Let’s talk A.B.A., neurotypicals.

A.B.A. is a behavioral technology that is used by neurotypicals, among other things, to teach skills to autistic people, especially kids.

Autistic adults have some concerns.

For one thing, it is traditionally used to make people act less autistic and more neurotypical. The presumption is, the closer to neurotypical, the better. We reject that. Autism is behaviorally diagnosed but it’s neurologically caused. We don’t act like neurotypicals in the first place because our brains are different from theirs and they cause us to act differently. Changing our behavior without appreciably changing our brains means causing us to act in conflict with our brains. In other words, alienating us from ourselves, altering our relationships with ourselves. Our relationships with ourselves are our own business.

For another, the “skills” they want to teach are ones neurotypicals like but they are frequently harmful to us. Eye contact, for example, decreases our ability to engage in two-way conversation. Quiet hands decreases our ability to express our emotions. Y’all may not value communication or emotional expressiveness and that’s fine. Be you. Don’t mess it up for those of us who do.

A third thing is, it is compliance-based. Compliance training decreases the chance that people will be able to comfortably direct their own lives and increases the chance that they will be abused. Y’all already abuse and murder us at ungodly rates. We would prefer that you not increase that. Actually, we would appreciate it if you would take steps to address the neurotypical violence problem. Hurting people doesn’t fall under the category of “be you.”

A fourth thing is, it is ridiculous amount of work. Preschoolers should not have 40-hour-a-week jobs. If you really want to increase the amount of child labor in the world, how about starting with the kids that remind you of yourselves? Don’t come after ours.

A fifth thing is, an overwhelming number of survivors (yes: survivors) say it is traumatic as hell. Look, we know you have deficits in empathy or you wouldn’t have given the world developmental centers, but here is a simple rule that you can probably learn: when you find out you are hurting people, CUT IT OUT.

This is not a comprehensive list. But “1. You’re hurting people. 2. You’re hurting people. 3. You’re hurting people. 4. You’re hurting people. 5. You’re hurting people” ought to be enough. I mean, yes, you’re the demographic that brought us the “Filicide — yay!!” and “30 days of bigotry” movements, but still….

Oh, and to the jerk who is upset that people saw 1,000+ A.B.A.-affiliated Facebook posters being happy about some dehumanizing jokes about the kids being subjected to the thing and thought, “Gee, maybe people who torture children are not quite as “awesome-sauce” as we have been led to believe” because it felt judgy with such a small sample, I am still waiting for you to tell me how many thousands of autistic adults an ethical A.B.A. practitioner gets to know before forming a judgment about how a child should be messed up and why I have never met a single person who was recruited for that work.

BTW, my first effort to find an A.B.A. therapist regarded by their peers as ethical whom I could interview failed. If anyone who hasn’t tried to come up with a name yet wants to give it a go, great. Otherwise I am taking the (literally) award-winning “BehaviorBabe” as an example. And some of us recall, that’s who put the jokes up.

But the jokes are not even close to the real issue. The real issue is:

WHEN YOU FIND OUT YOU ARE HURTING PEOPLE, CUT IT OUT!

And until neurotypical people can figure that one out, let’s quit wailing about how WE have deficits.

#TheRealTragedyOfAutism