Thank you for taking on Temple. Unfortunately she is a product of her generation. I have a hard time explaining this to most people. As far as the white privileged people, I see it all the time in Southern California and am sickened by it. So many therapists refuse insurance and do “super bills” which is so hard because underprivileged kids have to deal with ABA infested schools. It is so so so hard to see the disparity.
Yeah this was a tough episode to do. We both needed to nap for a week after recording it. It’s a complicated topic. She’s our Christopher Columbus in a lot of ways.
There are a lot of things I don't understand about Temple. She seems to think that autistic people either are babied (her word) at home or made to get jobs which then progress into careers. There are a lot of other situations that autistic people live in. Her own father wanted her to be institutionalized and had that happened, we likely would never had heard about her at all. I was born decades later in the 80s and was institutionalized (something that Temple's mother protected her from). There are also many autistic people that are allowed to live at home and don't work and yet are abused every day of their lives, which doesn't sound like babying to me. Temple had incredible privilege combined with people that supported her throughout her life and gave her opportunities like her aunt, mom, teacher, and some of her employers. A lot of us don't have that.
Hi Mary! Sami here, I'm the new Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. As an ABA survivor, Temple Grandin has always struck me as interesting for these same reasons. I was trained at a young age to believe that how I was moving through the world wasn't "right" or "acceptable" and basically trained to be more palatable at a young age because capitalism.
Now that I'm 27 years old and there is time and space between me and what happened to me in ABA, I'm faced with the tough questions - would I have rather been "babied" (in Temple's words) than thrust into a world that barely holds space for people like me to begin with? Was it all worth it? These are such nuanced questions and I absolutely agree with you that there are a myriad of other situations that autistic people get put into other than being "babied" or maintaining a long-term career.
Before finding this role (which I am so extremely fortunate to have), I found myself having to work a new job every three months to support myself due to burnout or getting bullied out of the job. I switched fields from fashion to makeup artistry to social media/copywriting and back and forth between the three, went back to school, did freelancing, part-time, full-time, you name it... had to endure two wrongful termination lawsuits, advocated for the bare minimum in accommodations to supervisors who were willfully obstinate... my path has stayed stagnant due to systemic barriers and the only time it progressed into a career is when I started to create disability advocacy content on TikTok, something that was not available to Temple Grandin when she was coming of age.
Temple Grandin absolutely had privileges that not a lot of autistic people possess, and a support system that wouldn't allow her to fail. While her legacy and accomplishments are important to the autism community, she definitely isn't the perfect representation of who we are and what we stand for.
Thank you for taking on Temple. Unfortunately she is a product of her generation. I have a hard time explaining this to most people. As far as the white privileged people, I see it all the time in Southern California and am sickened by it. So many therapists refuse insurance and do “super bills” which is so hard because underprivileged kids have to deal with ABA infested schools. It is so so so hard to see the disparity.
Yeah this was a tough episode to do. We both needed to nap for a week after recording it. It’s a complicated topic. She’s our Christopher Columbus in a lot of ways.
There are a lot of things I don't understand about Temple. She seems to think that autistic people either are babied (her word) at home or made to get jobs which then progress into careers. There are a lot of other situations that autistic people live in. Her own father wanted her to be institutionalized and had that happened, we likely would never had heard about her at all. I was born decades later in the 80s and was institutionalized (something that Temple's mother protected her from). There are also many autistic people that are allowed to live at home and don't work and yet are abused every day of their lives, which doesn't sound like babying to me. Temple had incredible privilege combined with people that supported her throughout her life and gave her opportunities like her aunt, mom, teacher, and some of her employers. A lot of us don't have that.
Hi Mary! Sami here, I'm the new Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. As an ABA survivor, Temple Grandin has always struck me as interesting for these same reasons. I was trained at a young age to believe that how I was moving through the world wasn't "right" or "acceptable" and basically trained to be more palatable at a young age because capitalism.
Now that I'm 27 years old and there is time and space between me and what happened to me in ABA, I'm faced with the tough questions - would I have rather been "babied" (in Temple's words) than thrust into a world that barely holds space for people like me to begin with? Was it all worth it? These are such nuanced questions and I absolutely agree with you that there are a myriad of other situations that autistic people get put into other than being "babied" or maintaining a long-term career.
Before finding this role (which I am so extremely fortunate to have), I found myself having to work a new job every three months to support myself due to burnout or getting bullied out of the job. I switched fields from fashion to makeup artistry to social media/copywriting and back and forth between the three, went back to school, did freelancing, part-time, full-time, you name it... had to endure two wrongful termination lawsuits, advocated for the bare minimum in accommodations to supervisors who were willfully obstinate... my path has stayed stagnant due to systemic barriers and the only time it progressed into a career is when I started to create disability advocacy content on TikTok, something that was not available to Temple Grandin when she was coming of age.
Temple Grandin absolutely had privileges that not a lot of autistic people possess, and a support system that wouldn't allow her to fail. While her legacy and accomplishments are important to the autism community, she definitely isn't the perfect representation of who we are and what we stand for.
Thanks for listening Mary! :)