The Loud Hands Project

The Loud Hands Anthology's Tiny Print Has Been Fixed!

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 01:25:51 -0400

As many of you noticed, the print in the anthology was really small. Small enough that some of our contributors even had a hard time reading their own entries!

Our first run of the Anthology came back from the printer with much tinier print than we intended. Somewhere along the line, our original formatting was disturbed. This means that we got misprints of the anthology in a tiny font size.

Thankfully, our printer has been able to correct this error, so new copies of the Anthology won’t be in such small print! You’ll also note that this means that the anthology is around 100 pages longer in the new printings.

Already have your copy? Don’t worry- while we’d love you to buy another copy, we believe that you deserve access to what you already have.

If you got a misprint version with the tiny print, you can email loudhands@autisticadvocacy.org and we will send you a free PDF copy!

Should you choose to buy another hard copy, Amazon is currently selling them at a discount.

(Sorry, these don’t apply to the eBook version.)

On Amazon: Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:03:29 -0500

On Amazon: Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking:

The Anthology is now up and available for purchase! Just in time for holiday giving, you can now head to Amazon to share Autistic voices with friends, family, community, or even just for yourself.

“Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is a collection of essays written by and for Autistic people. Spanning from the dawn of the Neurodiversity movement to the blog posts of today, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking catalogues the experiences and ethos of the Autistic community and preserves both diverse personal experiences and the community’s foundational documents together side by side.” 6”x9”, 291 pages, paperback. $24.99 on Amazon.

The Kindle release is to be expected over the next week.

We encourage readers to review the book, film reaction videos, and more. We’ll have more on that later in the week, too!

The Loud Hands Project's Anthology is coming to Amazon this Saturday, December 8th...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:21:33 -0500

Are you ready?

Anthology News!

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:41:57 -0500

Pre-publication PDF copies of the anthology, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, are going out to the donors who pledged at the eligible levels.

If you donated $50 or more, or if you donated $20, during our Indiegogo campaign, you will be receiving it. (Those who donated at the $35 level received ASAN membership but not the PDF.) To see the full list of perks and their corresponding categories, please visit the Loud Hands Project Indiegogo page.

Didn’t get a chance to donate? Don’t worry, both hard copies and ebooks of the anthology will be available for purchase in time for the holiday season! We’ll let you know here on tumblr, as well as on our twitter and facebook.

If you would like to create a review of Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, please email Julia Bascom at jbascom@autisticadvocacy.org.

Anthology Table of Contents!

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:52:33 -0400

Foreword

Historical Foundations
Don’t Mourn For Us
Autism Network International: The Development Of A Community And Its Culture
Critic Of The Dawn
The Future (And The Past) Of Autism Advocacy, Or Why The ASA’s Magazine, The Advocate, Wouldn’t Publish This Piece
Retrospective At The National Press Club (transcript)
The Beginnings of Autistic Speaking Day

Current Realities
Loud Hands & Loud Voices
Dear Younger Self
Loud Hands
Perfectly Autistic, Perfectly Me
Becoming Autistic, Becoming Disabled
Non-Speaking, “Low Functioning”
And Straight On Till Morning
The Incapable Man
Just Me

What They Do To Us
Quiet Hands
They Hate You, Yes, You
I Hid
Speech, Without A Title
This Is Why
Grabbers
Inhumane Beyond All Reason

Rhetoric
Why I Dislike “Person First” Language
Throw Away The Master’s Tools: Liberating Ourselves From The Pathology Paradigm
Killing Words
Disability Catch-22s
Like A Person
Why No One Counts
Passing As Ethics
I’m Spasticus Autisticus
Connecting Dots
Metaphor Stole My Autism
Why Autism Speaks Hurts Us
How Indistinguishability Got Its Groove Back

Voice
Plural Of Medium
Metaphors Are Important
An Ethnography Of Robotics
Socializing Through Silence
Are You Listening?
Advocacy: Everyone Can Do It
Pedagogy Of The Confused
The Meaning Of Self Advocacy
Autism, Speech, And Assistive Technology
Untitled
Run Forest Run: About Movement And Love
On Being Articulate
Loud Hands: I Speak Up With My Fingers
Accepting MY Normal

Moving Forward
Autism Awareness Is Not Enough: Here’s How To Change The World
To My Beloved Autistic Community On Autism Acceptance Day 2012
What I Want To Say To Fellow Autistics
Moving Forward: What’s Next For The Loud Hands Project

Conclusion
On World Autism Awareness Day

Loud Hands Project Website || Sections Preview!

