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Interview with Temple Grandin

JRoss

Active Member
I was recently privileged to interview Dr. Temple Grandin. Doctor Grandin is the one of the foremost autistic advocates in the world, as well as an accomplished engineer. Among other things, we spoke of the article that her mother, Eustacia Cutler, wrote for The Daily Beast that made controversial assumptions about autistic men and child pornography. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JR: The common perception of an autistic person is a young child with developmental disabilities.

TG: Yes.

JR: But autistic children become autistic adults.

TG: Well, that?s right.

JR: Do you have any advice for autistic adults on becoming their own self-advocates?

TG: I was in the cattle business before I was an autism speaker, and the first thing I did in that field was to make myself be the very best that I could be. I was a good agricultural reporter and good at my design work. I sold my work instead of myself.

JR: Selling your work instead of yourself.

TG: That?s what I did. Show off my drawings, show off pictures of jobs and people would go, ?Oh, you did that? Maybe we ought to pay attention to you. You did that drawing?? Then I got respect, for those drawings.

JR: Beyond professional self-advocacy, what would your recommend to autistic people who are working to counteract negative stereotypes that arise from notorious incidents like the Newtown shooting?

TG: Well I?d say that claiming that everyone on the spectrum does what the Newtown shooter did is like saying that every driver drives drunk, and that?s simply not true. We know a lot of people out there with autism and Asperger?s, yeah, and there are going to be a few drunken drivers. You know, it doesn?t mean that all drivers are drunken drivers.

JR: In addition to real world news, the number of autistic characters on television has increased in the past few years?

TG: Oh, I know. That?s increased. Yes, I?m aware of that.

JR: Is there anything that you would like to tell the public about the accuracy of these characters?

TG: What is the character doing? Hopefully they?re doing something positive. But I don?t actually watch enough television to be familiar with any autistic characters. I?m getting very concerned about the number of high-functioning autistic adults that are not getting jobs and who are not learning to work. The thing that drives me absolutely crazy is when you go up to the cattle industry and you go into a meat plant and here?s some ancient old, sixty-year-old that runs the maintenance shop and I know he?s on the spectrum.

JR: Are there any resources for helping autistic adults with employment of which you would like to make people aware?

TG: I get into the whole thing of disclosure at work. The thing I always did is disclose some specific need like having problems with multi-tasking, or needing a quiet place to work. One of the things I?ve learned, real early on is how to work well with a team I?ve been doing stuff writing animal welfare guidelines and I have to work with a team of fifteen other people. And what I have done, so we don?t have fights is say ?Give me one section that I?ll do.? While I?m working on a job I?ll design my stuff, and then when they screw up the rest of the plan they kind of stay out of it. I just make sure my stuff works! I want specific instructions of what I ought to be doing.

JR: The newly-released DSM-5 has changed the various autism diagnoses. What are your thoughts on the changes?

TG: Well of course the big concern is that some of the folks with Asperger?s will get thrown out of that. That?s a real big concern. And I think that?s going to vary by state a lot. Colorado, for example, never diagnosed very many people with Asperger?s. In other states I?m seeing kids that are just a little bit geeky ending up on social security, just playing video games, which really drives me crazy. They?re graduating from college without learning one work skill. They?ve never worked in a store; they?ve never done anything.

JR: Recently your mother, Eustacia Cutler, published a controversial article on The Daily Beast.

TG: Oh, I know all about that. Then Forbes picked it up and quoted out of it and splattered all over the web.

JR: What are your thoughts on the article and its reception?

TG: First of all, I never saw that article until it was on The Daily Beast. I didn?t even know she was working on that. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I think there?s some wording in there that I don?t think was very wise. And I think if I had read it beforehand I would have taken some of that wording out. How do you teach the rules? I mean you don?t, carry out certain sorts of sexual fantasies. Rules are very strict.

I take all the rules of the world and place them into four categories: Really Bad Things, things like burning down buildings, robbing banks, killing people, torturing people. Things that any civilized society you would go to jail for. Then you have your Courtesy Rules. They help people get along. There is the Illegal But Not Bad, where someone might download a movie illegally. And then you have Sins of the System that are very society-specific. You?ve got to behave yourself at the airport now. In this country we are allowed to criticize the president but we?re not allowed to threaten him. You?d better know the difference. If you go to some other country you get thrown in jail if you just criticize the president. That?s Sins of the System stuff. There are rules, especially about sex. If you break those rules there are draconian penalties.

JR: Do you feel that the Forbes response was unfair to your mother?

TG: Well, what they did is they took the juiciest bits out. Now things like the ninety percent divorce rate, I actually did a little checking into that. That?s for kids with severe handicaps. It?s not just autism, it?s anything that?s where the kid?s handicap is so severe that you cannot do normal activities. I had two counselors tell me the divorce rate was eighty percent, which is pretty close. But you see I don?t think you have an eighty percent divorce rate of parents of a kid with mild Asperger?s.

I don?t think Mother had very good judgment on that article, if you want my opinion of it. There are a lot of things that Mother and I don?t agree on. I think a better way to teach autistic people is to say ?Hey, let me show you the sex offender web site. You don?t want to get listed on this black list for the rest of your life. How would you like a GPS on your ankle? That?s not very nice. How would you like that following you around for the rest of your life? These are the rules.? There are certain keywords that you do not type into Google, period. And everything on the internet can be traced. Everything. The NSA is building a giant data center in Utah that tracks everything. And all the law enforcement agencies will want to get into it. Nothing on the internet is private. The other problem is that the system does not differentiate between stupid, na?ve and dangerous.

Source; Life Tinted Blue | Geekery, Parenting and Autism
 
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I had to start my own blog just for this interview. Every newspaper editor who looked at this liked the article but said that since it had no local interest that it was not publishable in their paper. It was just so important to me that Dr. Grandin's voice be heard in this matter.

Also, the other part of the interview was about children. That part can be read online at Spectrums Magazine.
 

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