Open Society

Every time I read through the “Harvard Story” discussed in our LAST POST, I can’t help but think of our American churches—particularly our theologically conservative, predominately White, churches and denominations....

As we read in our LAST POST, CRT emerged not only as a critical intervention in a particular institutional contestation over race but also as a race intervention in a...

As discussed in our LAST POST, CRT co-founder Kimberlé Crenshaw argued in 2011 that “what nourished CRT and facilitated its growth from a collection of institutional and discursive interventions into a sustained intellectual...

This Article revisits the history of Critical Race Theory (CRT) through a prism that highlights its historical articulation in light of the emergence of postracialism. The Article will explore two central inquiries. This first query attends to the specific contours of law as the site out of which CRT emerged. The Article hypothesizes that legal discourse presented a particularly legible template from which to demystify the role of reason and the rule of law in upholding the racial order. The second objective is to explore the contemporary significance of CRT's trajectory in light of today's "post-racial" milieu. The Article posits that CRT emerged between the pillars of liberal racial reform and Critical Legal Studies and that other conditions of its possibility included the temporal, institutional, and ideological nature of race discourse in the mid-eighties. Turning to the contemporary period, the Article posits that the post-racial turn presents conditions that are both parallel to and distinct from those that prevailed during CRTs formative years, and that the challenge of a contemporary CRT is to synthesize a transdisciplinary critique and counter-narrative to the post-racial settlement.

Kimberlé Crenshaw argued in her 2011 article, “Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory,” that “what nourished CRT and facilitated its growth from a collection of institutional and discursive interventions into...

Laws reflect dominant social morality and power distribution. That's why our laws are more likely to legitimize racism and racist systems than remedy them.

Bell's work signaled a return to the more “radical” elements of W.E.B. Du Bois, Oliver C. Cox, Stokely Carmichael, and even Dr. King.

To tell the story of the rise of critical race theory historically, we have to consider the segregationist and anti-Civil Rights context that spawned it.

Traditional Civil Rights discourse predates and dispels allegations of cultural Marxism

PDF | This article asserts that despite the salience of race in U.S. society, as a topic of scholarly inquiry, it remains untheorized. The article... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

Mae Martin has sent a sweet message to a fan who shared how Martin’s appearance on Taskmaster helped them to understand they/them pronouns.

Today, the Centers for Disease Control released the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network report. This report estimates how many autistic 8-year-olds there are in certain areas of the country. The report shows that better recognition of autism and continued efforts to reduce racial and gender disparities have caused…

The new 1 in 36 autism rate means the CDC is getting better at finding and diagnosing existing autism, not finding higher autism rates.

A full CIRCLE: inclusion of autistic doctors in the Royal College Of Psychiatrists’ values and Equality Action Plan - Volume 221 Issue 1

“There are several aspects to neuro-anarchy and several ways it can be engaged with consciously and unconsciously, it is a big part of Autistic shielding, especially the conscious choice to e…

Before we start, I want to go over some terms that will be covered here. Neuro-anarchy: as conceptualised by Katie Munday, I use this to refer to to the decentralisation of hierarchy as it pertains to neurocultures such as that of the Autistic community. Munday and I co-authored an article on this here. Neuro-anarchists arrive

In this latest issue of the Neuroqueer blog series, David Gray-Hammond and Katie Munday explore the relationship between neuro-anarchy and the Chaotic Self, considering how the two synergise and what this means for the growth of healthy neurocultures.

Background As the prevalence of autism appears to increase, more research to guide effective diagnosis and intervention practices is needed. Findings disseminated through peer-reviewed publications ...

Background: There is a lack of research on autistic intimacy, however a small body of research suggests that BDSM (bondage, domination, discipline, submission, sadism, and (sado)masochism)/kink may be appealing to autistic people. We aimed to explore how engagement in BDSM/kink related to autistic identity, using a phenomenological approach. Method: We recruited 6 autistic adults through purposive sampling on social media. All participants took part in a one-to-one spoken interview about their engagement in BDSM/kink and how it related to their sense of identity. Results: We used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to analyse the data and found 3 key themes. Theme 1, ‘Practicing safe ‘sex’’ highlighted how the clear communication and explicit focus on consent present in BDSM/kink facilitated a feeling of safety. Theme 2, ‘So many ways to touch and be touched’ was focussed on the sensory draw of BDSM/kink, and how it provided exciting ways to explore sensory joy (and sometimes revulsion). Theme 3 ‘Subverting (neuro)normativity’ showed how autistic people can find pleasure in intimate practices which transgress normative expectations. Conclusion: Our findings highlighted the importance of exploring the perceptions of autistic adults in relation to their own intimate practices. Autistic intimacy is an emerging area of research, with very little focus on lived experience. Whilst engagement in BDSM/kink may appear niche, our findings suggest that there are aspects which are inherently appealing to autistic people. These findings can be used to destigmatise both autistic intimacy, and engagement in alternative intimate practices more broadly.

Autistic people experience significant health disparities and reduced life expectancy. Barriers to accessing healthcare are associated with adverse health outcomes. Autism training and healthcare professionals' knowledge about autism is variable, and heterogeneity among autistic people leads to additional educational and clinical complexities. Autism remains nebulous for many practitioners, who are unclear about communication differences, access needs or life experiences common to autistic people. Healthcare environments can be challenging for all patients but autistic people may require specific accommodations to allow equitable access. The authors have developed a simple framework which may facilitate equitable clinical services at all points of access and care, using the acronym ‘SPACE’. This encompasses five core autistic needs: Sensory needs, Predictability, Acceptance, Communication and Empathy. Three additional domains are represented by physical space, processing space and emotional space. This simple yet memorable framework encompasses commonalities shared by autistic people.

The Mega Micro-Aggressions

Recognition of autism and the associated co-occurring physical and mental health issues has increased over recent years. However, undergraduate and postgraduate curricula take time to adapt and to impact on what is delivered in training so healthcare professionals, including doctors, report little training on these topics. Doctors need to know when someone might be autistic in order to respond to them appropriately. This article sets out the reasons why recognition of autism is important and the positive impacts of recognising and understanding autism on health outcomes, service delivery and patient experience. The negative consequences of not recognising autism or understanding the impact of autistic traits on the person are also explored. A companion article then covers how practice can be made more appropriate for autistic people to improve outcomes.

Our objective was to obtain an in-depth understanding of autistic adults’ experiences with healthcare and their recommendations for improving care. Our academic...

The three groups of factors we found that contribute to the quality of primary care for autistic people - person factors, provider factors and system factors

This essay rejects media‐fostered stereotypes of Star Trek fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, or mindless consumers, perceiving them, in Michel de Certeau's term, as “poachers” of textual mean...