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ABA is Not Okay10/24/2021 CW: Descriptions of ABA First, a little bit of backstory: I am afab and Chinese, and as we all know, kids who are afab and POC often fall under the radar when receiving a diagnosis for autism. I figured out I was autistic when I was 23 when I got a job as a behavioral technician for autistic children and noticed that I had lots of similarities with all of the autistic children I worked with. I had never heard of ABA therapy before I got this job, so I didn't know how controversial it was, nor did I understand why it was so controversial. While working at this job, I took a graduate-level Introduction to Autism class, and boy did I encounter a lot of ableism. First of all, in the very first week, the book they had us read was called "Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family's Triumph Over Autism." The title itself is ableist, as it shows how the author considers autism to be some kind of "enemy" that she needs to have triumphed over. The contents are as bad as you think; it's a book written by people who hate autism, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to try to force the autism out of kids, including putting children through lots of pain and suffering. The book describes children crying as adults touch and harass them against their will. Nobody else in the class seemed to think this was abusing the kids. I was so badly triggered that I wasn't able to articulate my grievances in a calm and collected manner at all; instead, I lashed out with hostility, and the professor reacted by dismissing all of my concerns and giving me poor grades. In the third week, we were given a video to watch entitled "A New Hope for a Cure." As everyone should already know, it is impossible to cure autism because autism is neurological, meaning it's connected to the brain and the spinal cord; plus, most autistic people don't even want a cure. The video had lots of ableist content. Psychologists put a boy through three years of ABA therapy for 40 hours a week since he was 13, and in the end, he was declared "free from autism." Even the boy himself believed himself to be freed from autism. We know for a fact that autism cannot be cured. That is impossible. The only explanation is that psychologists traumatized this boy so badly that he had to go into denial about being autistic so that they would leave him alone. Looking at the boy's eyes and listening to the way he talked, I could tell that the boy had PTSD because I was recovering from PTSD, and I know what emotional flashbacks look like from the outside. I pointed out that 40 hours a week of ABA therapy is way too much for a 13-16-year-old child, especially since he has to go to school at the same time. The professor once again dismissed my concerns and graded me poorly. There were many other ableist concepts taught in this class as well, but the book and video were the two worst ones I encountered while taking this class. Basically, the whole class kept talking about looking for toxic cures, which I repeatedly told the professor was not only impossible but hateful because wanting to "cure" autism is like wanting to "convert" gay people. They don't want to help us; they just want to get rid of us because they hate us. I wish I could say this story had a satisfying ending, but it did not. To this day, the professor has not changed his teaching curriculum. What has changed is that I moved on from my old job to a new one and am a firm advocator of "ABA is Not Okay." Thank you to our anonymous author for sharing their story.
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