Tag Archives: recommendation

Posts that I highly recommend.

Recommendation: BBC – Autistic Women

I’ve mentioned before that my dad reads the BBC (BBC Video Article: Cat Helps 6 Year Old Autistic) and he sends me interesting articles. This was one that he sent to me today.

BBC: “It all made sense when we found out we were autistic”

This is an excellent article, I can’t praise it enough. It’s about seven women (the first interviewed plus the six that are pictured at the top), all of whom received late diagnoses as autistic, and what that meant for them. And all of their stories resonated with me in some way or another. (One read about being autistic thanks to her mother’s work, and recognized herself in that – that was me except with my sister’s studies, for example.)

The article is focused on the fact that autism is very underdiagnosed in females – at least one of the women has a son who was diagnosed at four and a daughter who wasn’t diagnosed until she was thirteen, for example – and how these women found out they were autistic, and what it meant to them to be diagnosed. In a lot of ways (except for the fact that the article is basically all the women’s stories, with no additions or questions listed, except the numbers at the beginning of the article regarding autistics in the UK), it’s a mirror of the interview I gave the CBC last June.

I highly, highly recommend reading this article. The stories in it are wonderful and moving, and very, very true to my own experience, and so likely will be for a number of other autistic women.

‘Later!
🙂 tagÂûght

#BoycottToSiri: Here’s Why #ActuallyAutistic Reviews

Disclaimer

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve got some links for you of excellent reviews by other autistic adults (pretty sure all of the ones I’ve got are by autistics, but there might be a couple of allistic responses in there as well) about the reasons why we need to boycott “To Siri With Love” by Judith Newman.

But first, I want to express just how disappointed I am – and why – at Ms. Newman’s recent claim that To Siri was not meant for an autistic audience. I know I mentioned this yesterday in my list of grievances about it, but I want to reiterate today as a separate thing.

Any books about autism, no matter who they are written by, have an effect on autistics – in a lot of cases, because they affect the way autistics are treated by the readers of the book and, in a number of cases, by society at large. We may not be the ones targetted as readers, but because of the effect those books have, our opinions, needs, and desires about them need to be taken into account.

No author of a book about autism – or anyone else discussing that book – has the right to say that it has nothing to do with autistics. No one. By definition, a book about autism involves us.

You want to read a book written by an allistic parent about their autistic child? May I recommend Iris Grace by Arabella Carter-Johnson? (Also see my post BBC Video Article: Cat Helps 6 Year Old Autistic.) The author doesn’t try to hide the challenges that can come from raising an autistic child, but neither does she shy away from the joys that can come from the same. And she is respectful of both her daughter and the autistic community, which is always good to see in a book about autism.

Now, on to the links. (Please note that they’re not in any particular order, save how they’re saved in my Evernote.)

To the links and my descriptions….

#BoycottToSiri: #ActuallyAutistic Writer Review of “To Siri With Love”

Disclaimer Trigger Warning: Mentions of eugenics, privacy invasion, emotional abuse, and other potentially triggering elements.

So, I’m not on Twitter very often. I follow a fair number of people for various reasons (writing and autism being the two main ones, but not the only ones), but that’s still a lot of reading that has to be done every day, so I tend to only go on occasionally, and mostly read my notifications.

As a result, I wasn’t on when the #BoycottToSiri movement first started. (I’d never even heard of the book – “To Siri, With Love” by Judith Newman – before.) The first I heard of it was a post by a friend of mine referencing the honestly disgraceful characterization of YouTube autistic advocate Amythest Schaber in the book.

(Hint: “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” is a very negative term, used to refer to female characters who are only in things to appeal to the straight male audience. But even “gamine” would not have been an acceptable term to use. Amythest’s work has absolutely nothing to do with their appearance, and like I said above, it is disgraceful that not only did the author describe them that way, but also that the publisher (Harper Collins, BTW – I encourage everyone to express just how insulting and disgraceful this book is to them) allowed it.)

Anyway. Long story (very long story) short, I was poking around to get some information to send to people about this today, and ran into the Storify of a chapter-by-chapter review of To Siri by autistic adult and parent (and writer) @KaelanRhy. I checked with her, and she gave me permission to post that Storify here.

Continue to read for link and description

Recommendation: Unstrange Mind – Neurodiversity: Creativity and Innovation Thrive When We Welcome Diverse Minds

I haven’t been reading many other blogs for the last little while, due to various reasons including my concentration on CAPP issues, overall fatigue (ended up with low iron anemia again this past April, and that’s taking a while to clear up), and trying to focus a bit more on my writing (which has mainly meant doing a lot more reading of fic).

However, I recently (like Thursday) noticed a tweet referring to an interesting-sounding post by Unstrange Mind, and thought that I might as well check it out. So I followed the link I had on this site, and discovered that he now has his own site (rather than one hosted by wordpress.com). So I’ve been reading his posts on that blog, in chronological order (which included updating the links to the DSM-5 Autism Spectrum Criteria Analysis), and in the midst of doing that, found the title post.

