History
Jim Sinclair was the first individual to communicate the anti-cure or autism rights perspective in the late 1980s. In 1992 he co-founded the Autism Network International, an organization that publishes newsletters "written by and for autistic people". Other individuals involved in the creation of the ANI were Donna Williams and Kathy Grant, two autistic individuals that knew Sinclair through pen pal lists and autism conferences. The first issue of the newsletter, "Our Voice", was distributed online in November 1992 to an audience of mostly neuro-typical professionals and parents of young children with autism. The number of autistics in the organization grew slowly over the years and became a communication network for like-minded autistics.
In 2004 Michelle Dawson challenged applied behavior analysis (ABA) on ethical grounds. She testified in Auton v. British Columbia against the required government funding of ABA. That same year The New York Times covered the autism rights perspective by publishing Amy Harmon's article, "How about not curing us? Some autistics are pleading."
The rise of the internet provided more opportunities for autistic individuals to connect and organize. Due to geographical distance, communication and speech patterns of autistic individuals and the domination of neurotypical professionals and family members in established autism organizations, the internet provided an invaluable space for members of the movement to organize and communicate.
Read more about this topic: Autism Rights Movement
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)