hi kids, exciting development

so, because executive dysfunction is TERRIFIED of me and basically cries into its handkerchief when I'm around, I have finished putting new stuff on my website and reorganizing/writing some new bits for the disability section, something I've been planning on doing all summer, not one but ONE AND A HALF HOURS before my first class of my senior year. Come on you guys! Impressive!

Stuff is still uploading, so don't go to it right this minute that I'm posting it or you will be disappointed. But some possible things of note:

Difficult Cider (2010 musical odds and ends)

Lyrics for all the songs on the website

a terrible zine/diary thing I made two years ago, about something I'm trying to write a (somewhat more politicized) post about right now

On Speaking Badly: An Unintelligible Pop Opera

["It’s kind of, like, hard because, especially with speaking badly, because a lot of people speak badly who don’t have a disability, and I can’t really say that speaking badly is my thing, and that, um, it’s a hundred percent, that everyone who does it has a disability. I do think, though, that I can say that I think people have reactions to bad speaking that are unfair reactions, and I tend to think that those reactions come out of some kind of ableism, whether people can see it or not. Um...it’s analogous, I think, to, sort of, kids telling each other 'you’re so gay,' or sort of policing each other’s gender. And I think, you know, that can be going on in situations where all the kids are cis and straight kids, but there’s still this bogeyman. And I really remember, when I was a kid, that other kids seemed to not really even understand that a gay person was a real kind of person. It was just this sort of monster that we didn’t want to be. And, um, I feel like the same thing can be true with disability--even if people aren’t even outright saying, like, 'you talk like you’re retarded,' or something like that, or, like, 'you walk like a gimp,' I don’t know--but even if people aren’t saying those words, and even if people aren’t thinking about it as being about disability...I think that, um, we have a very deep sense that people who talk differently or move differently are not quite right. And, you know, whether that comes from not liking disabled people, or whether that results in not liking disabled people, I couldn’t really say, but, um, it’s definitely a problem."]

and last but not least, THE AWESOME DISABILITY SECTION, which is not that great actually, it only has like three things on it, but those things include:

Hi, I was just wondering why you keep using words like "ASD" and "autism spectrum disorder" and "autism" and "Autistic" about yourself when it's pretty clear that you have Asperger's and not autism at all.

What should I know about ASD that I'm not learning from pop culture?

this has already been up there for a year, but I still think it's like the best thing I've ever written, so: Pulling Rank and Involuntary Assimilation

also I have a suggested reading page which includes a transcript I made of Ari Ne'eman's awesome interview with Madness Radio, which as you may recall I love, cried about, became friends with him solely on the basis of, and so on and such forth.

Now it's 5:46, it's still not done uploading, except I think all the disability stuff is, but not the music. By six maybe it should be okay?

The videocast of the IACC meeting from April 30 is up. If you recall I wrote a post about how fantastic certain aspects were. So you should watch some of it!

Accidental Happiness Day

First I just want to tell you guys the very best Google search that has led people to this blog:

"can an autistic person seem smart and be an asshole"

Hopefully their question is now answered. Also I wanted to apologize because it's Blog Against Disablism Day and I figured I'd get angry about something and be able to write about it, but today I woke up feeling incredibly happy. I think my uncomfortable fallacy post from a few weeks ago is a good post about a particular kind of ableism. Amanda Baggs's BADD post If only, oh if only is a really good post about feeeeeelings, which I'm sure is the subject I would have ended up writing about if I had been in the mood.

But: why I'm incredibly happy. Yesterday I watched the live webcast of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. As it says in my sidebar, any discussion of policy goes completely over my head so I'm not going to try to talk about the IACC meeting in an intelligent way. You should read the transcript or watch the video when they go up on the IACC website.

I was basically watching it because Ari is on it now and I was interested to see how he did. And of course I was a bit scared for him because I don't feel safe about that kind of people. About the time I started watching, a guy was making a big speech that I wish I could remember more accurately, but it contained basically every awful thing you could say in a really short period of time. "If you're a parent, or just any person, or an individual," he said, and I got excited because sometimes individual is a euphemism for disabled person, "an individual raising a child with autism, you must be going through hell now that this disease has struck. But you know what they say--if you're going through hell, keep going."

Nice.

