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Feb 8 2023
Latest updates on my books!

It’s been a hectic time since I published my first book at the beginning of November 2022. I have worked hard to get The New Normal: Autistic musings on the threat of a broken society out in the formats that people asked for. With that in mind, what formats is it out in?

First and foremost, it is out in paperback and ebook format, available from Amazon in multiple countries, and Barnes & Noble (paperback only, and US only). There are two editions out. This is because the first edition did not meet requirements for wider distribution off of Amazon.

So here are some links if you wish to purchase the paperback and ebook formats:

Amazon Link
Barnes & Noble Link

Lots of you also asked for an audiobook version. So, naturally, I made that happen! The audiobook is currently available on Audible, but will soon be available on Amazon and iTunes. Here is the link to the Audible edition:

UK Audible
US Audible

So what else?

I recently published another chapbook. No, it’s not a poetry book this time. This is a three part essay on my experiences with neuroqueering, and it is also where I introduce my concept of the Chaotic Self that you may have heard me talk about in livestreams!

The book is called A Treatise on Chaos: Embracing the Chaotic Self and the art of neuroqueering. It is currently available in paperback and ebook, also both on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Here are the links:

Amazon Link
Barnes & Noble Link

If I can ask one thing of you all, please share the he’ll out of this news! Tell people about my books, write reviews, spread the word! Being self-published was a fun experience, but sadly, I lack marketing resources and I am being drowned out by some of the other wonderful books that are releasing at the moment. I would love to think that people get a chance to hear my message!

I am published in print in a couple of other places. For more information please click here

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Feb 6 2023
Creating Autistic Suffering: Is there a role for social care in the lives of disabled children?

