#Autistic #Autism #ABA #BanABA #SueABA #AbolishABA #ABAisAbuse

Just finished watching another Philosophy Tube video, a longer one about the [lack of] medical healthcare for trans people in England.

🔗 https://youtu.be/v1eWIshUzr8

But what calls my attention to all of this - and to my precious toots about #transphobia is how closely related the history of #Autism is to all of this. All the bigotry, the violence, the medical treatment and exclusion, the diagnosis. I wish I had the time to collect and build all the resources there are about this.

But to start, I want to lead with a paper about the Queer History of Autism, that shows how #ABA treatment for autism was first made as queer #ConversionTherapy. Their main proponent, Autism Speaks, poses as allies but are actually a hate group. A lot of what #ActuallyAutistic people go through daily is very similar to what queer and trans folk go through as well. And Abigail Thorne, from Philosophy Tube, also ends her reflection on this process talking about disability, the medical and social models and how a lot of ot comes down to #SocialExclusion.

🔗 https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29579

Not considering, as well, how much of our communities - #AutismCommunity and #QueerCommunity - overlaps:
"Autistic people are more likely than neurotypical people to be gender diverse, several studies show, and gender-diverse people are more likely to have autism than are cisgender people" (🔗 https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/largest-study-to-date-confirms-overlap-between-autism-and-gender-diversity/ ).

My point is that we should all work together and learn from one another.

#ABAisAbuse #BanABA #BoycottAutismSpeaks

#Autism #ABAisAbuse

#BanABA

There is no world in which ABA is acceptable. Once you start to make ABA acceptable, it is no longer ABA.

ABA is based on the premise that Autistic people are "flawed" and need to be "cured". It does that by training them through behavioral techniques (e.g., reinforcement) to "behave" properly. It is the equivalent to "Conversion Therapy" for LGBTQIA+ people (and has the same roots).

ABA, by it's premise, assumes that Autistic people are fundamentally flawed and, by its premise, ignore the feelings, thoughts, emotions, and needs of Autistic people to focus on their behavior. Modern "ABA" may consider these aspects, but that part of the therapy is no longer "ABA".

ABA therapy is often pushed on parents for their Autistic children at a young age (before 3 years old). These children have not stopped developing and do not have the ability to consent to such a trauma-inducing form of therapy.

Articles like this one try to dismiss the concerns that the #ActuallyAutistic community have about ABA. However, they fail to address the abusive aspects of ABA.

ABA is constantly evolving. However, the issue is with the "roots" of ABA, the foundation on which the entire therapy is based. You can repaint and re-plaster a building over and over to make it prettier, but if the foundation is built poorly based on false assumptions then you are doing little more than window-dressing an otherwise rotten building.

#ABAisAbuse #BanABA

https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/does-aba-therapy-good-choice/

This webinar on harmful approaches to autism, run by the European Council of Autistic People (EUCAP), starts at 11am GMT. Registration still seems to be open.
#ABAisAbuse
https://eucap.eu/webinar-nov-2022/

Ahh!!!

I post about Autism and ABA and suddenly I'm getting ABA ads telling me I should get ABA for my "Autistic child" with "behavior problems"!

#BanABA #ABAisAbuse

Just linking to this evolving thread on the birdsite by Tania Melnyczuk

Her long and multiply-branching threads are always a joy to get lost in

Here she is trying to fathom what on earth ‘good’ #ABA practitioners could possibly think they’re doing when they ‘treat’ #ActuallyAutistic people

#ABAIsAbuse #BanABA #BanPBS #BanConversionTherapy

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1533748785888763904