I found this very interesting article
http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/
Any parents/students with these conditions want to chime in on this view?
If they can learn to self-censor, what is the problem?
College senior here with High Functioning Autism.
I see no ADA violation. People that aren’t neurotypical generally are aware that they can misread social situations and say something bad. When I screw up, it’s embarrassing and I learn from it and then I don’t make that same mistake again. So you definitely learn to self-censor.
No.
There are lots and lots and lots and lots of things on campuses that blatantly violate ADA. This is nowhere near one of them.
If you want to read about how how non-neurotypicals are actually discriminated against in academia, I recommend Mad at School by Margaret Price.
I actually know of a case where a student with ASD was suspended for a month from college for saying an inappropriate comment in an assumed private conversation. She said, “I am so mad I could just kill her”, referring to another student, while on the phone with her mom. It was overheard by a security guard and for that she was suspended. I don’t think the family pursued an OCR case on the matter.
Personally I feel it is inappropriate for anyone, neurotypical or not, to be suspended for a common expression which even taken literally just expresses a level of emotional arousal, not an intent. I mean seriously, if the student instead said “I am so hungry I could just die” would the guard have taken her to the ER?
One major problem is that if this is pursued and accepted to its logical extremes, this could easily be extended to argue against having any semblance of academic standards because one can argue that they have a disproportionate impact on those who are non-neurotypical.
How about college or even private/public magnet schools with selective admission policies which selects for high academic performance, social skills, leadership in co-curricular/ECs, etc?
Isn’t disparate impact legal so long as the measure is reasonable?
There is so much wrong with this article, right from the premise - there’s no way for us to know whether or not Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein were on the spectrum or not. The conclusions that Newton may have had Asperger syndrome primarily come from an expert on autism who posthumously assessed personality traits of Newton and said they aligned with Asperger syndrome. His reasoning? That Newton didn’t speak often, was engrossed in his work so much that he often forgot to eat, often gave lectures to mostly empty rooms if no one turned up, had a nervous breakdown brought on by depression and anxiety, and was often lukewarm with his friends. By that definition, I have Asperger syndrome. That’s just called “being a scientist.”
It’s impossible and irresponsible to try to posthumously diagnose people with mental health disorders.
And it just rolls downhill from there, from assuming that scientific prowess is associated with mental health/developmental disorders (there’s no evidence it is) to a really broad and weird misinterpretation of several developmental and mental health disorders (neither PTSD nor bipolar disorder make you more likely to be offensive) to claiming that low blood sugar and sleep deprivation should also give you a pass on being rude and disrespectful because that’s an altered mental state (seriously?)
My D is not neurotoypical. One of her persistent troubles is not knowing when to generalize and when not to, and rigidity of categories. If the first dog she ever petted was named Fido, then every dog thereafter would be known as Fido. If the first baby she paid attention to was a girl, then all babies she saw from then on were also girls and were called “she.” This has greatly improved, but to this day, she will occasionally say things like “I don’t want to go to that park. Last time we went it rained and I don’t want it to rain.”
So, you can imagine my concern about her inadvertently using the wrong gender pronoun and similar issues. Worse, she no longer has an IEP, having been de-classified right before high school due to good grades in advanced classes. The school acknowledged she is still impaired based on testing, but claimed her disabilities did not cause sufficient educational impact to legally merit classification. This means she is not normal but does not have any legal defense if she screws up. I worry.
I can’t, actually. It seems a little far-fetched that your D would be expelled for inadvertently using the wrong gender pronoun.
@sylvan8798 , @TheGFG didn’t say she was worried her daughter would be expelled for using the wrong pronoun. She only said she was concerned. Lots of us who have non-NT kids worry about the social fallout from that, even if it’s not serious. My son has had his head bitten off more than once for calling a person who identifies as “they” “she.” So it can be awkward and confusing, even if it doesn’t result in something dire.
I’m in the most liberal department at a liberal school and I’ve never seen or heard of someone’s head being bitten off for using the wrong pronoun.
Does it happen? Probably. But I’ve also seen many a straight-cis male go ballistic after their son was inadvertently referred to as a daughter.
Is it common? No. Is it something that should actually be a worry? No. If I saw someone in my class being rude to someone who accidentally used an incorrect pronoun, I’d have a word with the rude person- not the person who made a mistake.
Most trans and/or otherwise gender-nonconforming people don’t generally ever want to make a scene. They are at higher risk of violence than literally any other demographic group. So you’ll have to excuse me if I find it hard to believe that so many people are going around making a scene because they were incorrectly called the wrong thing.
Using “he” and “she” incorrectly to refer to someone of known gender also sometimes happens with people whose first language is one where “he” and “she” are pronounced the same.
Specious argument. The author cites random phrases taken from campus-anti-harassment policies out-of-context; conflates the concept of campus “speech codes” with anti-harassment policies; and fails to cite single instance of overreach in enforcement of these policies, much less overreach in respect to specific disabilities. Plus he conflates learning differences such as ADHD with serious psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia, and lumps them all under the heading of “neurodiversity.”
Since the author doesn’t identify any specific university, so it’s hard to know the source of his examples - but here is an example of a policy.
University of Arizona:
http://policy.arizona.edu/human-resources/nondiscrimination-and-anti-harassment-policy
Note the qualifier in the first paragraph: “that a reasonable person would perceive to be sufficiently severe or pervasive to create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment”.
Got a problem? Then quote the actual policy and provide an example as to how it has been applied or enforced in an unfair manner against some living person, based on actual conduct or speech.
In my childhood working-class NYC neighborhood in the 1980’s, referring straight-cis male a “she” was considered “fighting words” level provocation and those who engage in it and ended up being beaten badly for it were regarded by most in that neighborhood as “getting one’s just desserts”.
Heck, when I was in 2nd grade, a couple of 4th grade girls at my Catholic elementary school ended up in a vicious knock-down brawl because one girl said the other girl was really a cross-dressing boy. The one who provoked the fight ended up getting expelled because of that incident being the last straw in a history of bullying other students.
I have ASD clients who have been expelled from high school due to inadvertent (though obvious to neurotypicals) insults to other students. That doesn’t mean it’s a matter for the ADA, just that parents are justified in their concern about possible consequences to their ASD kids who have trouble with social boundaries or appropriate humor.