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meeting autistic author Temple Grandin...

luna88

daydreamer
I have the opportunity to meet Temple Grandin on Nov. 5th. She's coming to my university to speak about creating a culture of access. I get to meet her after because I joined a neurodiversity group so I'm trying to think of a good question to ask her. Anyone have anything interesting they'd want to ask her? or suggestions? I read her book Thinking in Pictures... but she's written many others!
 
I read about her and watched the movie as well and she seems brilliant - I always wanted to ask her about the hug machine and the design of the humane slaughterhouse. You know the funny thing? It's said that we are less empathetic than NTs but it was her that lead the change in the movement towards more humane conditions for slaughter animals.
 
I saw her once at a talk in Sydney. You have to remember Temple is also autistic and talking to strangers and being looked at and judged by strangers cos you're in the public eye, that's all part of it for her.

The time I saw her talk, she got a lot of hostility from disappointed parents (this was 20 years ago) so uh it's important to bear in mind how much hostility and resentment she has had to endure. BUT she's a very cheerful 'can do' person, so...
 
Although I have never met her face to face, I had the pleasure of her returning my phone call a few years ago.
I too, think in pictures, so we do share that commonality.

I hope to see her on a speaking tour in the future, and hopefully get to "look her in the eye" ;)
 
Although I have never met her face to face, I had the pleasure of her returning my phone call a few years ago.
I too, think in pictures, so we do share that commonality.

I hope to see her on a speaking tour in the future, and hopefully get to "look her in the eye" ;)

how cool that she called you!! i think in pictures too :) if only i could speak in pictures haha...maybe with virtual reality someday that will be possible, i guess poetry is the closet thing to speaking in pictures...
 
I saw her once at a talk in Sydney. You have to remember Temple is also autistic and talking to strangers and being looked at and judged by strangers cos you're in the public eye, that's all part of it for her.

The time I saw her talk, she got a lot of hostility from disappointed parents (this was 20 years ago) so uh it's important to bear in mind how much hostility and resentment she has had to endure. BUT she's a very cheerful 'can do' person, so...

that's so irritating that people were hostile towards her... i see that as ableism!! i've experienced hostility from people my entire life, before I discovered the autism diagnosis it was confusing but now it makes more sense. not socializing in the "expected" way is very aggravating for neurotypicals it seems. i wonder what they were so hostile about. so are you from Australia?
 
I read about her and watched the movie as well and she seems brilliant - I always wanted to ask her about the hug machine and the design of the humane slaughterhouse. You know the funny thing? It's said that we are less empathetic than NTs but it was her that lead the change in the movement towards more humane conditions for slaughter animals.

yes!! good point. i had this discussion with an herbalist on the spectrum once and he said that he thinks people with autism just have a different type of empathy, it's more of an embodied feeling of empathy that we have rather than a socially emotive empathy, if that makes sense. i do believe it is more complex than just having empathy or not having empathy. i've always felt more deeply attuned to nature and animals than humans my entire life so i think that could be related.
 
how cool that she called you!! i think in pictures too :) if only i could speak in pictures haha...maybe with virtual reality someday that will be possible, i guess poetry is the closet thing to speaking in pictures...
A friend since childhood works with non-verbal kids.
I asked her some questions about autism when I first suspected I was on the spectrum.
She gave me good feedback, then asked if I had ever seen the movie "Temple Grandin".
I had not, but went and found it just to see what it was about.
I nearly broke down in tears because for the first time, I had a movie for others to watch to see how my mind worked. What was my normal was what I thought everyone was like.

Lisa also told me that what she remembered about me in school was that I was always very different than others but good at problem solving.

I really excelled at pencil photo-realistic drawing and always had an eye for photography, so it should come as no surprise that I was one of the students that carried a 35mm SLR daily in school.
It never occurred to me that what I was doing was trying to duplicate what I saw in my head.

After I dug deeper into my studies of the autism spectrum, I decided that I wanted to talk to Dr. Grandin and made it a priority to do so.
I never in a thousand years expected her to call me, but boy wasn't I pleasantly surprised the day she did.
 
that's so irritating that people were hostile towards her... i see that as ableism!! i've experienced hostility from people my entire life, before I discovered the autism diagnosis it was confusing but now it makes more sense. not socializing in the "expected" way is very aggravating for neurotypicals it seems. i wonder what they were so hostile about. so are you from Australia?

yuh, from Australia, east coast at the moment, but have lived west as well, hope to get back there one day.

The hostility was like a group mind resentment that their kids had autism and they 'shoot the messenger' in that situation, it was sorta like she was to blame for their lack of a mini-me. BBUUUTTT it was 20 years ago and a lot has changed since.
 
yuh, from Australia, east coast at the moment, but have lived west as well, hope to get back there one day.

The hostility was like a group mind resentment that their kids had autism and they 'shoot the messenger' in that situation, it was sorta like she was to blame for their lack of a mini-me. BBUUUTTT it was 20 years ago and a lot has changed since.

I hope so! Ill let you know how it goes...
 

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