@Autistrain @GTMLosAngeles @robrecht @Aerliss @neurodiversity An absolute turd of a man

The final straw was Spectrum 5K, where he was given £3,000,000 to collect & analyse the DNA of 5k autistic people (to help with our poorly tummies & such).

Then when asked in an interview if that data could be used for eugenics he basically replied he wasn't gonna do any eugenics but he couldn't guarantee someone else might not. Zero fucks given.

@Autistrain @GTMLosAngeles @robrecht @Aerliss @neurodiversity I might start compiling a list of his theories that have been proven wrong but are still taken as gospel by many.

He's done immeasurable harm to autistics.

@niamhgarvey @GTMLosAngeles @robrecht @Aerliss @Autistrain @neurodiversity It was great to be back in education & the first year was very positive. Then as I began to understand more (I enrolled only a month after receiving my dx) I began to see the harmful myths that did not correlate with my lived experience.

I had a wonderful cohort in the first year. I was the only male on the course & the other students were nearly all mothers of autistic kids & worked in education.

I gave press interviews on behalf of the course & university. I delivered training to university staff. I even delivered a session in my second year.

It was also about this time that I was doing a module on multi agency safeguarding of vulnerable adults & when reading the required texts I made the horrible discovery that I was being both exploited, disregarded & effectively ignored if anything I said disagreed with NT cannon.

That second year broke me & I never fully recovered the optimism, hope & enthusiasm I had for the field.

If you're considering going to study autism at university I should warn you, you'll be battling myths & stereotypes all the way. Unless you find an excellent course.

The final straw came when I experienced total autistic burnout & a worsening of my physical disability. The tutor suggested I press pause & come back to it. I was sent a form to do this. Filled it out & returned it.

They had sent me the form that would unequivocally remove me from the course. A year I'd spent five grand on.

They refused to award me a Post graduate certificate that I had already passed & paid for until I paid for some horrendous module that truly broke me.

During the middle of lockdown, completely isolated & now with no support from the university, organisations or anyone else I had to fight for the qualification I had undeniably earned. It was taken to an independent advocate & nearly all of my complaints were upheld. Though by this point I was completely broken by the experience. Meanwhile everyone (who wasn't autistic) continued to have fairly lucrative careers in the Autism Industrial Complex.

I was effectively dead to them. I'm still completely & totally isolated. I can't turn to anyone here because it's rife with nepotism & revolving door & merely the mention of certain people causes me to feel sad, angry, overwhelmed & trapped.

I'm not suggesting you would have the same experience & I sincerely hope you don't but that's a small fraction of the fallout from my M.Sc. Believe it or not there's worse parts.

So even though I have no academic support network, or colleagues, or income I still devote a significant amount of my time to studying, discussing & thinking about autism.

It was during this that I was introduced to the concept of "mate crime" I was then given repeated brutal examples of what it actually meant from people I trusted implicitly.

I have hope for my future career but I don't think it can happen where I currently live. In short my opinion is you already know more about autism than any "expert" save yourself the money & start your own business. Or write a book.

@ferrous @petercrosbie @sentient_water @Aerliss @Autistrain @neurodiversity

I understand why people who identify with the autistic neurotype are not best pleased with the way medical research pathologises autism, I really do. I don't like it either.

But at the same time... A lot of the time they /aren't/ pathologising autism the neurotype, they're pathologising ASD, the mental disorder, which legitimately is a pathology.

This distinction is important to me because...