My anger at discovering a recent article written by one @KarenSisto [if you are on Twitter r, tm, no copyright infringement intended] or Karen Kabati-Sisto if you aren't
published by Autism Daily News also known as autism daily newcast dot com go look it up in your search engine yourself if you want to I am not linking to this piece of trash article
which was recently moved from some page or other to the "opinion" page
does not quite cut it for adults who identify as being autistic, aspies, on somewhere on the medically induced spectrum of autistic disordered and puzzle pieces of a certain other organization that does not speak for us, period
has prompted me to write this response.
As a very young child, I was diagnosed. My dad rejected the recommendations of the examiner. Instead of the usual route, I got the things that I needed and an excellent academic education beside.
Social situations were always difficult for me and still are.
That my dad worked hard in order to afford the much smaller classes in private schools saved me from the much worst bullying that I would have received had I been thrown into public schools and what passed for "special education" in my times.
Dad also worked hard with me. I owe much of who I am today to my father.
This rant is dedicated to him. Dad died in December 2014. I will miss him forever.
Being Bullied Is NOT Perky
The autistic teen in Ohio who was tricked into having a bucket of body fluids thrown on him-- https://tinyurl.com/qjkz6mr --would beg to differ with you, Ms. Kabati-Sisto.So would the teen in Wales left paralyzed after being forced to jump off of a bridge-- https://tinyurl.com/pgkusd2.
Ask the twelve year old from Missouri who was beaten in the school cafeteria and suffered a fractured skull among other injuries.
https://tinyurl.com/oxfhzvx His mother had send a letter to the principal a month earlier stating that she thought her son was in danger. The student who "allegedly" beat her son weighed two hundred pounds and had other suspensions on his record. Nuff said?
Yahoo has images of "kids severely injured by bullying" to show you https://tinyurl.com/ok87hn6 mixed in with stuff that clearly isn't. Look at their faces and tell me again about the perks.
There are zero perks associated with bullying of autistic kids, period.
It is easier to quantify physical damage than emotional scars. We can give kids antibiotics and bandages and fancy wheelchairs and casts and put them in traction and make operations but we cannot heal a society that persists in justifying monstrous acts done to us by "the good that can come out of raising awareness" at the expense of our pain.
There is no good bullying. There is only bullying. If your school system isn't working on inclusion and community building for everyone every day all day, then a feel-good article characterized in the comments as click-bait isn't going to fix anything.
Going into survival mode for twelve years plus of school time is the opposite of true self-esteem building. Acting out of desperation is what we've learned to do at school for years. It's more of the same old same old. This article suggests nothing new, adds no new knowledge, contributes nothing constructive to a conversation that needs to happen in a meaningful inclusive way. Inclusion means having us sit down at the table as equals. That won't happen for as long as applied behavioral analysis and its damming history exists. The fish stinks from the head back.
radical sapphoq says: If something is not acceptable to say or do to a child or adult without a label, then it is not acceptable to say or do to us. Get out of our headspaces. You don' know how to interpret what you are looking at anyway. Quit spreading the big lie that autistic people "lack theory of mind." It is articles like "10 Perks Kids with Autism Get from Bullying" that demonstrate exactly who lacks what. And it ain't us.
