Tag Archives: Human Rights

Uh Oh. Here comes data…

Autism, Human Rights, Neurodiversity, , ,

Dear Folks. As you know, I’ve been working for years now on a book on autism and human rights. I’ve recently been looking for publishers, and one of them, on their submission portal, asked how long the book was. So I went back and counted words.

Whoops! It’s way, WAY longer than anyone is going to publish or most normal (autistic or neurotypical) people would want to read. Being who I am, I need to provide data to back up the points I make. But the data is making the book far too long. So–change of plan.

I’m going to take most of the data and detailed arguments about the data out of the book and put it here on my blog. So if anyone wants to know why I say certain things in the book, the back-up information will be here.

Of course, dear readers, that means YOU get stuck with all that data. I will do my best to feed it to you in small and fairly palatable chunks, and to intersperse it with other things. I hope you will stick with me, because this information is important and should be widely known.

Thanks for your patience.

If This Isn’t Discrimination, What Is?

Autism, Human Rights, ,

So Tory Ridgeway was awarded a Navy ROTC scholarship to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University this spring. He was very excited, hoping to be the first military officer in his family.

But then the Embry-Riddle ROTC program discovered he was autistic. This was not something he had kept hidden—he wrote about it in his application to the school. Maybe they just never actually read his application?

In any case, they have just told him the offer was rescinded, because of his “developmental disorder”—in other words, not because he didn’t meet the qualifications, but simply because he was autistic.

Many autistics have served honorably in the military. Some have spent their whole lives in the service. But presumably they either didn’t know they were on the spectrum or were able to “mask” successfully.

It’s time for more autistic service members to “come out of the closet.” And it’s long past time for the Armed Forces to do the right thing for Tory and all the other young people out there who want to serve their country.