This article was co-authored by David Gray-Hammond and Tanya Adkin
The NHS defines the role of social care as being;
“…about providing physical, emotional and social support to help people live their lives.”
This sounds like a wonderful, albeit vague, concept. Perhaps it would help to look more closely at the law associated with social care. Let’s go back to 1970 and look at the Chronically Sick and disabled Persons Act. For the purpose of simplicity, let’s take a snapshot of what they are supposed to provide for disabled children according to this legislation:
“(a)the provision of practical assistance for the child in the child’s home;
(b)the provision of wireless, television, library or similar recreational facilities for the child, or assistance to the child in obtaining them;
(c)the provision for the child of lectures, games, outings or other recreational facilities outside the home or assistance to the child in taking advantage of available educational facilities;
(d)the provision for the child of facilities for, or assistance in, travelling to and from home for the purpose of participating in any services provided under arrangements made by the authority under Part 3 of the Children Act 1989 or, with the approval of the authority, in any services, provided otherwise than under arrangements under that Part, which are similar to services which could be provided under such arrangements;
(e)the provision of assistance for the child in arranging for the carrying out of any works of adaptation in the child’s home or the provision of any additional facilities designed to secure greater safety, comfort or convenience for the child;
(f)facilitating the taking of holidays by the child, whether at holiday homes or otherwise and whether provided under arrangements made by the authority or otherwise;
(g)the provision of meals for the child whether at home or elsewhere;
(h)the provision of a telephone for the child, or of special equipment necessary for the child to use one, or assistance to the child in obtaining any of those things.”
Unlike the NHS definition of social care, this is a fairly broad and specific piece of legislation that lays out exactly what local authorities are legally required to provide to disabled children. If we look at section 17 of The Children’s Act (1989), the provision of services that can be provided by social care is pretty much unlimited at the discretion of the director of Children’s Services. As long as it meets one of the areas identified in the Common Assessment Framework. The Children’s Act (1989) defines a “Child in Need” as;
“(a)he is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services by a local authority under this Part;
(b)his health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him of such services; or
(c)he is disabled,”
This essentially means that if health and development is going to be “impaired” or “further impaired” without provision, there is nothing that can not be covered by social care. It is essentially open ended because of the individualistic needs of disabled people and their families. At a glance this sounds wonderful. No disabled child should ever be at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, those that have tried to access these services have had a vastly different experience.
Why is there such a gap between law and practice?
We challenge any parent of a disabled child to ring up the local authority and ask for any of the services outlined above. These resources don’t exist. All that does exist for parents of disabled children is bureaucracy, complaints, gaslighting, invalidation of difficulties, and as the cherry on top; parent-blame. The truth is that one of the roles of a social worker is about the distribution of services and providing the things that the law outlines. When those resources have been stripped away, and there is nothing for social care to give, what is left?
The lens of safeguarding
The policy and ethics of social work is changing. The Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government, 2018) document does not even specify anything for disabled children. It’s as though their existence has ended because of the systematic defunding of services, and no one seems to have noticed. Clements & Aiello (2021) argues that this is unlawful and discriminatory; We would agree that completely ignoring the existence of disabled children in a social care capacity fundamentally alters the purpose of social care, without explicit statement of it’s new purpose. Here’s how this plays out;
Parents approach social care to ask for an assessment regarding the provision that the law specifies social care should provide.
Social care automatically apply a lens of safeguarding to said child.
There are no resources to give.
The only function that remains for social care is to focus on the parenting of said child.
Institutionalised Parent/Carer Blame
Parents complain about unlawful restrictions and practice, and get labelled as difficult parents, or serial complainers.
Fabricated and Induced Illness, accusations of exaggerating your child’s difficulties for personal gain, caught up in safeguarding processes due to the absence of due process for disability, or if you dodge all this; you may be able to slink away with no resources, no provision from social care, but still with your family intact.
Truth be told, without the resources we are at the point that if we look at this objectively, we have to ask; what is the role for social care with regards to disabled children?
Ethics in social care
Social care values and ethics (as outlined in the code of ethics document (2021) produced by The British Association for Social Workers) covers three main values;
“1. Human Rights
2. Social Justice
3. Professional Integrity”
None of the above meets any of these values. Not by a mile. Social workers are being set up to fail. They are set up to be the scapegoats for the effects of the governments practice of defunding essential services for disabled children. The short-sightedness of this is immense because the provision of these services for disabled children are explicitly recognised as vital to the health and development of disabled children. If the health and development of disabled children is significantly impaired, it will create a safeguarding issue. Defunding services for disabled children creates more cost-strain on safeguarding services, who are not specialists in disability, and feeds into the culture of defensive-practice, gatekeeping of resources, and parent-blame.
Tanya is routinely approached by parent’s as she works in the field of social care. These parents want advice after reading the legislation about accessing provision. The heart-breaking truth is that she has to tell them there is no provision that exists without it being legally enforced. Parents of disabled children are faced with an ugly truth that there is no adequate support for their child from social care.
What do we do instead?
This is where we have to examine;
What the law says.
Is it enforceable?
What is the cost both financially and mentally?
Do the pros outweigh the cons?
Realistically, in our experience the most effective way to assess, identify, and obtain provision for disabled children is through an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP). That in itself can be an intense and lengthy legal process. We can say one of the benefits is the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal’s (SENDisT) role in the appeals process regarding EHCP’s. They are an external tribunal service that look at the legalities regarding the needs and provision for disabled children. These tribunals are overwhelmed meaning that the EHCP process (with appeals) can take upwards of 18 months. You may need independent reports, legal representation, and an abundance of cognitive resources. While you are waiting for all this to happen you are stuck in the parent-blame cycle that we mentioned above.
The only way that any of this is going to change for the better is for an increase in public money investment into a sector that is, quite frankly, running on empty.
One of the positives is that around 96% of EHCP tribunal appeals end in favour of the parents;
“SENDIST panels upheld local authority decisions in just 207 of 5,600 hearings in 2021-22 – an LA success rate of 3.7%” – Keer (2022)
At first glance this looks like a positive for parents, but it is evidence that local authorities are using the overwhelmed and lengthy tribunal appeal system to defend resources that don’t exist, and avoid their statutory requirement for the provision of services.
As is always the case, disabled people are at the bottom of the pile yet again. Viewed as a drain on societies resources, directly contributing to ableist and discriminatory attitudes that are a pervasive theme throughout disabled peoples lives. Therefore creating more Autistic suffering.