At the same time, this is completely ordinary and unsurprising. It's not like I was like, "Oh poor Ari having to listen to that" because I constantly hear that stuff in the real world, and you probably do too. For me, it's not even the hell thing or the disease thing, it's the completely ignorance that people with disabilities have feelings. Seriously, if he'd just said "autism is a terrible unbearable disease and it must be hell for the people who have autism," that would be something. But no. People with disabilities aren't upset or not upset; we just...aren't there.

Then as I watched the rest of the meeting, two things happened:

1. Ari would reframe stuff. For example, Geraldine Dawson from Autism Speaks presented research which included the fact that a lot of ASD people have some form of mental illness and a lot of ASD people are on psychotropic drugs. Ari said something like, "The amount of people with developmental disabilities who have mental illness isn't as high as the amount of people with DD who are on psychotropic drugs. Are you studying how many people are being inappropriately given drugs as restraints?"

This was really neat because just as Francis Collins (the going through hell guy) was coming from a perspective of assuming that everyone thinks autism is awful (and that everyone who thinks or feels anything does not have autism), Ari was talking as if he assumed that everyone a)thought of autism as a developmental disability, not a disease, and b)was really interested in people with DDs being treated ethically.

2. During the public comment section, two people with ASD talked.

Both of these things made me very excited and led to my feeling of happiness when I woke up today. Usually when I hear the word "autism," I don't feel at all safe or welcomed and I don't think that the things that are going to be talked about are things that are important to me. Some of the people who were at the IACC meeting thought it was a meeting about Autism the Horrible Disease. But other people thought it was a meeting about Autism the Disability, and both kinds of people got a chance to talk.

tl;dr: a baby triumph

So I'm sort of bad at figuring out how I feel about things, or just how things are, objectively. This is probably due to growing up with gaslighting although I also think that not being able to identify your feelings is supposed to be normal for people with ASD. Although maybe it's normal for people with ASD as a result of gaslighting. Anyway. I recently said to someone that I can never tell if I'm going too hard or too easy on myself. And that's been a major issue especially for the last term, because I've been extremely fatigued and extremely sensitive to stress, with both those things feeding into each other, combined with the fact that of course I think it's my fault for being so lazy and letting myself get away with things. That last fact means that it's really hard for me to just state that I'm having trouble and not doing things wrong on purpose. And this is tied into my general inability to speak up about anything.

One small piece of the problem is my psych class. We're allowed to take the exams on our computers, whenever we want. This sounds like it would be good, but I got so anxious about the first exam that I took it at three in the morning without being done studying, just because I wanted it to be over. I got a 28% and so, in combination with other factors that are making me tired and/or meltdowny, I'm having to freak out about doing well enough on the other exams to get my grade up to a pass.

Then my professor found out that people had cheated on the exams, and told us that from now on we'd be taking the exams in class. I found this out last week, right before the third exam, and it made everything worse. I don't know how to start explaining the problems I've had on tests and exams my whole life, but basically I find it really hard to tell what the questions are asking. It makes me stressed out enough that it takes a lot of energy to answer them at all; by now I've figured out that I should just write way too much rather than risk writing too little or writing the wrong thing, but it takes a lot of effort to get all those thoughts out.

I really enjoy the experience of typing on the kind of computer I have now (scroll up if you don't remember what kind of computer I have). I love the noise and the feel of the keys and it makes it a lot easier to get out the things I have to write because I'm getting sensory reinforcement. It's different from writing by hand and it's better than any other kind of computer I've had or used.

My Amateur Prediction of What Will Happen

I am having huge amounts of trouble tolerating any frustration or discomfort + I have trouble understanding, remembering, and talking about certain kinds of science that are covered in this class + my normal test-taking problems - the comfort of typing on my computer = total mind explosion and a grade I can't afford.

Enter two people who I really, really love.

1. Ari Ne'eman. Ari is a person I talk to a lot and a lot of the time we have the following conversation:

Amanda: An aspect of one of my classes is really difficult for me as an ASD person./Someone I know said something offensive about disabled people./I think that one of the kids with disabilities I know is having such and such problems and their teacher isn't responding to it.

Ari: You should talk to someone about that.

Amanda: I can't do that.

Ari: But

Amanda: NO

Ari: But

Amanda: NO

(change of subject)

Ari isn't trying to make me do things I don't want to do; he just has a very different way of thinking about things. Basically, he flunked learned helplessness. His first reaction to this kind of stuff is to do something, and I don't think he has this reaction on purpose, but it's ended up as a situation where I'm like a mountain being eroded by the ocean (Ari is the ocean in this simile, if you were having trouble keeping up). He's not intentionally chipping away at me, but his presence in my life gives me a different idea of how a young disabled person can react to things.