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:13:00 -0400

The Loud Hands Project is designed to serve as a library and celebration of autistic culture for the autistic community. The initial sections of content include:

101: This is a place people can go to find basic explanations of the social model of disability, neurodiversity, self advocacy, etc. It is structured around core vocabulary and concepts, and presented as an interactive concept map. This is also the place for links to some basic, foundational documents: Don’t Mourn For Us, the ADA, etc. This is really foundational stuff for understanding neurodiversity, disability rights, and self-advocacy.

Historical Foundations: This is a place to explore the history and heritage of the disability and autistic communities. The Loud Hands Project has big plans for this section, including an eventual archive and interactive timeline. Initially, there will be a page of links to go to for the general history—although we may eventually develop our own content here, the initial goal is to make all of the great, comprehensive content on disability history already available online easier to find and conceptualize. We’re collecting an archive of founding documents of the autistic community, and those would be stored here, along with additional projects LHP is planning in the future.

Community Conversations: A huge component of the website, and one of its main purposes, is to facilitate the occurrence, several times a year, of community conversations around autistic identity, neurodiversity, self-advocacy, and other related concepts of relevance to our community. Examples of the conversations might be: what you wish you could have told yourself about growing up autistic; a response to a highly publicized act of murder, bullying, or abuse against an autistic person; a call to share writings or works by autistic people that made a profound impact on your life; what does being autistic mean to you; etc. A call for submissions will go out, an administrator will assemble & upload the results, and on the appointed day, a page will be unveiled where the responses can be viewed. It’s similar in concept to a blog tour, but submissions will encompass multiple medium (film, poetry, essays, letters, visual art, etc.) and have an extended time frame for preparation. Each Community Conversation will be archived on the site.

Blog: Content on the blog, as on all pages, might be written, visual, video, or a combination. We are looking for bloggers!

Anyone willing to contribute short writing for the 101 and history sections should email jbascom@autisticadvocacy.org

Anthology Authors!

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:57:00 -0400

Launch date is coming soon! In the meantime, we are proud to reveal the names of the authors who will be featured!

Jim Sinclair • Cal Montgomery • Ari Ne’eman • Corina Becker • Zoe Gross • Amanda Forrest Vivian • Julia Bascom • Bev Harp • Amy Sequenzia • Nick Walker • Steve Silberman • Paula Durbin-Westby • Kaijaii Gomez Wick • Amanda Baggs • Kassiane Sibley • Kimberly Gerry Tucker • Melanie Yergeau • Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone • Chloe R. • Anne Foreman • Meg Evans • Shain Numair • Karla Fisher • Elizabeth J. Grace • April Herren • Penni Winter • Alyssa Z. • E • Anonymous

Thank you to all our authors, and to everyone who submitted to our Anthology!

Loudhandsproject.com

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 16:12:00 -0400

Loudhandsproject.com:

We aren’t dead!

The Loud Hands Project has been hard at work for the last few months. Over the last few months, we’ve collected and sorted through an overwhelming pile of submissions for our upcoming anthology, solicited additional contributions and begun to assemble the shape of the anthology, filmed at two of the Allies In Self Advocacy summits held by the Administration On Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities and collected more interviews at Autreat, and begun development of content for our website.

Over the next several months, LHP has a busy schedule: we’ll be at the Autism Summer Institute at the University of New Hampshire in a week, filming at ASAN’s Autism Campus Inclusion Summer Institute the week after, and presenting at TASH and Autcom. We’re developing projects around disability history and employment; look for the trailer for About Us Without Us, our documentary project on eugenics and prenatal testing for autism, this fall. And of course, the Loud Hands Project anthology and website are both on track for their fall release.

Thank you for your ongoing support of the Loud Hands Project. Look for more updates in the coming weeks, and visit our Coming Soon page and sign up for our email alerts and announcements—so much is happening, we can barely keep track!

littlemissmutant: joey-andromeda: Lately I’ve been getting a...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:40:57 -0400

littlemissmutant:

joey-andromeda:

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of enjoyment from videos of people stimming, so I decided to make one of my own. The whole thing was filmed on naught but a webcam and an iPhone, and this was my first real attempt at video editing, so…yeah.

Yay it’s a stim video!

Your loud hands are adorable

We did it!

