follow up, here's the quote:

"autism is contextually situated within societal responses to and of gay panic...we can locate queerness in the mainstreaming of ABA, which is used to eliminate "feminine sex-typed behaviors" and "cross-gender identification" in gender-variant children and to make autistics "indistinguishable from their peers".

sources from the attached footnote in the text:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311956/pdf/jaba00060-0003.pdf

https://alyric.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html

the full context of this is both intensive (/angry puns) and disturbing; here's a couple of relevant links

https://sociallyanxiousadvocate.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/why-i-left-aba/#more-126

http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html

What I don't know yet is if "queerness in the mainstreaming of ABA" also includes eliminating "feminine sex-typed behaviors" and "cross-gender identification" to this day within ABA used against autistics, not just the documented links/histories between LGBT aversion therapy and autistic version therapy. In other words, is gender conformity part of the "treatment" in relation to allistic conformity for autistics

regardless, this needs to be expanded upon. the fact that youth conversion therapy (which can include ABA, or ABA like adversives) is being rejected is long overdue; this should and must be extended to autism as well

also true: in my mind, ABA against autistic youth was being used to backdoor gay aversion therapy, and i spent a few days thinking "great, wtf now"

welcome to how my mind works at times

regardless, it wouldn't surprise me, either. especially after reading up about how the two are historically interconnected, and the nature of ABA practices themselves to this day

yes, i'm still on this lol

i'm like "well, you certain perserverated over that one" (about conflating ABA and conversion therapy). perhaps i had a meltdown in slow motion 🙃

seriously (!) though: as melanie yergeau notes, "Queer bodies and autistic bodies betray rhetoricity in gesture, relationality, emotion and intent...autism, then, poses a kind of neuroqueer threat to normalcy, to society's very essence."

cc: @a_breakin_glass

so *of course*, ABA includes gender conformity, because:

a) why wouldn't it, given cishetnormative and allistic society;

b) it does so because i as a neuroqueer says it does, which is why it must be stopped at all cost

the rest is just establishing a paper trail. "what do i know, my editor assigned me this beat. i just work here, in my brain and body, ~ don't mind me ~"

Neuroqueer: An Introduction

"A neuroqueer individual is an individual whose identity has in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering. Or, to put it more concisely (but perhaps more confusingly): you’re neuroqueer if you neuroqueer."

http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/neuroqueer-an-introduction/

Referenced in Melanie Yergeau's book, "Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness" https://www.dukeupress.edu/authoring-autism

@shoutcacophony

Honestly, idk if I want to fave this or...
Burn the world.

@kafkaesqueNomad whynotboth.mp4

@shoutcacophony

True...
One after the other.
Um... I found a new horror as the CW says.

https://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/20150302/autism-early-diagnosis

@kafkaesqueNomad webmd should be burned to the ground on general principle. reading now

@shoutcacophony

The way I see it it's practically ABA for toddlers, at an absolutely defenceless age, where the kids can't even consciously look for other coping mechanisms...

The text is aimed at making it sound harmless/playful, but some words open a can of worms of subtext...

Those children, imo, will learn such a deeply internalised self-hate they won't ever be able to fathom or grasp...

@kafkaesqueNomad *nods* the entire text is full of (ironically enough) red flags. like

"The researchers believe the motion the little girl made with her arm as she threw the toys was the beginning of a repetitive behavior -- a telltale sign of the condition."

"A baby boy has a 1 in 4 chance of getting the disorder if an older sibling also has it. For girls, the risk is about 1 in 9."

@kafkaesqueNomad so, if a child imitates their old autistic sibling, that's a red flag?

oh wait, they've "intervened" already, nm 😡

@kafkaesqueNomad "Eventually, some may not even be considered autistic anymore."

"And because they have trouble expressing themselves, many have developed what she calls “challenging” behaviors -- temper tantrums, biting, and self-harm -- that become crude ways to communicate. Those habits then become the focus of treatment."

@kafkaesqueNomad

"The stakes are high. Surveys of young adults with autism suggest that only about half have ever held a job in the decade after they graduated high school. And even when they can get work, it’s often for menial pay."

*breaks things autistically*

@kafkaesqueNomad ok, now that i've vented (ty btw):

it seems like this sort of nonsense is *everywhere*. at least in the U.S., that *is* the dominant, pervasive (more angry puns) narrative

example: McNeil-Lehrer had this six part special on autism, and at the end there was a panel. without a single autistic person on it. just talking about, you know, things that will alter millions of autistic people's lives, no big

@kafkaesqueNomad

on the panel, though: Thomas Insel, who publicly supported chelation therapy in 2008, and more recently, pushed the "if you're not diagnosed, you'll become violent" myth as part of establishing an autism = super-pathology narrative on HBO

but he left the NIMH (which he headed for over 10 years) for Google, then a startup. so cool, cool, all good

*breaks more things*

@kafkaesqueNomad i really hate these fucks lol

@kafkaesqueNomad @shoutcacophony and the justification for not including an autistic person on the panel full of that narrative would've been the narrative itself

@a_breakin_glass @kafkaesqueNomad right. "what are you if not an empty shell for us to fill"

@shoutcacophony @kafkaesqueNomad and the classic "autism is like cancer!!!" line as well

@a_breakin_glass @kafkaesqueNomad it's...it's like susan sontag never existed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illness_as_Metaphor

@kafkaesqueNomad this article is the most vomitastic best article ever 🤢 /bitter sarcasm

@kafkaesqueNomad past that, all i can say to that pos non-article has already been said

http://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html

@shoutcacophony

I've read a few lines. It looks/reads eerily familiar...
But I had to pause and save for later.

I'm really not sure about the situation in germany...
"Normalcy" is generally considered ...perversely important, though.

I'm very convinced that even in 1988, when my brother was diagnosed, doctors still held on to that very outdated "refridgerato mother" belief

@kafkaesqueNomad wow. yeah, that's not good.

@kafkaesqueNomad i'm old enough that when they did the "we're going to ABA the gay out of you" thing, and autism pre-screening was apparently part of that, it wasn't like "*sounds alarm, separates from rest of the class*" we are doing the thing now

@kafkaesqueNomad more like "thing. now." "um, what thing?" "thing thing."

*administers a "match faces to expressions" test*

*adminsters a rorschach test*

*does EEGs, supposedly for family neurological condition* but i was the only repeat visitor, so ???

(my mom definitely had a neurological condition, but it took a couple of years of ????? and mood elevators at one point and ????, so who knows)

@shoutcacophony I do, in fact, agree with this

@a_breakin_glass i figured you would :)