And as an aside, I quickly gathered around the time of my diagnosis that most of the "controversy" among autistic people (as opposed to parents) regarding the change to a single Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis reflected a lot of internalized ableism. There were a lot of autistic people who didn't want to be lumped in with "those" autistic people.

The way I interact with the world flowing from my own experience, I was glad I would have been filtered into the more despised group.

I was so overjoyed and relieved to discover there were people like me in the world, that I wasn't some uniquely broken type of human, I immediately saw everyone as almost my family. I wanted to stand beside and with everyone.

If you've explored any of the links in the article I shared at the start, you'll see how autistic children were viewed by the man who designed ABA, Ivar Lovaas. And you'll see it looks a lot like gay conversion therapy because he applied the same techniques in that arena and published research papers about it.

And none of those original techniques are off the table today, including the use of electric shock as punishment. "Clients" (victims) of the Judge Rotenberg Center are forced to wear their torture devices on their backs and the center recently won a court case allowing them to continue the practice.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/23/687636057/massachusetts-school-defends-use-of-electric-shock-treatments

So don't talk to me about how the "therapy" has changed. Its most brutal elements remain in use today.

But even the "softer, gentler" forms are just as abusive and recent research demonstrates its victims are also much more likely to exhibit PTSD as adults.

What are the goals of ABA? The sole goal of the therapy is to force a child to look and act as much like non-autistic peers as possible. The so-called "optimal outcome" is when a child is no longer observably autistic among peers from a distance. That's it. That's the most important measure of results.

I wrote about that because I worked very, very hard to make myself look as "normal" as I could as a child and I pretty much achieved their so-called optimal outcome. I know what drove me and it wasn't good. I wanted others to treat me like a human being. Even so, internally driven was still better than externally imposed.

https://faithandfood.morizot.net/2017/08/12/optical-outcome-for-whom/

And I continued to pay a price for that "optimal outcome" my entire adult life. I wrote about that as "The Price of Passing"

https://faithandfood.morizot.net/2018/05/27/the-price-of-passing/

And please note again, forcing an autistic child to look as non-autistic as possible is the ONLY purpose and goal of ABA.

ABA does not help with language use. That's speech therapy.

ABA does not teach life skills with accommodations as needed. That's occupational therapy.

ABA does not help an autistic deal with sensory overload and emotional regulation. Play therapy, art therapy, and similar forms fill those needs.

No autistic person is telling the world not to help autistic children.

We're practically screaming for people to give them real help, the help and support they need.

And in the process, give them the space to BE autistic without exclusion, abuse, and condemnation.

My post from Week 6 of the #TakeTheMaskOff campaign examines more of the impact masking has had on me and how I'm trying to approach it today.

https://faithandfood.morizot.net/2018/08/27/coping-strategies-week-6-of-takethemaskoff/

What about the research? Yeah. About that. My Dad was a cancer researcher and I have other scientists in my family. So from both my academic history and my family, I understand how research works. I can interpret methodology and the statistical validity of data. And I know the difference between population studies and randomized, controlled trials.

This paper, which outlines a small trial of an intervention that focuses on educating those around the autistic children, references the only RCT of ABA I've found anywhere. And as described, that trial found that ABA had no statistically significant impact.

http://www.gernsbacherlab.org/wp-content/uploads/papers/1/Gernsbacher_reciprocity.pdf

But what about all those studies that show improvement? Yeah, even apart from the construction and methodology of the studies, and all the ones I've read have been pretty flawed, there's the whole correlation versus causation issue. Absent an RCT, that's *really* hard to demonstrate.

That's one of the things that's so impressive about Dr. Gershoff's decades long research on the effects of spanking. It's a collection of studies and meta-analyses covering decades of research and more than a hundred thousand subjects. It would be completely unethical to perform an RCT of spanking, so that's the sort of population data required to prove something. None of that exists for ABA.

ABA is the worst sort of pseudo-science because it actively harms children. *That's* what current research is demonstrating.

It really is autistic conversion therapy and is just as evil as LGBT conversion therapy.

But children who underwent ABA improved on "measures" (whatever those measures might have been)!

You know what? Children develop and change and learn even faster and in greater leaps than adults do. And people in general learn and change over time. It takes a *lot* to attribute change to a specific cause. It is *not* easy to do.

And again, we come back to the only goal of the "therapy" in question: ABA tries to make autistic children look more like their non-autistic peers.

That's it.

Why is that even a valid goal, not matter what methods are used?

I don't believe the ends justify the means, but in this case even the desired ends are horrible.

@tmorizot I've seen you mention not being treated like a human several times now and I relate to that so hard. It's so hard to put into words how I was being treated. It didn't seem to fit nicely into the category of bullying, I just knew I was being treated as less than human.

Some people became my "friend" but usually treated me more like an amusing pet. I was always wary of those people.

Others just looked at me with contempt, as subhuman

@tmorizot And when I see that happening to anyone else my heart just breaks from the pain I know they're feeling.
It hurts. A lot.

@Laura_I Yes. Yes, it does. I recognized recently that's part of the reason I have always so strongly empathized with other marginalized groups. The process of social marginalization always involves treating the subject as less than fully human.

@Laura_I I could see, as long as I remember, the ways people responded to each other.

And they didn't respond to me that way, even the ones who tried to be helpful, nice, or friendly.

And that never stopped hurting.