In this case the conversation went like this:

Amanda: I'm scared I'm going to fail my exam because I like taking it on the computer and I don't think I can stand it without the computer.

Ari: You should get permission to take it on the computer as an accommodation.

Amanda: How is that an accommodation?

Ari: It reduces your anxiety.

Amanda: I don't have anxiety.

Ari: Are you serious?

(Ari reminds me of some things I have done. For example, remember how I took that exam at three in the morning without being done studying. And some other things. I conclude that I possibly have anxiety.)

Then I emailed my professor asking if I could take the exam on the computer. His reply was ambiguous and I thought he might be saying no. Ari said that if it didn't work I should go to the disability services office.

2. I have been well-disposed to this professor since he handed out a form on the first day of classes asking if we had any "special needs, quirks, or homicidal tendencies." I thought this was cool because it made disability a casual, light thing that was important but not scary to disclose. Also I just think he's weird, which is good. I only go and talk to professors who are weird, because by the time things are bad enough for me to talk to professors I no longer have the ability to act like I'm not weird, and if they're not weird they can get mad at me.

So yesterday I walked into his office and said, "Is it okay if this is a meeting about me being stupid and crazy instead of a meeting about the material on the exam?"

And he said, "Yes."

And I sat down and explained that I have autism but lately I have it worse. And that I'm having--"Can you have boring panic attacks?"

"Boring panic attacks," my professor repeated with a bemused expression. "Well, if you're having them, I guess you can."

"It's like--I feel really bored and distracted but then I realize that physically I feel like I'm scared. But the main thing is, I understand if I can't take the exam on a computer but this thing happens"--and I explained about not being able to tolerate things and about how the computer makes it a little easier. I was straightforward about sometimes wanting to scream, and my professor looked pained.

"Well," he said, "then...I can drop off a copy of the exam at the psych office and you can go into another room with your computer and open up a word processing document and don't open anything else. I think you should be able to print it out in the computer lab, but if that doesn't work, email it to me."

"Is--does this make things a lot harder?"

"For you or for me?"

"I mean, for you?"

"It's a very small change," said my professor. "If it helps you--"

Chicago Style is Oppressing Me

You may recall that I sometimes use "chicago style is oppressing me" as a tag related to academic problems I have. I'm making fun of myself but I also mean it. I do think that rigid ideas about how to do things can be extremely damaging to someone like me. For example if my professor had a normal reaction to the weird thing I said when I first came into his office, that would have impaired my ability to communicate with him. Because he didn't care that much about me saying something weird, or wanting a weird accommodation, I was able to take my test in an easier way. I wasn't prepared enough for the test, and I don't think I did well, but I did a lot better than I would have if I had had to take it on paper.

I know this isn't a big deal but it's a huge deal to me. I'd like to thank Ari for making me a little different, and I'd like to thank my professor for meeting me halfway, because I'm not different enough to fight yet.

Feelings are not real

So for some reason I was torturing myself by reading the blogs of a bunch of curebies (I know that curebies is kind of a rude word and I try to be more civil, but I don't know what else to call them). They were talking about how they think Ari Ne'eman doesn't care about individuals with severe ASD.

I disagree, and have said so in previous posts, but that's not really the point. Nothing very exciting was happening. Then, one of the people who was listing Ari's supposed views linked to another website. I clicked on the link, expecting it to be some sort of statement he'd made that had offended them.

However, it was actually this: http://www.asperger-advice.com/asperger-syndrome-behavior.html

Get it? Ari is inherently incapable of understanding other people's feelings! That's why he has the wrong opinions. Because he simply doesn't understand that other people feel bad, and if he could just understand feelings like normal people do, he would have the right opinions.

This is sort of a refreshing break from people who claim that he's not really autistic. Except, it's actually not, because it's a fucking giant piece of hateful bullshit! I should mention that this isn't really about Ari or anyone in particular. It's just a fucking terribly stupid thing to say.

I mean, first, the obvious: this isn't what the ASD "lack of empathy" is about. I don't pretend to know exactly what it is, but here are some ways of thinking about it. (I don't agree with all of these, but I'm trying to be exhaustive.)

