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:32:29 +0000

@Su: Oh, yes, I wish they had added the closed captioning file that I submitted to them for that one. But here’s a captioned version for those who need it:

http://www.overstream.net/view.php?oid=udtvrbt0rlao

And I interpreted that last paragraph you wrote the completely opposite way— until that last sentence, I made the assumption that they might expect it to be more valid because he’s non-NT! Clearly my mind still does not work along NT lines at all.

By: su

su — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:28:32 +0000

I’m sorry if this has been posted elsewhere on your wonderful blog but I find this a great antidote whenever I have to debrief from some awful autism-antagonistic perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_dPZDcX_ck&feature=player_embedded.

I went to a carer support group meeting today and when I left the mothers were all speculating as to whether their guest speaker, a psychologist who takes an interest in marriage guidance counselling for those with autism, was himself on the spectrum. This is the reason I stopped attending these meetings. It is not the speculation itself but that it is always attended by an unspoken assumption that information from a neurotypical source is of higher value.

By: K

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:44:25 +0000

Hay. Thanks for linking.
Omg you even added a vulvodynia tag. I hope that helps someone.

By: Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:27:17 +0000

Regarding the mentally ill girl in Suffolk: just to clarify, the police station was, at that time, the default “place of safety” for juveniles with a critical mental health situation. That changed a few days later, when a new unit opened. Of course, that doesn’t say much for the state of mental health services for young people in that part of the UK. I wonder how many other places still have that policy.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:00:43 +0000

@Jadey: That’s another great thing about us neurodiversity types. Unlike Autism Speaks, we actually bother to caption some of our videos.

By: Jadey

Jadey — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:37:33 +0000

Ah, okay, I watched it CCed with the sound off because I’m at work, so I missed that aspect. Thanks for the other link.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:14:31 +0000

And as for the Rethinking Autism video… the voice clips used in the video are of actual autistics (including one who uses a communication device), but none of the people shown in the video are as far as I know. So it’s sort of half-and-half.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:12:43 +0000

@Jadey: Yeah, there's at least one that I know of: I Am Autism Speaks. There are several other responses, too, but that's the only one I can think of that actually uses the original footage.

By: Jadey

Jadey — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:08:17 +0000

Has anyone taken that Autism Speaks video and remixed it with new narration? I Googled briefly but haven’t found that specifically yet (although I did find this video that works as a pretty good rebuttal from RethinkingAutism: http://vodpod.com/watch/2232709-rethinking-autism-autistics-speak — not sure if anyone in it is *not* NT though, but the message is on point). It would be an interesting project to creatively reclaim the footage. Any vidders in the house?