If you would like to play a part in trying to improve one small part of this, click here.

References
Clements, L., & Aiello, A. L. (2021). Institutionalising parent carer blame. The Experiences of Families with Disabled Children in Their Interactions with English Local Authority Children’s Services Departments. Cerebra. University of Leeds.
HM Government (1989) Children’s Act
HM Government (1970) Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act
Keer, M (2022) SEND Tribunal 2022: With a 3.7% LA success rate, what will it take for the Government to finally understand the law matters? Special Needs Jungle
Policy, Ethics, and Human Rights Committee (2021) The Code of Ethics for Social Work. British Association for Social Workers

David Gray-Hammond 5 Comments
Feb 1 2023
Why is getting diagnosed with autism so difficult?

The Autistic community has written at length about why getting a diagnosis is so hard, especially with regards to those at particular intersections of experience. I myself have spoken about how our diagnostic understanding of autism is based on the Autistic person in distress. Current models used to diagnose simply do not work.

There is a wider issue to consider, though, than race, gender identity, or trauma. We have to consider the individuality of Autistic people.

Humans are never just one thing. We don’t just experience being Autistic. Every single one of us lives at the intersection of multitudes of experiences. Currently, diagnosis of autism is based on a collective understanding of a shared group of observable behaviour. This diagnostic conceptualisation was socially constructed (ironically) by people who rarely share in Autistic culture. This has resulted in very restrictive criteria that boxes out a lot of people.

Due to the intersectional nature of humanity, these criteria will never capture all Autistic people. Allow me to give an example:

I am Autistic, ADHD, and Schizophrenic. This does not mean that I have Autistic, ADHD, and Schizophrenic traits. None of these traits cancel each other out either. A more accurate description would be that I am AuDPhrenic. My experience arises from the interactions of my neurological systems. I don’t have separate parts of my brain for all three diagnoses. I have a human brain, and my observable behaviour has then be put into three categories.

This is why the medicalisation of neurodivergence has been an issue in perpetuity. We try and categorise human experiences despite its propensity to defy expectations. There is no such thing as an objectively neurodivergent brain. Some of us are just wired in a way that stops us from assimilating into normative society. Any categorisation is an abstract concept that is entirely constructed by humanity.

We can see the irony of diagnosis in neuroqueer theory. Anyone can queer their embodiment. It is not restricted to the Neurodivergent. Neurotypical people could, in theory, neuroqueer to the point that their observable behaviour is not neurotypical anymore.

So what does all this mean for diagnosis?

It means that we need to move away from one-size-fits-all approached to diagnosis. We need to move away from diagnosis altogether. In a post-normal society, we need to allow people to use the words that best describe their own sense of identity. As I talk about in A Treatise on Chaos, identity is a knowing target. The nature of the Chaotic Self is that we grow and change, and our identity is constantly shifting and changing.

We need to allow people to use the words that best describe their identity. Locking a person’s identity behind a diagnosis and then requiring them to receive that diagnosis is a paradox and a betrayal of the neurodiversity movement itself.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments
Jan 31 2023
Five things I want parents of neurodivergent children to know

It can be very difficult to wrap your head around neurodiversity when you have spent your life being taught that any deviation from the status quo is a disorder. It’s all the more overwhelming when your child is discovered to be neurodivergent, and suddenly, you live on a battlefield between advocates and professionals. In this post, I hope to give you a starting point with five things that are important to know in your attempt to affirm your neurodivergent child rather than force them into what the world tell you they should be.

1. Person-first language versus Identity-first language

This has been a point of contention for as long as the neurodiversity movement has existed. Broadly speaking, the Neurodivergent community (in particular, the Autistic community) prefers identity-first language. Identity-First language requires us to stop viewing neurodivergence as an illness or disorder and instead view it as an identity.

