“Context,” the word, is not at risk of vanishing just yet, but “context,” the concept, could soon go the way of “critical thinking,” or “racism,” wherein parties that seemingly know little about these terms have the power, through the act of thoughtless appropriation, to destroy their impact.
An autistic former US National Swim Team member describes her harrowing journey towards finally discovering the right diagnosis.
An American Autistic Living in Thailand Writes on “Why Gardening May Have Saved My Life”
Think about it…Over the last twenty years, exactly what has biological autism research given the average working or middle-class American family with a child with autism?
She doesn’t flinch. “We need money! We need a lot of training and it costs a lot of money…We’re not lost. We’re not this little country that has our heads in the sand.”
Almost a year ago I resigned from the Board of Directors of NEXT for Autism (the benefactors of HBO’s celebrity-filled “Night of Too Many Stars”). And it was an especially disappointing divorce under circumstances tied to my being the only autistic Board member they’d had in the years I was with them. Well, the wrong hands appear to have gotten hold of the long-ish resignation letter that outlined my concerns with NEXT for Autism. In an effort to get ahead of the situation, control the narrative myself, and prevent any misinterpretation about how I intended to leave, I’ve leaked the document before do the rather unhappy folks who got their hands on my document.
Today, fewer people seem to want to use the word, “coward.” We know so much more about why our emotions can cause us to freeze, to run away, to fail to come to the aid of a loved one, to desert, or to lie. And while explanation is still not justification, our increased knowledge of executive functioning, emotional regulation, and the long-term damage lurking within all negative reinforcements…has granted us infinitely more humane clarification about why “cowardice” occurs.
Occurring all across western culture is a deep reckoning with the historic treatment of people of African descent. People with disabilities/disabled people need to cheer, support, and also take notes. For when I mentioned “society’s insecure demand to be able to ‘exclude,’” I may not have been as overreactive as you thought.
