alexander shay’s Reviews > Serving Teens and Adults on the Autism Spectrum: A Guide for Libraries > Status Update

11) last sentence of the second last chapter finally mentions how disability is a product of society and that the problem is not the individual—meanwhile the book up until this point mainly focuses on the ‘bad’ behaviors of autistic people/how their behavior can negatively impact others regardless of it being intentional or not

9) Quoting the same passages from the same sources multiple times throughout the book. Also only using one source for each subject (any talk of sexuality or puberty is only quoted from ‘When Young People With Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Hit Puberty’) which again excludes transgender people and queer people more generally.

8) Reliance on a single autistic librarian’s experiences/quotations to validate suggestions and arguments proposed in the book, despite saying in the preface and introduction that autism is a spectrum and even using the phrase ‘if you’ve met an autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person’.

7) focuses on non-verbal, mostly non-verbal, and intellectually disabled autistics with explicitly stated exclusion of “high functioning” autistics but still uses quotes and discussions from those “high functioning” autistics as examples

6) implies that most autistic people have sub-par intelligence and tend to act inappropriately sexually in public spaces (a misrepresentation both by assuming this is ‘most’ autistic people and by perpetuating stereotypes people already believe about autistic people)—while this definitely occurs on occasion with *some* autistic people, this book makes it sound like its the norm/to be expected

5) this book focuses only on those with severe developmental disabilities, acknowledging that there are “high functioning” autistics but that this book is not for them—because like everyone else in the world she is under the impression that, as a high functioning autistic, we don’t need the same supports and help, when in fact research shows we are disproportionately affected by depression, anxiety, etc

3) it uses person-first language with the excuse that it is ‘required’ by the AMA style guide, despite quoting someone directly describing how autism affects their whole life and is not detachable from who they are nor a disability to be viewed negatively
4) the author herself is not autistic, when there are definitely autistic people working in libraries

I’m autistic and I don’t like this book.
1) it passively frames autism as something to overcome, that people with autism should strive to behave, think, and want what neurotypical people do
2) it uses ‘sex’ instead of gender, and only mentions cisgender male and female people, despite ~25% of autistic people being genderdiverse