Instead of person-first language (person with autism/ADHD), try using identity-first language (Autistic person/ADHD’er). As a community, we prefer it because our neurodivergence is inseparable from us and fundamentally; we don’t need to be reminded of our personhood. There are wider discussions around cure culture and normativity, but the information here is a good basis to start learning from.

2. Familiarise yourself with the social model of disability

Discussion of appropriate models of disability can get complicated, so I will try and explain this simply. Autism (as an abstract concept) classes as a disability. There has been a great deal of discussion around whether disability is centred in the person (the medical model) or the environment (the social model). For the purposes of starting to understand disability in the context of neurodiversity, you will need to rethink your conceptualisation of disability.

For the most part, disability arises in neurodivergent people because society and the environments it provides are inaccessible. Rather than considering your child to be disabled due to deficits, start to consider that the issue is oppression. It sounds extreme, but due to the neuronormative attitudes of society, we are held back until we can conform to perceived cultural norms.

This is largely where functioning labels arise from. The idea that people are more or less disabled comes from normative thinking, as does the medical model of disability. Speaking of which…

3. Functioning labels give you very little useful information

You have probably heard of people being labelled as high or low functioning. This is a falsehood. Primarily, disability from neurodivergence has a tendency to be dynamic. A person’s functioning depends on so many variables that different times, environments, and states of health will alter a person’s functioning.

Something else to consider is that those labelled low-functioning are considered so because they do not fit the stereotype of a person who will ever be able to contribute to society. Therefore, they are denied agency. Conversely, those labelled high-functioning are considered valuable to society despite their quirkiness and, for this reason, are often denied resources.

Ones access to humanity and support is often dictated by the functioning label you are assigned.

4. Neurodiversity covers more than autism and ADHD

Neurodiversity refers to all brains, including those considered neurotypical. Neurodivergent people are those who are not neurotypical. For more about terms and definitions I recommend this article by Nick Walker.

People who are not neurotypical also includes those with what is traditionally considered mental “illness”. It also includes things such as Down Syndrome and epilepsy. In particular, I would like you to think about how mental health has been pathologised and how we might move forward to a more inclusive society.

Onto my final point.

5. Almost anything can be traumatic

You may have heard about the high rates of trauma amongst the Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent community. Our understanding of trauma has been heavily influenced by normative attitudes. The truth is that a wide range of things can traumatise your child.

It’s probably not reasonable to expect yourself to protect your child from every trauma, but having a trauma-informed perspective will help your child-parent relationship a lot.

I hope that this gives you some food for thought and helps you feel as though you can start your journey of learning. Remember, it’s okay to be scared, and it’s okay to make the odd mistake. Allow yourself space to admit your shortcomings, and always consider asking neurodivergent adults about things that helped then as children.

Neurodivergence is not just for childhood.

If you have found this helpful and would like to read something a bit more in-depth about normativity and its impact on neurodivergent people, please consider purchasing my book The New Normal: Autistic musings on the threat of a broken society

For further reading on my website, please check out the Creating Autistic Suffering series that I co-author with Tanya Adkin and the Neuroqueer series that I author with Katie Munday.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Jan 30 2023
Neuroqueering and the Autistic expression of pain

Neuroqueering is a liberational practice. It allows the person to express themselves authentically. But what if authentic expression of Self could cost you your life? What if the people observing you are basing their judgements on a majority group that does not express themselves in the same way that you do?

This is why we need to talk about Autistic people and pain. When we express pain, both emotional and physical, we often embody thar experience differently to the neuromajority. Autistic people have a complicated relationship with pain, and for the sake of simplicity, I would like to consider physical pain.

In hospitals around the world, pain is often recorded using numerical and visual scales. These rely on a person being able to articulate the way they are feeling on a numerical scale and be witnessed to display pain visually in a way that marries up to that figure. One might think it’s a simple system, but if you are Autistic it presents a significant challenge.