1. people with ASD can't read other people's body language instinctively so we don't notice other people's emotions as much
2. people with ASD think about things differently from normal people so we don't have as good a sense of what to expect as they do with each other
3. people with ASD are really overwhelmed by a bunch of stuff and don't have as much energy/processing ability to spare figuring out other people's feelings and reacting to them
4. people with ASD notice things about other people, but we don't always notice the "relevant" thing (remember the Square 8 post where Bev realized that someone was upset because the person's clothes were messy, but no one else noticed because her body language seemed normal?)
5. people with ASD don't understand that other people don't all know the same things we know
6. some combination of the above

So, absolutely none of these characterizations of ASD empathy impairment have anything to do with not caring about people, or not understanding/caring that someone else is upset if you are explicitly told that they are upset. So, what the fuck is this person talking about?

Basically nothing. Basically trying to figure out another way to say that Ari (or insert name here) doesn't have a right to speak.

I'm just going to say something: I don't care about your fucking feelings. Don't you think that I, for example, also have feelings? Lots of people have feelings but only privileged people get to spend four hundred million hours talking about them. If you have a kid who fucking has seizures and bites himself, you know who everyone is supposed to feel sorry for? That's right. You. Not the person who is in actual physical pain and probably feeling terribly overloaded all the time.

People with disabilities are never expected to feel as bad as the people around us. This is why people get away with saying really fucked-up things about their disabled relatives, and even abusing or killing us. Because their feelings are such a huge deal that they totally trump the actual real things that happened to the disabled person.

The funny thing is, I actually have plenty of doom-and-gloom views about ASD and disability in general. I don't think ASD makes me special. I'd rather not have it. I think lots of other ASD people would rather not have it too. But since I'm an actual person with ASD, if I just sat around thinking about how it isn't all that great, I'd become really depressed and useless because it's my entire life and it will never not be there. (By "my entire life" I don't mean that ASD is my only notable quality--I mean that I've never lived without ASD, and I never will, unlike family members of people with ASD who claim to "have autism" or "live with autism").

So, instead of just being like "feelings feelings feelings feelings feelings," I try to look at all the interesting and meaningful aspects of having a disability, and I try to learn about and help other disabled people, and teach and be helped by them. I feel like when I do this it becomes one of the coolest parts of being alive and then I maybe understand why God made me disabled in the first place.

I sort of went off on a tangent and I apologize because I was trying to talk about the really screwed-up "you just think that because you don't have empathy" tack. But this just makes me so upset because it seems to tap into the whole thing about how important feelings (usually non-disabled people's feelings) supposedly are. I'm sure Ari has feelings too, but he doesn't feel the need to spew them all over the place like you do, and he has the grace to say "I disagree with you" instead of "People who don't have autism are incapable of understanding logic," or whatever.

I support Ari Ne'eman, part two

Hi.

I am an ASD person. But, something that I think is equally important, if not more so: for a few years I have volunteered with people who have mild, moderate, and severe developmental disabilities. I know a lot of DD people with different levels of impairment. I want to work with severely DD people after I graduate from college.

I care very much about people who are not "high-functioning," and I wouldn't support Ari if I didn't think he felt the same way. I used to not like him very much because I had gotten the impression that he was one of those "a dash of autism creates a genius" windbags. I later realized that this wasn't the case and was more a function of the way he was portrayed by popular news outlets, who were more interested in writing a gimmicky article about his disability than expressing what he actually believes and is actually doing. He has worked a lot on keeping people with disabilities from being abused in schools and institutions--an issue which generally affects people who are more severely disabled. He has also made comments that show he is not a Shiny Aspie, for example in this New York Times article from November:

“My identity is attached to being on the autism spectrum, not some superior Asperger’s identity...I think the consolidation to one category of autism spectrum diagnosis will lead to better services.”

The people who have campaigned against his nomination and confirmation are generally people who don't like the idea of ASD people expressing opinions--especially opinions that are anti-cure. They set up being anti-cure as being anti-severely disabled people. But I couldn't disagree more.

I've written several times about a school for ASD kids where I interned last summer. I have a lot of criticisms of the way this school is run, for example the fact that they are anti-stimming. However, because the school has a 1:1 teacher:student ratio and most of the teachers are really devoted to their jobs--plus the highly notable fact that every nonverbal kid gets an AAC device--kids with severe ASD are able to make a lot of progress. Every kid can communicate at least a little using their AAC device and understand schedules and instructions; and there are kids at the school who were nonverbal and have become highly verbal.

In Ohio, I know kids who have problems (including but not limited to ASD) that lead to them having trouble talking, looking at things, and paying attention. They generally don't have a person working with them 1:1 who is doing exactly what is necessary to help the kid pay attention and learn. So, they are way behind the ASD kids at the school where I interned.

