Browsed by
Month: May 2019

Disability, Discrimination, and Politics

Disability, Discrimination, and Politics

Here’s a fundamental question: what is the political status of autism?  Are autism and other disabilities simply impairments that need to be addressed through the provisions of services and supports, or are autistic people also victims of oppressive social and political systems that cause marginalization?  Do autistic people just need charity, or do we need social justice as well? We need to address this question and answer it, for I would say that the present model used to address autism…

Read More Read More

Deficit Isn’t a One-Way Street

Deficit Isn’t a One-Way Street

Sometimes, the best way to see where our conventional assumptions can go wrong is to consider concrete examples. Within the pathology paradigm, we assume that autistic people are disordered, that they have deficits in different skills and abilities, but we don’t critically examine how autistic people’s environments and the typically-developing people within these environments might contribute to autistic people’s disabilities.  We ignore the possibility that the typically-developing person might be something less than a normative ideal of perfection. Autism and…

Read More Read More