Autistic people often experience alexithymia. We struggle to put internal sensations into words. We often can’t articulate what we’re feeling to ourselves, let alone a doctor on a numerical scale. At the same time as this, we often do not express pain in the same way as those of a predominant neurotype.

How many of us find paper cuts unbearable while walking around daily experiencing delirium inducing chronic pain? An example from my own life is the 10 hours I spent walking around with a collapsed lung. I was in agony, but I didn’t respond “typically” to that pain, nor could I articulate its severity in a way that made sense to others.

Enter in the era of the neuroqueer. We are witnessing the birth of a post-normal society. This is a world where Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent people feel more and more like they can embody their experience in a way that means something to them, and not for the benefit of others. This means that modern medicine needs to also evolve.

Unless healthcare professionals familiarise themselves with the Autistic expression of pain, many of us will be failed (or even killed) by a lack of clinical competency. That is what it is. There is no clinical competency that should not, or does not include an understanding or minority groups experiences of pain.

Neuroqueering is a wonderful thing, but it really does shine a light on the failings that befall Autistic people.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Jan 30 2023
What purpose does the concept of mental “illness” serve?

As a Schizophrenic person, I see many talk about me as being mentally “ill” and in need of medicine. I do take medication, but for me, medication usage is similar to what one might see within ADHD communities. Medicine is a tool, not a treatment. It allows me to function in environments that are not designed to be accessible to me or my needs. It allows me to live my life without the constant experience of distress, one that I experience without medication because the world is not designed for me.

All suffering is valid, and all neurodivergence can result in suffering. Not because we are ill, but because the world is a traumatic place to live. Neurodivergent people have to face the oppression of all that is different on a daily basis.

“Illness” as a concept within psychological wellbeing a distress is a convenience. It allows professionals to tell us our suffering is unavoidable. If we die by suicide, then we are collateral damage. Victims of a pathology ravaging human kind. If we are “ill” then professionals and leaders do not have to acknowledge their role in a system, causing us distress.

This is what we are actually experiencing. Distress. When we can move forward from pathology models and start to consider that what is happening is a very human experience, we can start to point the blame where it belongs. A world that is violent and terrifying for a huge portion of the population. It is not on us to recover from a mysterious, unquantifiable entity of illness. The world needs to change.

We need to recognise that distress is a human experience, and no two humans have the same experience. Just because my distress looks like the loss of our shared reality does not mean that I am ill. Just because I take medicine that eases my distress does not mean I have a disorder. We don’t assume ADHD’ers to be ill for taking medication. Why do we do it to other forms of medication-assisted neurodivergence?

This ties us up in ideas around med-shaming and toxic positivity. One of the reasons people feel shamed of their meds is because, to them, it feels like an admission of guilt. They weren’t strong enough to survive without becoming ill. It’s not fair to let people feel that way. It’s also unfair to go the other direction and tell people to manage their distress without tools such as medicine. It’s possible to be neurodivergent (and not ill) and still need medication for day to day life.

Neurodivergence is aggressively neutral. It has positives and negatives, and it also has experiences that are not able to be compartmentalised. Truthfully, neurodivergent experience is human experience. The fact that we have to section off different experiences and diagnose them as “illness” or “disorder” fundamentally undermines the neurodiversity paradigm.

Mental “illness” is a deeply flawed concept, and until we fix this, we will not be able to reduce human distress.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Jan 28 2023
The privilege of being neuroqueer

I have, for some time now, discussed neuroqueer theory (as conceptualised by Nick Walker and her colleagues), adding my own takes to the emerging liberatory thoughts of a blossoming post-normal era. I consider myself neuroqueer. Not only because of the relationship between my queerness and my neurodivergence, but also because of the relationship between my Self and normative society.

