Communication Justice

Autism, Stigma, Ableism new ways to address old problems.


I am noticing an uptick of the words “Communication Justice” in comments within papers and articles posted across the internet. I had to look it up to understand the full context.
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The concept goes back to the “nothing about us without us” concept which is discussed in one of my early blogs. Stigma is real and when people learn of our autism or see us struggling in one way or another in general social situations many to most tend to judge quickly and dismiss anything we may say or do as having no basis, relativity, consequence, or truth. We are ignored or our comments condescended to, others simply working around us without finding significance or the ability to relate to our input.
This is also called “ableism”, assuming we could do it, should do it as others do and ignoring us, shaming or blaming us for being different, and mentally/personally, expecting us to conform to their “norms” and dismissing us from any specific participation or interaction, rejecting, ignoring our input or viewpoint or considering it not valid, real, true, or relevant, etc.
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All these forms of prejudice are something most of us have experienced frequently.
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Communication Justice attempts to help us be heard and our input considered valid. A paper or article created with communication justice in mind contains input from those affected by the subject being discussed. It weighs with the outcome of conclusions drawn and takes into consideration the input of those of us discussed in the article, study, papers, etc.
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Words and concepts change around autism as society changes and language evolves.
I try to keep up with it all and to share it here since the folks who visit here are usually older adults who need valid basic information from a reliable source when they begin to suspect their own diagnosis, going through self discovery and attempting to obtain diagnosis, or recently diagnosed with ASD and trying to sort it all out.
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If you would like me to address a specific struggle you are having while working to gather information and sorting it all out, please send me a message or make a comment. I’ll see what info I can find to share right here. We are all in this together!