Open Society

If you are oppressed, then you face ableism. It’s that simple. You’re probably not used to this concept at all, so I’ll explain(1).  Bear with me, because this is quite impor…

Background and aims The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to people's lives, especially for families, whose children have been taken out of ...

Article: Botha M (2021) Academic, Activist, or Advocate? Angry, Entangled, and Emerging: A Critical Reflection on Autism Knowledge Production. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Art. No.: 727542. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727542

The stressors autistic individuals encounter and experience as traumatic may vary from non-autistics. We conducted a qualitative study to identify potential sou...

Background Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) are at increased risk of potentially traumatic events and may be at increased risk of post-traumatic stres...

Well. There’s no one audience for this essay. I want deaf people to understand our histories better; to explicitly recognize our…

"As disabled folks have been saying for years, disabled sex is hot! But, it can only be hot when there is acknowledgment and care for what someone’s disability means to them."

People use languages in different ways. Some people use language to help find other people like them. Many people use language in specific ways because of how their body and mind work. Sometimes a person’s environment and material conditions forces them to use language in a certain way. However, when someone languages outside of what people think is normal, others can think that they are bad with language or are not as smart or are broken. We are trying to point out that no one is actually ‘bad with language.’ Our goal with this paper is to help people understand that no language is bad. It is okay to want to change your own language use if it will make you feel better. But no one should make you feel bad about your language. We need a bigger and more flexible understanding of what language is and what it communicates about a bodymind’s capacity.

We are honoring each of the Top 12 winners of our Student Editorial Contest by publishing their essays. This one is by Asaka Park, age 17.

We placed songs from our “Chronic Neurodivergent Depressed Queer Punk” and “Pluralism Rocks” playlists throughout stimpunks.org, tying them into our advocacy. They collectively serve as a Public Se…

As autistic adolescents and young adults navigate the transition to adulthood, there is a need to partner with them to identify strengths and needed supports to enable goal-directed actions. This article conceptually integrates research on self-determination, defined by Causal Agency Theory, and executive processes in autism to provide direction for future research and practice. We describe how integrating research on self-determination and executive processes could enable autistic adolescents and young adults to be engaged in the process of assessing executive processes and self-determination. We discuss how this can better inform personalization of supports for self-determination interventions by focusing on support needs related to executive processes, including inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, from a strengths-based perspective. We discuss how this can enable self-determination interventions that promote outcomes aligned with the values of the autistic community.

The first in a series of summaries of significant research studies concerning our community, this piece helps non-academics to understand Dr Damian Milton's ‘double empathy problem’.

The Lancet’s proposal to create a new label of “profound autism” serves only to distract us from the work of ensuring that all autistic people have everything they need to thrive.

“We have the absolute right to demand to be heard, and should not be treated as second-class citizens.”