In my book A Treatise on Chaos, I discuss what I have conceptualised as “the Chaotic Self”. Rooted in the idea that all things tend towards chaos, ever changing, unable to unexperience the events that form our sense of Self. I consider how I have neuroqueered my way to this understanding of myself. What I don’t discuss in that book (although I do discuss in The New Normal) is that I was only able to gain this understanding of who I am through privilege.

Privilege doesn’t necessarily refer to the presence of a benefit. More specifically, it is the lack of obstacles and barriers. I suspect this is why so many people struggle to see their own privilege. Much like the Dunning-Kruger effect, you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t realise the advantage of a clear path through life if you have never had to take stock of obstacles.

I have queered my neurology in a number of ways. One of those ways was the use of mind-altering drugs. I have no doubt that my privilege is what allowed me to do this with no legal repercussions. I also did not have to deal with abusive family and had a safe home away from those who would exploit my journey of Self discovery. I had fewer obstacles to my journey of understanding and growth than those with less privilege.

Neuroqueering requires an element of authenticity in one’s embodiment of Self. It’s necessary to manifest your truth through action, but what if doing so could place you in danger? For BIPOC or other marginalised groups, authenticity can be life-threatening. Authentic embodiment of a marginalised identity is often criminalised or pathologised. Both can land you in prisons or institutions, in some places, it can be met with violence.

Those of us proudly flying the neuroqueer banner need to realise something important. Neuroqueerness is not an individual endeavour. It requires societal evolution. To be neuroqueer requires us to use our authentic embodiment of Self to drive a change that makes a post-normal society safe for all of us. Neuroqueerness that is only accesible to the few is not true neuroqueerness. To be neuroqueer is to fight for the liberation of all humans.

As we move toward a world where normative violence is unacceptable, we need to be prepared for the pushback. Those who benefit from normativity and oppression will not support the redistribution of power. For those with less privilege, this fight could be deadly. As we liberate ourselves, we must make sure to liberate those for whom the barriers to freedom are greater.

I am neuroqueer, and I will fight for your eight to be neuroqueer too.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Jan 27 2023
Autistic advocacy: The reality of lifting up a community

Many of us as community advocates have dedicated our lives to defending the marginalised and uplifting those that society has tried to hold down. For some of us, this has become our professional job. For others, it is something done on a voluntary basis. Both are as valid as each other. We spend enormous effort on our cause, but in truth, we rarely make space for ourselves. To put it another way; who advocates for the advocates?

Autistic people engaging in community advocacy and activism are just as disabled as the rest of our community. We are not some mythical entities that exist outside of the reality of Autistic experience. We are victimised, we are oppressed, we are invalidated. Many of us have very public facing profiles, and sometimes people forget our right to privacy. It can be exhausting. We have to fight not just for our community but also police ourselves. People online tend to expect perfection. Ironic, given that neurodivesity is almost explicit in its denial of perfection.

Beyond the pressures of being in the public eye, there is the reality of facing the trauma that our community experiences. Many of us fight daily on an individual and community level against the abuse of our community. My first thought, of course, is the Spectrum 10k campaign. Myself and the rest of the Boycott team have shed literal tears trying to hold ourselves together and fight. Another example is the Creating Autistic Suffering series that I co-author with Tanya Adkin. The content of those articles is not hypothetical. It is based on things we have witnessed in our professional roles.

Time and again, we face some of the worst that society gives to neurodivergent people.

I do this work because I love the Autistic community, and I live my work; but I am a human being. There are times when I want to scream and cry and pack it all in. There are times when I feel like an imposter. There are times when I wonder how sustainable it is to get up each day wondering what ableist vitriol I will witness today. I love my work, but it can be draining in a way that can’t be described by any metric I am aware of.

So, why write this? No, not because I can’t cope with it. This work is my calling, and despite the negatives, I wake each day knowing that today, I have the power to make a positive difference for someone. I write this because I want all Autistic advocates (regardless of the nature of that advocacy) to know that I see them. I see you standing up and fighting each and every day. I see you do your best to make sure that the world we leave behind is better than the one we were born into.