Neurodiversity: Creativity and Innovation Thrive When We Welcome Diverse Minds is the text of a talk Unstrange Mind gave at University of North Carolina’s Fourth Annual Disability is Diversity Week celebration, on Wednesday, November 9th, 2016 in Asheville, North Carolina. (CONTENT WARNING: Post contains mention of suicide and attempted suicide.)

Despite the aforementioned content warning, this is a hopeful post. Unstrange Mind explains the basics of neurodiversity – including the biological factual basis – and how that can apply to support creativity and innovation. He looks at the advantages that supporting and encouraging a neurodiverse environment can provide, and names examples. he also points out that accomodations… don’t really cost all that much.

So. Highly recommended post. And at least a few more to follow.

‘Later, all!

🙂 tagÂûght

Recommendation: Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew

Ellen Notbohm, the mother of two children, one of whom is on the spectrum, has a number of books out about children on the spectrum, acting as the voice for her son. One of them, Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew, is now in the ASNL Barbara Hopkins Library. As I was early to Social Club today, I noticed it and decided to read it to see whether I agreed with what was in the book.

My personal answer? It’s excellent. There are some minor things that I disagree with (noted below), but the vast majority of it (and every one of the “Ten Things”) involves points that I am in full agreement with. It’s also both well-written and quite respectful of autistics. (Including the fact that although she uses “child with autism” throughout, she both explains why she prefers not to use the term “autistic”, and also that a number of children, when they grow up, prefer to be referred to as “autistic” rather than “adult with autism”.)

Click for my specific thoughts

Link

My dad follows the BBC for the quality of their reporting, and sometimes finds interesting tidbits on there. This was one of them. Very positive message here. You go, Iris and Thula!

How a cat enabled an autistic six-year-old to communicate

Turns out there’s also an article on CNN about Iris and Thula, which goes into greater detail about Iris’s accomplishments as an artist.

Portrait of a 6-year-old artist with autism and her therapy cat

Thanks to Autism Canada for that link!

🙂 tagÂûght

Recommendation: Hamilton FeminAuts’ Resources

So, I’ve been poking around the Autism Canada forums, and one of the members there has a link to a group called Hamilton feminauts. To quote from the About Us portion of their website:

FeminAuts was founded as a safe, inclusive, and accessible meeting space for women and female identified individuals on the Autism spectrum to meet likeminded individuals and learn valuable skills such as self esteem building, sensory self regulation, and adaptive and social skills.

http://hamiltonfeminauts.weebly.com/about-us.html

I went there to poke around as well, and I would say that their resource page definitely warrants a recommendation! So: Resources – Hamilton feminauts. They’ve got a bunch of useful free phone apps, for both executive dysfunction and communication; links to various resource sites (including the ASAN welcome packet and the Geneva Centre); online diagnostics and test resources; inventories and social stories (including ones related to sexuality); and usual open source therapies and courses links.

Yep, high on the recommended resources list!

Note that I’ve also included a link in my links page.

🙂 tagÂûght

Recommendation: G is for Giraffe by Unstrange Mind

And it’s another recommendation of a post from Unstrange Mind’s A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge, this one “G is for Giraffe“.

What do giraffes have to do with autism, you ask? It’s all about symbols and symbolism. The majority of the Autistic community do not care for the puzzle piece symbolism, for fairly clear reasons – there’s nothing about us that’s missing, for one thing – and it was a symbol created by allistics, not autistics. We need our own symbols.

And that’s what Unstrange Mind’s post for today is about – what are the autistic-created symbols for autism? Read, and find out!

🙂 tagAught Âû

StimTastic: First Look

So, another April post. This one also about things near and dear to our hearts – stimming. (No, it’s not the post I’ve been promising for two years now. Sorry. That one’s still going to take some time to do.) No, this one is a first look at Musings of an Aspie’s company, StimTastic.

Note that I say “first look” because I haven’t yet received any of their products. However, hopefully next month after my birthday I’ll be able to provide some specific product reviews…. 😉 (Yes, some stuff from StimTastic is first on my birthday list.)

Read on!

Recommendation: E is for Empathy by Unstrange Mind

Heh. Remember when I said in the last post not too expect too many recommendations this month, despite the posting volume on Autistic-oriented blogs? Well… there was another wonderful post put up today that really needs signal boosting.

Unstrange Mind is doing a series this April for the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge (check the following post for the link if you’re curious), and she’s hitting things hard, the way they need. And today’s post (well, all these posts she’s writing, but today’s happened to strike me) is about something that is a huge problem in trying to gain acceptance for autistics. The Empathy Question.

Please, read through the post E is for Empathy – it highlights a number of problems with the idea that autistics have no empathy (talk to my mother, or my best friends; they’ll dismiss that idea immediately). It even mentions a new study that brings to light some problems with the “well-known” Sally-Ann Test, a study that I hadn’t heard about before.

Not to mention the ludicrous treatise she mentions that says something about since autistics have no empathy, we have no sense of community. *cough, cough* Um, what do you think my blogroll list is?

Anyway, she also provides links to another blog post about empathy, that in turn provides links to more. Please, take a look at them, and absorb the message we’re trying to send.