Son lei ábi čábbodat Gáddeguoras gilddii Vahágis gáiddai fávlái iige gáddái boahtán šat. áhpi, go áhpi, áhpi. Olmmoš gal lea áhpi. Das ii geahči lea. Áhpi/ Sofia Jannok Today, 10.9., is suicide prevention day. Suicidality among autistic people is many times higher than in general population. According to research, factors increasing the risk further are […]
This essay is my response to an offensive article published a few weeks ago in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest newspaper. The original article was such a mixture of outdated and misleading information, prejudice, nentism and discrimination, that the term hate speech is quite fitting. In addition to publishing this essay, Kaiao contacted Finnish non-discrimination ombudsman’s […]
”What’s wrong with seeing #Autism as a disability?” This is a good and common question! Many people, autists included, do identify as disabled and part of disabled community. They are not wrong, either -for one thing, autism traits and environments in which autistic people live vary a lot and it is only natural for lived […]
Finnish media has picked up an unfortunate habit of avoiding A-words by using terms such as “neuropsychiatric challenge/difficulty/issue”. Apparently, people believe that this sounds more friendly than talking about disorder. That, however, was a thought that was put to use before thinking was finished. Autism, for instance, is not a challenge, problem or difficulty any […]
Alongside drama going on around Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, some autism related questions have surfaced. People ask, how much autism explains a person’s bad or incomprehensible behavior. Short answer: no more than a neurotypical person’s neurotypicality explains and justfies their behaviors. Claiming otherwise is nentism. The nentistic prejudics I discuss today are particularly disgusting, because […]
I received as reader feedback the following question I thought for a great topic for a blog post: ”My friend/colleague/this person I’ve met appears to be autistic. Because learning about my autism has helped me a lot, I’m wondering if N could also benefit from such knowledge. How could I bring the matter up respectfully, […]
Inspired by a Twitter mutual, I asked DALL’E’s idea of what does an autistic consultant look like. This was the answer: Here we have, quite neatly, summed up all stereotypical, outdated, misinformed prejudices and clichés associated with autistic people. But where is the consultant? I ran DALL-E with just the word ”consultant”, and it looks […]
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, […]
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 […]