The school where I interned is a charter school that kids with Autistic Disorder and PDD-NOS can get into by lottery, when there's a free space. It has the resources to serve 28 students. If you're a rich person with a severely ASD kid and you can't get them into that school, you can try to put them in a private school. If you're not rich, your kid can go to public school and be in a big special ed class where people will maybe sometimes pay attention to them, occasionally, and maybe that will or won't help your kid learn something or other.

The reason I'm anti-cure...well, I may not be anti-cure theoretically (I don't know if I am) but I am practically....and the reason I'm anti-cure is that there are lots of things you can do to help people with severe disabilities, but there isn't enough money. But there is a lot of money going to research. If everyone was anti-cure, the charter school could serve more than 28 kids.

But I do think ASD mice would be really cute.

I support Ari Ne'eman obviously

So, as you probably know, Ari Ne'eman is a young Newfoundland with a disability (he's not really a Newfoundland, I just think he looks like one) and he recently became the first ASD person and I think also the youngest person ever to be nominated to the National Council on Disability.

However, someone put a hold on his confirmation because he is controversial because people who are ASD aren't supposed to have any opinions about ASD. Basically Ari doesn't believe in curing autism and has said things about disability being socially constructed, and since no one has ever said this about cerebral palsy or paraplegia or anything, that means that Ari thinks that autism isn't really a disability. (Kidding! I'm just trying to present both sides.)

It doesn't help that any time someone writes an article about Ari, they just obsess over the fact that he has ASD, and the entire content of the article is like, "ARI NE'EMAN IS A SPECIAL GENIUS BUT HE HATES VELVET AND WHEN HE WAS A KID HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT SMILES LOOK LIKE." I actually used to really dislike him and groan whenever I read an article about him; I can trace my not-dislike of him to the moment I encountered an interview with him that was actually done by someone who knows what disability rights is.

It was really scary about the confirmation hold, not just because his confirmation is getting delayed, but because it might encourage more people to write articles about how Ari is a)A SPECIAL VELVET-AND-SMILES-HATING GENIUS, and/or b)doesn't know that severely ASD people exist, or doesn't care about them due to his impaired theory of mind (remember: he hates SMILES!). The scariest part is that Ari isn't allowed to talk to the media until he's confirmed, so the articles might just quote some random thing that he said in the past. Scary!

Except, it turns out that in the past, Ari said the most awesome thing ever:



And the New York Times article about the confirmation hold quoted him:

Mr. Ne’eman declined to be interviewed, citing the pending action on his nomination. But in previous interviews with The New York Times and other publications, he has argued that those most severely affected by autism are the ones who benefit least from the pursuit of a cure, which he suggests is unattainable anytime soon. Instead, he says, resources should be devoted to accommodations and services that could improve their quality of life.

Historically, the kind of genetic research supported by many parents of children with autism, Mr. Ne’eman has said, has been used to create prenatal tests that give parents the ability to detect a fetus affected by a particular condition, like Down syndrome, so that they can choose whether to terminate the pregnancy.

“We just think it makes more sense to orient research to addressing health problems or helping people communicate rather than creating a mouse model of autism or finding a new gene,” Mr. Ne’eman has said.

The part in bold is my new Facebook status, followed by a bunch of <33333s, and probably will be for a long time. MOUSE MODELS!

I apologize a lot for the really giggly and lulz-y tone of this post, because I know that this is a serious issue and I want to express how much I support Ari--okay, quick, let's watch me try to sound really serious. I think that Ari is a very moral and very competent person. I think that rather than being a weakness, his age actually shows how incredibly passionate he is about helping other people with disabilities. And I don't think being in politics proves he's not really disabled. I think he does things that are very hard for him, because he feels they have to be done. And the hold on his confirmation is a really bad thing to happen to a really good person who does important work.

I'm relieved about the New York Times article, but the content of course is bad news. And hopefully some people with clearer heads than mine can write posts that address this more thoroughly.

WWAND

So, in November I was seized with conviction: Oberlin needs an Autistic Self-Advocacy Network chapter! Or, to be more specific, I would like an ASAN chapter, but I don't know how many ASD kids go to Oberlin, if any. Or, to be even more specific, I've encountered two, and one just graduated--so I know there are two ASD kids at Oberlin. Hardly enough. I also don't know if the other ASD kid would be into this; he's really nice but I don't know whether he's interested in disability rights.

