Reader, I regret to inform you that the Neurotypicals are at it again. Or rather one specific neurotypical is. There is a recent book review in the NY Times that isn’t worth the ink or paper or pixels it’s printed on. It’s written by Judith Newman and it’s a terrifying mass of horrific delusion and absolutely no fact-checking. If that name sounds familiar, this is the same person that wrote To Siri With Love, a book so actively harmful there was a whole movement to #BoycottToSiri because of the levels of sheer hate speech about neurodivergent people in it. The book where she divulged medical histories and personal information about her son without ever asking if that was okay with HIM. The one where she wants medical power of attorney over that same son when he hits 18 so she can get him sterilized.
Yeah, that person.
The review she wrote for We Walk is even more delusional that the letter that Steve Rogers wrote to Tony Stark at the end of Captain America: Civil War. It name-drops Allen Buchanan, a “bioethicist”/eugenicist which is not surprising given the author, but still left me staring in almost incoherent fury at my screen. The book itself has its own issues, falling into the same traps that To Siri did. Newman also seems to come to the conclusion that inspiration porn is good, actually. Which was right around the time my blood pressure started spiking again. Twitter link below goes into some of the details as to why this was a bad take par excellence.
Twitter Link Discussing The Review
As for my personal opinion, I tend towards the side of no representation for us without us. As an autistic adult, I sincerely wish parents of autistic children would stop writing about us without any seeming care for how their words affect us.
Words matter. Attitudes matter. Theirs are actively harmful to people like me.