Q: Why are disabled people so ugly?

A: I feel like I ought to be insulted that you asked this question, which presumes that disabled people are indeed ugly, because in general, we’re not; we’re just ordinary-looking, some not so good-looking, some gorgeous. It’s down to luck whether we look pretty or not-well, luck and a talent for style and ( Read more... )

I'm sure a lot of you have heard the news by now. The mother and godmother of Alex Spourdalakis pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. They were sentenced to four years, and with credit for time served they'll be out in a week ( Read more... )

( CW: Murder of the disabled by family members. Genocide. )

I think we're having a summer homicide spike. Homicides of autistics have been coming in very fast lately.

June 19: Kevin Wilkes is killed by a fellow group home resident who was known to beat him up and bully him; staff kept them housed in the same location despite Kevin's previous injuries.

June 20: The body of Aaron Pajich is found buried ( Read more... )

Today I'll be joining an online vigil for the 2015 Day of Mourning. The point of the vigil is to commemorate people with disabilities who were murdered by their families and caretakers--killed by the people who were supposed to protect them.

( Read more... )

This entry contains spoilers for Disney's TangledSo what happens to Rapunzel after she gets her happy ending? She's out of the tower where she's spent her whole life. Mother Gothel is long-overdue dead and dusted. She finally gets to meet people. She gets to have her birth family. She finds out she's royalty. The guy she loves just proved how much ( Read more... )

Today I added the 200th memorial page to the autism memorial site. The most recent death was on Monday. We lost a little boy named London McCabe, a six-year-old iPad afficionado with a cute smile. His mother threw him off a bridge after blogging about how hard it was to raise an autistic child and asking her readers for money ( Read more... )

Today at around two in the afternoon I was sleeping peacefully in bed, as my wonky circadian rhythm demanded. My alarm radio was going off and had been for about a half hour. I heard a knock at the door. It was the police, doing a welfare check. Apparently, my mother had called them and demanded that they check on me and get me to call her ( Read more... )

What could an autism rights movement give us that we don't have now?

Jobs. We're unemployed at a rate that's high even for people with disabilities, and many of the unemployed are perfectly capable of working. Many of the ones who are working, do so at sheltered workshops often earning less than a dollar an hour.

Equal protection from harm. We're ( Read more... )

I spend some time each day monitoring the news and maintaining the Autism Memorial site, and lately, things have been unusually quiet. This year so far, 2014, I've added only seven new people, mostly children. That there should be any is bad, but that the new cases are a trickle instead of a flood is somewhat hopeful ( Read more... )