Each of us has the power to make change for the better. Our mere existence alters the world in irreversible ways. However, I want advocates everywhere to know that it’s okay to stand back and recuperate.

The reason a choir can sing impossibly long notes is because individual members can breathe while the rest keep singing. In case no one has told you recently; take a breath, the rest of us can hold the note for you.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Jan 26 2023
Understanding Autistic mental health in a broader context

We often discuss anxiety and depression amongst the Autistic population. Some such as myself and Autistic and Living the Dream have pushed to get lesser discussed mental health concerns into the zeitgeist, but there is a problem with how it is framed in a more general sense. When most people discuss Autistic mental health, they discuss the individual experiences, I feel it is necessary to look at the bigger picture.

One of the reasons we centre our conversations on individual experiences is because of the medicalisation of acquired neurodivergence. Medical models of psychological wellbeing centre the experience of distress as the defining feature of what is then described as a disordered mind. It teaches is that acquired neurodivergence is the source of our suffering, placing the responsibility on us to adapt to an unchanging environment.

This is where Autistic mental health becomes complicated. In general, Autistic people favour social models of disability and neurodiversity-affirming approaches, and yet we are taught that further neurodivergence is a disorder. It directly conflicts with our understanding of our Self. It partitions off parts of ourselves and teaches us to eliminate them rather than co-exist. What we actually need is to recognise that distress from traditional “Psychiatric conditions” is as much of a reaction to our environment as an Autistic meltdown is.

The environments that exist in our world are inherently traumatic for Autistic people. Trauma alters the way the brain functions, and we are then taught it is our responsibility to recover from that. In truth, the responsibility lies with the environmental factors that cause our distress. You are not suffering because of “illness”. You are suffering because the world is not made with your needs considered. When the world consistently abuses us, crosses our boundaries, and fails to meet our needs, we suffer.

Autistic people need to be allowed to co-exist with themselves. We need a world where the experience of distress doesn’t require us to get better but requires the world to do better. Lack of accessibility and invalidation of people’s lived experiences might well be one of the biggest causes of psychological distress in our society.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Jan 25 2023
Spectrum 10k will never be acceptable: Here is why

During my time in the Autistic community, I often heard murmurings of eugenics projects, but in all honesty, I was unaware of the reality of just how many sought to eradicate Autistic people. Perhaps then you can understand just how upsetting Spectrum 10k has been; not just for me, but for tens of thousands of Autistic people, for whom eugenics has been a mythical creature. This project has served as a rude awakening to a world in which we are not welcome. Such a world as the ones found in dystopian fiction.

They say that ignorance is bliss, and truthfully, it was. I yearn for a world where experts are only wrong, and do not harbour genocidal ambitions. Unfortunately, the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, UK, are engaging on projects that each day take us closer to a world where Autistic people no longer exist.

Myself and the rest of the team at the Boycott Spectrum 10K campaign have literally given our wellbeing to this cause. Many, if not all of us, have been in some state of burnout since this started. We have fought hard to make it clear that we won’t stand idley by while things like this are enacted upon our community. So this latest attempt to draw us into consultation over this project has been a slap in the face.

Some may believe we can achieve more by coming to the table, but I want to tell you why that won’t work. There is no version of the current project that is acceptable. As the project stands, any input from Autistic people would be tokenistic. It would still have the same goals, it would still produce the same data with the same ethical issues. In order for this project to be acceptable, it would no longer be the same project. It would require new goals, new data collection, and new ethics approval. They would likely lose their funding as well as the people who provided it had very specific goals in mind.

For our input to mean anything, this entire project would need to be abandoned, and a new one co-produced with the Autistic community.

Unfortunately, this will not happen. The people involved in this project do not care for what research we actually need. Their values do not align with our community. If we came to the table, they would write down our views, and bin them once we left. Involvement with this project will bring nothing good, but it will empower them. If we come to the table, we legitimise their ambitions. We can not allow that to happen.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
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