Mini Autistic Advice #1: My workplace's neurodiversity workshop spread misinformation and promoted ABA therapy. What do I do?

Hi everyone, this is not the official article for the week, that one will be posted early tomorrow morning (I always post new work on the 1st and the 15th of the month, or the nearest week day). But I thought I would try out something new. I get many questions on my Tumblr that I answer quickly, rather than turning into full-blown Autistic Advice columns, and while they’re generally lower effort than a full piece, some of them do have some value to them, or grapple with interesting topics enough to get some real traction on the platform.

I figured I might as well share some of these occasionally with you, as shorter bonus content in addition to my two main big posts of the month. I’ve also been really, really surprised and impressed by the reception this new Substack has gotten, and I’m really grateful for the number of you who have chosen to support the work with a paid subscription, so I wanted to unlock a little bonus content for everyone as a thank you.

So here is the first foray into doing that! Here’s mini Autistic Advice #1:

Ugh that is so horrible, I’m sorry you had to deal with that anon. I think you can make a stink about it, but be clear first about what your ask even is. Do you want your department to send out information correcting the misinformation about ABA? Recommend an alternative resource for employees where they can learn more? Do you want your organization to hire a completely new speaker to do damage control (you can email me if you want)? Do you just want them to know that the organization they hired is bunk and have them put on a sort of do-not-support list so they will never be hired again? Your desired outcome should be informed by your knowledge of your employer, your energy level, and the egregiousness of the offense.

Next, who else can you include in advocating for your desired outcome? Is there a neurodivergent employee group? A union? A general purpose company DEI group? Do you have neurodivergent coworkers or ones you know to have similar political alignments to yours? Talk with them and strategize. See if you can get more people on board and willing to sign a letter or attend a meeting about this. The inclusion of other people’s perspectives may cause your desired outcome to shift, and that’s fine.

The last bit of prep work you’ll want to do is gather resources that explain why the Autistic community does not support ABA. ASAN is a good place to start, as is Stop the Shock, and you can also mine the citations in my book on the subject for a few sources to link to. You want to be able to present these to leadership while you make your requests, knowing they probably will not read it – but if they see there’s a large volume of information backing you up, and a whole social movement behind it, as well as multiple angry employees, they are more likely to do something.

Finally, watch your back for retaliation and have a realistic gauge of the place where you work. Is dissent punished? Will you be mocked or treated like you’re the problem for raising this? Is it a fluffy, feel-good liberal org that could successfully be guilted into a symbolic gesture in the direction of the right thing? Or is it a fluffy, feel-good liberal org where anyone who challenges the myth of the organizations’ moral righteousness is penalized? What is this fight worth to you, and what leverage do you have without worrying about losing your job?

Sometimes neurodivergent people do get fired for speaking up. Hell, sometimes they get fired despite being the heads of their company’s diversity ERG. So please, please be careful. You cannot ever trust your boss to do the right thing or care about you, and you cant trust HR either. This is why having the support of multiple employees is crucial. If you work in a library I’d say the odds are better than usual of being heard out, and your resources actually being read by some employees…but tread carefully regardless!

You can also contemplate making a difference in means beyond the formal organizational structure: for example, by sharing information privately with coworkers who you know are interested in or sympathetic to the neurodivergent cause. Talking to your coworkers and organizing alongside them is always valuable, no matter how informally or modestly it starts. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

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Would y’all like to see more mini-posts like these? Let me know! In the meantime, you can always send me an ask or request a future piece using my Tumblr ask box: drdevonprice.com/ask