{"id":124225,"date":"2022-04-13T14:49:37","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T18:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/?p=124225"},"modified":"2022-04-13T14:49:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T18:49:37","slug":"dr-alicia-broderick-oped-on-autism-awareness-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/2022\/04\/13\/dr-alicia-broderick-oped-on-autism-awareness-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Alicia Broderick OpEd on Autism Awareness Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Alicia Broderick<\/a>, Teaching and Learning<\/a> Professor, wrote an opinion piece published on NJ.com<\/a> about Autism Awareness Month.<\/p>\n

She wrote:<\/p>\n

Autism acceptance month: Raising awareness or manufacturing a market? | Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

This April, you\u2019ll once again see the now-familiar icons and ritualized observances that have marked April as \u201cautism awareness\u201d month for decades: the puzzle pieces, the \u201cLight it Up Blue\u201d campaign, the now rainbow-themed branding of ribbons, t-shirts and other sundry kitsch, and, perhaps most importantly\u2013the fundraising campaigns. You\u2019ll be asked to \u201ctake the pledge,\u201d \u201ccelebrate differences,\u201d maybe even \u201clearn the signs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what you\u2019re less likely to see or hear about this month, and it\u2019s one of the most important things about which we need to be raising critical awareness: the industrial-scale commodification of autistic people. And how these initiatives are actually part of the money-making machine.<\/p>\n

While Autism Awareness Month has been celebrated for more than 50 years, the last decade and a half\u2019s \u201cawareness\u201d initiatives and their fear-mongering rhetoric \u2014 autism is an enemy, it\u2019s an epidemic, and it\u2019s coming for your children \u2014 were masterfully crafted to generate a market of willing and eager consumers: consumers of autism intervention products. That\u2019s not raising awareness, that\u2019s manufacturing a market.<\/p>\n

Since at least 2011, the autistic community has decried these events each April, and has advocated instead for the acceptance and valuing of the autistic experience, and the nurturing of autistic agency, liberation, and pride.<\/p>\n

By 2021, many (though not all) of the largest autism advocacy organizations had jettisoned their \u201cautism awareness\u201d initiatives and rebranded to get on board with April as \u201cAutism Acceptance Month\u201d (and many are also busily appropriating the language and iconography of \u201cneurodiversity\u201d into their own PR, logos, and brands.)<\/p>\n

But before we celebrate this as a victory for autistic activism, let\u2019s ask why (or why now)?<\/p>\n

Why this kinder, gentler, shift to autism acceptance, to valuing of neurodiversity?<\/p>\n

Perhaps as a society we have genuinely experienced growth, and that is almost certainly true, to a certain extent. But that\u2019s not the only reason.<\/p>\n

The other answer is that it now benefits the autism industries to rebrand.<\/p>\n

And the \u201cvaluing of autistic people\u201d branding serves at least in part to obscure the \u201cvalue\u201d of autistic people as commodities for the autism industries.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the money. It has been and it always will be.<\/p>\n

Within autism commerce, autistic people, including very young children, have become the raw materials of the profitable, booming and ever-diversifying autism industries, including the applied behavior analysis industry, the autism pharmaceutical industry, and others. And the central engine driving the growth of those (multibillion-dollar\/year) industries is their vast potential for profit.<\/p>\n

Every autistic 2-year-old sets in motion a chain of commercial transactions: consultations, evaluations, diagnoses; infinite varieties of therapies, supports, services, counseling and other interventions, as well as pharmaceuticals and even research dollars.<\/p>\n

The minute a child is diagnosed, they are transformed into a commodity of the autism industries, representing nearly boundless potential for profit extraction.<\/p>\n

Wall Street is certainly no stranger to this market. Research firms are producing bullish forecasts for the autism intervention industries<\/p>\n

(both ABA intervention and pharmaceutical intervention subsectors), while private equity and venture capital firms are aggressively acquiring autism-related assets.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a meet-and-greet summit later this month that puts LLCs selling autism interventions (mostly ABA) in direct conversation with private equity firms, venture capitalists and other potential investors.<\/p>\n

For the last 30 years, behavioral intervention services have dominated, and virtually monopolized, the marketplace (just try getting public education dollars or health insurance dollars ).<\/p>\n

And pharmaceutical intervention is on the cusp of its own growth spurt, staking out its own market share.<\/p>\n

The autism markets are booming, and they are globalizing. However, the substantial and ever-increasing investment and growth in these industries is not centrally driven by what\u2019s best, ethical, right or just for, let alone desired by, autistic people. The engine of that growth, rather, is driven by the industries\u2019 vast potential for profit generation. Period.<\/p>\n

Awareness isn\u2019t inherently negative but we have to ask, \u201cawareness of what?\u201d Greater awareness of the commodification of autistic people would be a good thing if that awareness leads to a disruption of those processes. And acceptance isn\u2019t inherently positive if it\u2019s used as a shiny object to groom consumption and brand loyalty and to distract from asking the hard questions. This isn\u2019t a binary consideration.<\/p>\n

We should always ask \u2014 and not just every April \u2014 who benefits?<\/p>\n

The booming autism industries ultimately may or may not improve the lives of autistic people. But they certainly seem to be benefiting the many non-autistic people who profit from their existence.<\/p>\n

And who benefits? more than anything else you\u2019ll hear this month is the question we need to be asking as we focus our attention on autism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Alicia Broderick, Teaching and Learning Professor, wrote an opinion piece published on NJ.com about Autism Awareness Month. She wrote: Autism acceptance month: Raising awareness or manufacturing a market? | Opinion This April, you\u2019ll once again see the now-familiar icons and ritualized observances that have marked April as \u201cautism awareness\u201d month for decades: the puzzle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":124226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-23_college-news-and-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}