Aida A. is a young but already accomplished Finnish autism activist. Recently she represented autists at kickoff of Finland’s parliament’s neurodivergence network. Kaiao got the permission to translate and share her speech, which describes some current troubles of autistic people, especially children and young people. Launching of the neurodivergence network is a strong signal of […]
I have sent the following letter to researchers of University of Tampere, in response to this article posted on Neurocenter’s website. Feedback, referring to your recent article @Neurocenter’s website Dear Reija and Matti, I’m writing to comment your recent article concerning of your participation to GEMMA research on Neurocenter’s website from ethical point of view, […]
Well-meaning neurotypical people tell autists surprisingly often, that autism is nothing to be ashamed of. They look very kind, but I always wonder, who exactly are they talking to? I don’t think it’s autistic people. I think so, because per definition, autists have challenges in social interaction and in various tasks related to perceiving social […]
One can perceive an interesting pattern in both international and local autism discussion: autistic people are sidelined, and often absent from it. Instead, neurotypical people are portrayed as ”autism experts”, and neurotypical people also represent autistic people in matters that concern us. There are many reasons for this…and all of them are bad. Most obvious […]
A common and very harmful prejudice against autistic people is, that we are really unpleasant, rude and annoying people. Many people believe that we are difficult to like and almost impossible to love. Knowing this places autists between a rock and a hard place when pondering, whether to disclose autism and face all the prejudice […]
Today, autism information is fairly abundant. However, quality of that information is a huge issue. There is a lot of information that tells more about prejudices and subjective interpretations of its producers than about reality of autism. Some of that information is used to give credibility to actions that cause autistic people suffering or are […]
The concept of ”hiding autism traits” is quite commonly used especially when discussing autism on women. I can only hope this will change one day, since this notion is a poor description for the phenomenon it attempts to describe. First issue is, that talking about ”hiding” refers to intentionality. However, autistic masking is not nearly […]
My relationship with my local healthcare provider has improved greatly since the arrival of online booking system. Making appointments online instead of calling is nice, but most important improvement is, that now the doctor can see first my written description of my symptoms instead of learning about my problem via interviewing. I used to tell […]
Update/2022: We now have a new word, created by me my collaboration for ASY’s (Suomen Autismikirjon Yhdistys ry.) project for equal glossary for autism. In the project a Finnish glossary was created to replace outdated and unequal autism terminology. The glossary also included some new terminology to describe autistic experience. By definition, nentism is prejudice, […]
One of the greatest misunderstandings regarding autism is understanding autism spectrum as a line where people can be placed according to their ability to function. At one end are ”quirky people” and at the other end deeply autistic people with developmental disabilities. Linear model of autism spectrum is harmful to everyone and causes suffering. It […]