Alistair Davidson

I've been thinking a lot about
#AutisticLiberation, what the demands would be, how people including progressives would react.

My first demand would be *incredibly* controversial: "stop bullying us", which includes "stop bullying people for their autistic style traits."

Nov 18, 2024 at 12:02pmWeb
Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024
The implication is: don't bully people for spending their time in a dark room wearing a dressing gown, for having odd communication and tics, for having intense interests and wanting to tell you about them, for struggling to hold down a job, for struggling to "read the room", for being analytical...
Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024
Which is pretty much a list of "nerd" and "neet" traits. There is widespread agreement, across the political divide, that bullying people who have these traits is acceptable or even good.
Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024

The autistic unemployment rate is estimated at 80%, because we face massive discrimination in the workplace. I have worked about half the time across my adult life.

I have also struggled to access services such as unemployment and disability benefit, healthcare, education, and so on

Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024
So demand 2 is an end to institutional discrimination, which means at a minimum special provisions being made available in every institutional context. For the discrimination to truly end, the provisions would need to be available without even a self-diagnosis.
Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024
Point 3 - not a demand - is on us, to foreground #AutisticPride and #AutisticJoy

Let's write about how amazing learning feels. About the joy of collecting. About that feeling when all the detail you've been absorbing clicks together into a breathtaking structure.
Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024
And finally point 4 is a responsibility, to help and police our own. An Autism Liberation movement should fight discriminatory views within our community, and build solidarity beyond it. In particular the far right has made efforts to groom and radicalise neurodiverse people and we must fight back.
Show threadAbram Kedge has movedNov 18, 2024

@moh_kohn interestingly, throughout my career I felt valued for the sideways approaches I took to problem solving and process optimization right up until I worked at Etsy (briefly). This supposedly woke and supportive company among other disruptive practices tortured me with pair programming (just give me time and space to think, don't stop me looking deeper because you don't think it is important).

After that I decided never again to work in a tech company.

Show threadAlistair DavidsonNov 18, 2024
@AbramKedge I find they love my results and hate my ways of working