Multiply-Disabled Autism and Intersectional Feminism

Post Reply New Topic

I got a headache reading that article.

I think I need some colorful pictures to help me understand it. Sociology tends to twist my brain in ways it doesn't like. I've always had more respect for evidence based views than social philosophy, but I acknowledge that not all issues can be dissected that way.

I would be very weary of going down this route. The original intersectionality theory created by Kimberlé Crenshaw has turned into “oppression olympics” and somewhat successful attempts to censor ideas based on “privileges”.

While an autism version might not go down this route the ingredients to do so are in place. The theory places an overemphasis on group identity rather than looking at a person as an individual(If you have met one autistic, you have met one autistic). The same toxic combination of social media and that it is apparently coming out of the same academic bubble that messed up the original idea is a good indication it will be weaponized in a similar manner as the original intersectionality theory.

A manifestation of the Culture of Victimization...sort of par for the course.

The basic idea of "intersectional feminism" makes perfect sense to me, although there are problems with some ways the idea has gotten used.

A problem with applying "intersectionality" to the autism spectrum is that the most disadvantaged category is those who are unable to communicate in any language-based way and hence cannot speak for themselves.

So the only people who can speak for that category from personal experience would be people in the adjacent categories of (1) people who learned to talk very late (late enough to remember what it was like to be nonverbal) and (2) people who still can't speak due to motor issues but have learned to write, type, and/or use sign language.

And it should be remembered, by the way, that the founders of the neurodiversity / autistic rights movement were mostly people in these categories, NOT people diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Alas, in my opinion, a big big problem is that autism research seems to be ignoring people in these categories for the most part. We really should make a point of advocating that there be research projects that make a point of interviewing people in these categories and their parents, to find out what their parents did right. Such research could help MANY (though not all) parents of kids who can't use language at all.