Following the trail of where Hans Asperger picked up the term autism I ended up reading a fascinating 1919 German book by Eugen Bleuler titled ‘Autistic and undisciplined thinking in medicine, and how to overcome it’. The content is not at all what you would think. The sands of pathologisation have shifted significantly.
From an autistic perspective cognitive dissonance manifests not in terms of contradictory beliefs, but in terms of complete alienation from the mainstream culture in industrialised societies. Most of the so-called foundations of our civilisation amount to a delusional level of wishful thinking. Our society is locked into paradigmatic inertia by fear and busyness.
From today we will will start counting the days until all forms of conversion therapies are banned in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our hope is that this page will only need to be appended a few times with further activities to remind the government of its commitment to banning conversion practices and of its commitment to human rights, including all the rights articulated in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which our government has ratified in 2008.
In a submission to the Justice Select Committee, members from New Zealand autistic community groups say while they fully supported a ban on conversion practices targeting sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, protections should be extended to include all New Zealanders subject to these practices, especially neuro-diverse communities among whom conversion therapies also cause considerable harm.
From a position of safety within a network of mutual aid, autistic people are ideally equipped to act as catalysts for the evolution of social norms for collaboration between groups, to allow human scale communities to manage scarce resources sustainably at bioregional levels, and to share trustworthy knowledge globally, via the global communications networks we have established.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) education beyond wishful thinking: The antidote to xenophobia is genuine appreciation of diversity and interdependence.
Autistic people know intuitively that trusted collaboration at eye level, without social power gradients is the only route to creating good company.
Te Hapori Whai Takiwātanga o Aotearoa is a new website that is designed as an access point to the New Zealand Autistic Community. If you are autistic and live in Aotearoa New Zealand, you are welcome to join Te Hapori Whaitakiwātanga Aotearoa and to access the peer-to-peer support services offered by our members.
In our society the fiction of homo economicus manifests itself in the beliefs associated with the language of behaviourism, which exists in multiple dialects, and which has come to permeate and pollute many disciplines in the social sciences
Autistic people are anthropologists by birth in a very literal sense. Trauma and autistic lived experience in Western industrialised societies are very hard to separate.