Week 7 - Chapters 5 & 7 of Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement

I actually rather enjoyed this reading and loved the personal narrative frame of reference to the neurally diverse movement and cause. In chapter 5 the first point raised that I think clarified what it is to talk about -isms and how difficult it is in actuality to bring language to these experiences. Another point from Tisoncik was this, “Once you learn how to understand injustice in political terms, you cannot help but apply political analysis everywhere you see human suffering. The skill set works nearly everywhere, because nearly everywhere, when you find a group struggling against disadvantages, you find the same dynamics.” I find this point important because it really exposes how social awareness is lived and cannot be turned on or off at least not easily. And that more or less that many groups that struggle with oppression have parallels.

“Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.” I think this statement in chapter 5 sums up a lot of why society operates the way in which it does, groups of people gain traction which is detrimental to societal integrity when groups support or practice oppressive values.

“The point is that no one automagically becomes an ally by virtue of merely existing—if you want to be an ally of any oppressed group, and you have privilege, you have to choose to be an ally, educate yourself, and work at it. Just thinking that you deserve to be counted among the good guys is always insufficient.(76)” This should be a universal law in allyship.

From chapter 7, what was the most interesting thing to me is how neurodiversity can run in families and cause people to not think twice about a person or child's temperament. Prompting a person's difference to almost be concealed due to familial normalization.