I needed to figure out how many interested ASD students there were, and find out who they were, and contact them. Not necessarily in that order. So I emailed the head of disability services asking if she could send out an email to all the students registered as disabled, so that anyone who was ASD and interested could get back to me.

She answered me like a month later saying that she'd needed time to let her thoughts "percolate" and that we should get an autism rights speaker at Oberlin, and she also sent me the Tim Page freakshow New Yorker piece (I'm being a little harsh, but I would probably feel more positive about the piece if I hadn't had to spend like two weeks agonizing over how to tactfully answer her query about whether it should be linked on the Oberlin disability services page). I linked some pieces that I thought were better (a New York Times article about accommodating ASD students in college, and Changing People to Fit Jobs, or Finding Jobs to Fit People? by Dora Raymaker--which I just think is amazing, and applicable to so many areas of life). She said that she knew all the disability services people quoted in the NY Times article, which was cool, and that we should meet and talk about ASAN. We agreed that we would meet when I got back on campus.

Guess what didn't happen! Can you guess? I figured it was dumb for me to wait for her so I emailed her a week or two ago saying that I was on campus. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT HAPPENED THEN?

I should probably delete this because it's kind of bad to criticize someone when it's really obvious who they are. I'm sure she's a good person, I know some disabled kids at Oberlin really like her, and she must be really busy--but she's the one who decided we need to have a meeting, and there's no reason for us to have a meeting. It's just like, why do people always have to make stuff about "having a meeting" and "talking?" I don't have anything to say to her anyway. I just wanted her to send out the email. She's done it for other disability-related student groups. Why does everyone have to make everything needlessly complicated?

This post is called WWAND because I was hoping that Ari Ne'eman was reading my blog and could advise me, but he probably isn't because he's famous and has a real life. Someone else advise me instead. Why does everything have to be so hard all the time? Why can't people just do things that other people ask, if they aren't difficult and make sense? This kind of thing isn't especially easy for me, but I realized that if I keep waiting around for a really organized and socially adept ASD kid to come to Oberlin, I'll be waiting forever. It might as well be me. So why can't it just be me?

we need a name for this

"Ari Ne'eman can talk and some ASD people can't talk so he's not a good representative"
"oh so who do you think should represent ASD people"
"um, me"
"oh okay are you like a nonverbal ASD person"
"oh no, actually I don't have ASD at all"
"wait so then isn't Ari Ne'eman more ASD than you"
"yeah but for some reason 'how ASD someone is' only matters when I'm talking about people who aren't me and my friends"

Ari Ne'eman Interview with Madness Radio

This is so so beautiful, I've been listening to it for the past hour and a half and it almost made me cry. Whenever I've read and listened to interviews with Ari Ne'eman (head of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, as I'm sure you know) I've had a tendency to be sort of judgmental and wonder "why is he saying that the way he is, why doesn't he explain it better." But the truth is, he is really forced into situations with the mainstream media where he has to deliver soundbites and is constantly defending himself against accusations that he doesn't have an ASD or doesn't have a significant ASD or thinks that kids with ASD should be allowed to hit their heads on walls.

This interview is with a radio show that is involved in mental health rights--not something I know much about, but it seems to tie into ASD rights in many respects. And the interviewer is just so decent and actually wants to listen to Ne'eman, with the result that he talks in depth about his experiences as a teenager in special ed where they were trying to train him to act normal. When he is actually given time and space to talk about that and make points about it, he does a really good job explaining some of the problems in the way ASD kids are "treated" a lot of the time.

He's talked about himself in interviews before, of course, but it's frequently been in a context where the interviewer is basically demanding that he justify himself--I'm fond of NPR, but the person who interviewed him there asked for an example of a recent incident that reminded him he is autistic. Why do they need to know that? Also, so much time in those interviews is taken up with him using the phrase "disability rights," and then the interviewer jumps on it like, "SO YOU ADMIT AUTISM IS A DISABILITY." Or if he doesn't use the phrase "disability rights," the interviewer says like they think he doesn't know, "Well autism is disabling! Kids hit their heads!! It's a disability! If you try to say it's not a disability then kids will just be allowed to hit their heads all the time!"

This interview is the first time I actually feel like I understand who Ne'eman is. And I feel bad that I have had such critical reactions to his interviews before--I mean, the things he has done are massive, and he's my age, and he went to a school where they tried to train him not to be interested in public policy. Well, they sure failed in that endeavor. This is amazing shit.