Watercolor image of red and black fidget spinners, on a white background.
Our spectacular new TPGA FB banner is a watercolor by artist @scrappapertiger.bsky.social. TY Sonny!
We thought AI-generated art was fun a few years ago, and used it for many of our graphics. Reader, we were so misled. We are now replacing those graphics with art from real artists & photographers.
1. This morning, Texas AG Ken Paxton just released a chilling new declaration:
Mental health therapists, counselors, and psychologists must cease affirming trans youth - using their name and pronouns - or potentially face child abuse charges and loss of licensure.
Its a horrifying escalation.
Field of magenta wildflower stalks under oak trees.
It is paintbrush season. I love paintbrush season.
(This is a timeline cleanse.)
[image: Field of magenta wildflower stalks under oak trees.]
Field of magenta wildflower stalks under oak trees.
It is paintbrush season. I love paintbrush season.
(This is a timeline cleanse.)
[image: Field of magenta wildflower stalks under oak trees.]
"Sensory sensitivities were also cited as a major factor contributing to anxiety, as well as impacting various facets of the participants lives, including their ability to interact with others." #autism #anxiety #neurodiversity
FB trolls, you will be blocked and your comments deleted. Too few hours in the day.
1. The New York Times, unsurprisingly, has released yet another hit piece on transgender people.
This time, it comes from Jesse Singal.
I fact check it in my latest piece.
End your NYT subscription, and put it towards people doing good work on the issue.
Subscribe to support our journalism.
Miss our Claude and our Steve so much. :(
I leave you with messages from autistic non-speakers about their own wishes & desires, from the short film Listen by @communicationfirst.bsky.social. I recommend you share it as a worthier option, if and when people ask for your opinion on #TheTelepathyTapes.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dc...
19/19
“It may be an older page, but those warnings are still necessary,” said Zoe Gross, a director at @autisticadvocacy.org, a nonprofit policy org run by & for autistic people. “Ppl are still being preyed on by these alternative treatments like chelation & chlorine dioxide. Those can both kill people.”
FDA removed warnings against fake, abusive, and dangerous autism treatments like MMS (industrial strength bleach) and chelation.
Kennedy's anti-vaccine friends made a lot of money selling this to autism families.
www.propublica.org/article/rfk-... @megomatz.bsky.social @propublica.org
West Virginia has done well on child immunization - avoiding measles while its neighbors have outbreaks - thanks to its strong school immunization mandate.
Now, anti-vaccine efforts are putting the law - and WV's children's health - at risk. www.economist.com/united-state...
I leave you with messages from autistic non-speakers about their own wishes & desires, from the short film Listen by @communicationfirst.bsky.social. I recommend you share it as a worthier option, if and when people ask for your opinion on #TheTelepathyTapes.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dc...
19/19
…but the many AAC users who have worked and still work so hard to be able to communicate with the rest of us fellow humans in ways that we all can understand. Non-speaking AAC users have enough barriers to contend with, without self-styled do-gooders getting in their way. #TheTelepathyTapes #AAC 18/
I will allow—as the research I've cited has allowed—that influence is possible during supported communication. Of course it is. But too many people are using that possibility to deny supported AAC without exception. And that is hurting not only the people who need AAC and aren't getting it… 17/
Such "advocates" are often part of an anti- #neurodiversity parent faction that unceasingly claims all supported AAC methods are fake, and which is therefore ironically complicit in turning parents and caregivers away from methods that might help their non-speaking loved ones live better lives. 16/
A special side eye to the supposedly pro-communication ghouls who claim to "protect" non-speakers while actually working against their interests—like the uncharitable troll who bought the website Facilitated Communication dot org (not linking, do not recommend) & turned it into an anti-FC nexus. 15/
The same article continues that, "FC research should be reconsidered and reconducted using current best practice autism research approaches, including coproduction and a presumption of autistic communication competence, to assess its validity as a potential AAC method for autistic individuals." 14/
Contemporary research indicates that, "Alongside lived experience testimonies, robust and peer-reviewed research exists to challenge a categorical anti-FC position, although, strikingly, the presence of such research has rarely been acknowledged by those who adhere to an anti-FC stance." 13/
This means that those critics who continue to categorically deny supported communication's legitimacy are doing so from a position of defiance, rather than of evidence. Not a great look for supposed experts or advocates. 12/
Example: "Although message passing studies confirm that influence is possible, they do not show that all text produced by all nonspeaking autistic ppl who are learning to type with assistance is the result of influence. In fact, evidence using other methods directly challenges this conclusion." 11/
The core argument against supported communications is the "message passing test," in which some older studies claim it was the non-speaker's facilitator who was doing the communicating, and not the non-speaker themselves. These studies are REALLY old! We have newer, contrasting research! 10/
@autisticadvocacy.org rightfully responded, "Attempting to wholesale deny the authenticity of a form of communication, regardless of the evidence available with respect to a specific individual, & then assert that unrelated interventions are 'alternatives,' is unjust and logically inconsistent." 9/
The problem is that NON-nonspeakers go overboard in trying to "protect" non-speakers who use supported communication methods like Spelling or Letterboarding, as when The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), took the position that supported communication methods are not legitimate. 8/
But to refocus: I have a bone to pick with the people who dismissed #TheTelepathyTapes not by focusing on its supernatural gibberish, but because they question the autistic subjects' supported communication or AAC, and whether they are "really communicating." This is the aforementioned dick move. 7/
@epballou.bsky.social continued: "There's just nothing supernatural about it. (And, obviously, it doesn't obviate the need for real AAC.)"
#TheTelepathyTapes #autism #autistic #AAC 6/
@epballou.bsky.social cont'd: "I have a suspicion that something like a very intense synesthesia may be at play. That if someone is sensitive enough to non-verbal communication, body language, & emotional signals, it may well feel like they're "hearing" what someone else is thinking or feeling." 5/
Autistic writer @epballou.bsky.social has a point for non-autistics who think the autistic non-speakers are reading their minds: "One possibility I think hasn't been explored enough is that the autistic people in #TheTelepathyTapes are reporting something real, just not quite what they think… 4/
Also—autistic academic TC Waisman on The T Tapes:
"Smacks of the "magical negro" character. Note: I am both Autistic & Black. The magical negro character (in books, movies, tv shows etc) is a mystical character whose only task is to assist the protagonist on their hero's journey. Sound familiar?" 3/
