Neurodiversity received a profile boost with the recent publication of US writer Steve Silberman's Neurotribes. He argues that people with differently wired brains have always existed – some of them geniuses because of their autism, not despite it – and details how diagnostic criteria have expanded. The rate of autism has risen from 1-in-2000 in the 1970s, to 1-in-68 this decade. Meanwhile, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) was founded in North America in 2006, to promote neurodiversity and give Autistic people a voice in discussions about autism. Its slogan is “nothing about us, without us”.

“Don't try to cure me. Try to understand me.”

Another major US advocacy group, Autism Speaks (AS), has come in for sustained vitriol over its campaigning. “Autism Speaks wants you to hate Autistic people by demonizing autism as a fate worse than death,” reads a YouTube comment posted on one of its documentaries. “They tell you it steals your children and ruins marriages. How do you think it feels to be Autistic and hear that?” Another comment: “Don't try to cure me. Try to understand me.” Neurodiversity activism is not like that in Australia. There's no local equivalent of AS. Mainstream autism organisations have toned down their rhetoric from that seen six years ago in a fundraising advertisement from Autism Awareness Australia (AAA), which darkly warned that “30,000 Australian kids have been kidnapped – by autism”. Local ASAN head Katharine Annear, diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome in her 20s, calls the ad part of a “shock, horror” approach that makes Australians fear autism. The 42-year-old, who speaks via Skype from her Adelaide home, is a part-time lecturer at Flinders University who also works in the disability field. She has swept-over hair, dyed different colours, and exhibits slight weariness from decades of campaigning.

Katharine Annear

A wooden box was built to lock up distressed clients at a Victorian day care centre run by Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect), reported The Age. A 10-year-old boy was caged in a Canberra public school in March, according to the ABC. And The Sydney Morning Herald reported a 16-year-old boy was found chained to his bed in Sydney's Blacktown in November. Other spaces used to seclude children with disabilities were listed by disability advocate Julie Phillips, in an August 2015 submission to the Senate Education and Employment Reference Committees. They included a locked cupboard, outdoor pens and a disused schoolroom otherwise used for junk. One Special Developmental School, the submission alleged, had placed children in a room, the size of a disabled toilet, with wooden walls and no windows. It was bolted from the outside.

"If you were non-verbal, a young child, and in grief and pain all day, wouldn't you be violent?"

Annear says sensory challenges can be suddenly overwhelming. Frustration with not being able to communicate can lead to challenging behaviour. Leong poses the question: if you were non-verbal, a young child, and in grief and pain all day, wouldn't you be violent? ASAN-AUNZ, which has 170 members, engages in systemic advocacy – submissions to the NDIS, for example, on how to include Autistic voices in services – and social media campaigning. Annear says new Facebook groups run by other Australians form almost daily. Melbourne has a growing media and arts scene for younger people who are less interested in the local ASAN affiliate's patient coalition-building. Monash University student Julia Pillai is founder of the Great Minds Don't Think Alike podcast, which discusses neurodiversity from the view of neurodiverse people.

"People say they 'understand' why a parent would chain up their son."

“We are stereotyped and objectified [in the media],” she says.”We tend to be either put in the gutter, such as when people say they 'understand' why a parent would chain up their son when they went out, or on a pedestal – insert genius-savant trope here.” That kind of binary thinking isn't helped by the description of autism as low- or high-functioning. In his book, Silberman quotes British psychiatrist Lorna Wing: “The spectrum shades imperceptibly into eccentric normality.” Joel Wilson, 29, from Perth, says, “I function well at some things and horribly at others. I know Autistics who are pre-verbal – don't speak – but, through accessible technologies, have university degrees.” Within the Autistic community, there are differences over how to protest everyday indignities. Wilson was called a “scab” after he wouldn't ridicule Aspect online for its day-centre wooden box. But he asks, “If a large organisation is shut down, then what happens to the [many] Autistics they support?” And there is a gulf between self-advocates and mainstream autism organisations, often formed and led by parents. “I haven't had a positive interaction with any of them,” says Ashley Waite, a Melbourne Greens candidate who was diagnosed Autistic in her 20s.

“It's a ridiculous notion that we're doing something evil to these children."

AAA's CEO Nicole Rogerson, who calls AAA a “parent group”, admires the move to self-advocacy. She worries, though, that neurodiversity might obscure “very real challenges”. Some Autistic people can't speak for themselves and need others to advocate on their behalf, she says. Others need skills to reach their best potential. “It's a ridiculous notion [that] we're doing something evil to these children,” she adds. “We love them to death.” She has been criticised for not condemning the mother of the Blacktown teenager chained to his bed. But she stresses, “It's never OK to abuse a child. Ever.” “Of course, I'm a mum, and I'm going to look at it through a mum's perspective. We need to support the family. That boy only has his mum. Demonising her online is not okay.” ASAN's Annear recognises there is often a lack of services, but says, “If you feel you can't parent your child for whatever reason, we do live in a society where you can relinquish them. You don't have to abuse and neglect them.” There are common goals. Annear shares Rogerson's concern that not all people on the spectrum are thriving. Much has been written of how some Autistics can flourish in professions such as engineering and IT. Annear worries about the person with an IQ of 160 and no independent living skills, who pees in a jar because they can't face leaving their room. Tony Langdon agrees many Autistics need help with challenges which can also include communication, sensory issues, self care and mental health. “I'm not against treatment,” he says, “but treatments should be to improve the person's quality of life, not to make them look 'normal' to society.” In Neurotribes, Silberman wrote of young Autistic twin boys being given electric shocks in a California-based experiment in 1965 if they didn't obey the researcher. Cattle prods were widely used that decade, in an attempt to stop a child's Autistic mannerisms, such as rocking backwards and forwards.

Dawn-joy Leong talks about her "different way of thinking"

