No Review This Year

This year, I am actually not at all motivated to do a review. Actually, I can’t think of much that happened this year that is not utterly boring and is actually my readers’ business. I am also tired of endless strings of nonsense about how this year the term-of-the-year for whatever sucks about my life [...]

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Intellectually Disabled Student Wins College Dorm Lawsuit

I just found out that a student with intellectual disabilities won a lawsuit to live on campus. Micah Fialka-Feldman, who is in a special program for students with intellectual disabilities at his college, was not permitted to live on campus, allegedly because he is not a full-time student, but it is quite possible that some [...]

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At the Ceiling of the Care System: The Effects of Care Packaging on the Most Severely Disabled

As I wrote last February and last month, “intensive”, “24-hour” or “one-on-one” care may be thought of as far more than they really are. This may be a problem for those with moderate disabilities, who have to associate themselves with such words as “intensive” in order to get what is for them a minimum level [...]

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Care Packaging for the Blind

Until now, I always thought there were only five categories of care packaging within the Dutch system of long-term, residential care: developmental disabilities, mental health, physical disabilities, nursing home care, and some kind of weird system for youth with mild intellectual disabilities. I criticized the system for dividing people, especially those with multiple disabilities or [...]

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Falling Off the System: People with Mild Disabilities Hit Hardest by Budget Cuts

I will do another post on the effects of care packaging on the most profoundly disabled later, but I have to do more research for that. This post will be about another, totally different group of people left out by the current long-term care system: those assessed to have the mildest disabilities. When massive budget [...]

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Does Intellectual Disability Make a Difference in Autism?

Why is it that I and other autistic people without intellectual disabilities, are assumed not to think that intellectual disability makes a difference to an individual with autism? In fact, I have always said that it does make a difference: in a recent comment on Facing Autism in New Brunswick, I actually made it quite [...]

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Cure Effects All Autistics, Or Why Ari Ne’eman Has Every Right to Advocate

As I wrote a few days ago, Ari Ne’eman, ASAN founder, has apparently changed his mind, or at least altered his language, on the subject of autism as a disability. Most likely and hopefully, he hasn’t changed his mind on the subject of cure. Harold Doherty uses this as a reason to deny him the [...]

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The Disability Movement Never Promised You a Rose Garden

When discussing the social model of disability, people who won’t take it often point out that people with disabilities would still suffer no matter how accommodating and accepting the world would be. This is true, but is it a reason to reject the social model? First, there is suffering that is really intrinsic in the [...]

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Intersectionality, Multiple Disabilities and Comorbidity: The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts

There is a debate within the autism/autistic community about whether the core of autism should be like Asperger’s or “high-functioning” autism, and all the additional problems faced by certain autistics, are “comorbidities”, or whether these additional problems are part of the autism itself. Examples of these so-called “comorbidities” include mental retardation and epilepsy: both are [...]

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Did You Know Many Autistics Do Not Live in Institutional Care?

Did you know that many autistics live in institutions, Harold Doherty aka @AutismRealityNB asks on Twitter. Yes, I do. Once again, I am not counting myself. This post is not going to be about me, so I’m not willing to elicit ad hominem arguments along the lines of “You have access to a computer so [...]

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