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:06:24 -0400

We did it!

After 80 days, several interviews, too many tumblr posts, an ambitious blog carnival, hundreds of shared facebook updates and tweets, thousands of emails to families, friends, coworkers, and arch-nemeses, and a constant, concerted effort by the Autistic community to keep the momentum rolling and the energy building, fundraising for the Loud Hand Project’s first anthology and website ended at 11:59 pm PST with $15,610 from 224 separate donations.

We did it.

It feels unreal, but we did it.

We did it.

The original fundraising goal for the project was set at $10,000. We didn’t think we’d make it, but we figured that 80 days might give us enough time to come close enough, and perhaps a few people would hear about us and we could start laying down roots.

19 days later, we met our goal. Then we exceed it. Then we started to realize that maybe, just maybe, there was a more pressing need and a *hunger* for this project than we’d realized.

Maybe we weren’t alone.

61 days later, the timeline for our campaign on indiegogo ended. We spent those 61 days formalizing plans for the anthology, as well as future projects that would help center autistic voices and people, speaking. Since we made that $15,000 benchmark, one of those projects will be a documentary looking at conversations around eugenics. Others are planned, of course. We’ve got a list of film projects, we’re still taking submissions for the anthology—and will be up through April—and we’re talking website features, just as a start. This Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, we’ll be gathering footage for four separate projects at the Allies In Self Advocacy summit in Baltimore. Our campaign on indiegogo has given us an unbelievable head start, and we’re able to move forward now, secure in our roots and ready to do our donors and our community proud.

Thank you so much for giving us that start. The journey is just beginning. The anthology and website will debut this summer; we hope you’ll come along with us for the rest of the ride.

Humbly,

Julia Bascom, Loud Hands Project Organizer

Autism Campus Inclusion Summer Institute

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:42:10 -0500

Autism Campus Inclusion Summer Institute

February Update

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:11:20 -0500

Loud Hands Project: February Update

It’s been a quiet but productive time for The Loud Hands Project since we passed our initial fundraising goal of $10,000 on January 14th, after just nineteen days. Since then, we’ve:

-given interviews about the project for AWN’s radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/autism-womens-network/2012/02/03/the-loud-hands-project) and on Joyce Bender’s Voice Of America: Disability matters (http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/59769/ari-neeman)

-worked on finalizing plans for the anthology, website, and future projects and taken an inventory of equipment needs

-begun receiving submissions for the anthology

-expanded our FAQ section on our tumblr (http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/16126946761/questions-answered)

-sent out a second call for video clips for a project around autistic community, autistic identity, and passing (http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/18096311025/call-for-video-clips)

-finished our first wildly successful Loud Hands Project Blogaround (http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/18143366933/third-and-final-part-of-our-blogaround-recap)

-continued raising money—we’re now at $12,170 with 175 donors.

Overall it’s been a successful few weeks of laying a firm foundation, and we’re in a solid place now to gear up for our last two weeks of fundraising. That’s right—we only have 18 days, or two and a half weeks, left to raise money. Our fundraiser on indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Loud-Hands-Project?a=351448) ends March 15th. How much do you think we can raise by then?

We’d like to make $15,000.

The first 19 days of fundraising was a bit of a wild ride for the autistic community. There was a real hunger and a need for The Loud Hands Project, and people rallied together and pushed to meet the goal. It was equally incredible and overwhelming. We’re wondering if we can recapture that energy for our last 18 days of fundraising.

We’ve raised enough to build a website this spring and put together our anthology, our founding, guiding document, an explanation of what it means to have loud hands. But the anthology has always been meant as only the beginning for this project, which we envision as an expansive, transmedia forum for both celebrating autistic comunity, identity, and culture and simultaneously insisting that these things exist and are worth perserving.

That is a huge undertaking. We live in a world that isn’t entiely convinced that autistic people have minds at all—to change the conversation to one that recognizes we have voices at all, let alone valuable ones? That’s going to take an enormous investment of time and effort. Rome wasn’t built on a day, and it definitely wasn’t built without any funds or resources.

Which brings us back to fundraising. 18 days. Our goal: $15,000. Will you help us?

As you can see on indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Loud-Hands-Project?a=351448) we have a few next steps for the project already outlined. If we can make $15,000, we’ll be able to beging production on one of those steps—a video called “About Us, Without Us.” ”About Us, Without Us” is a video about the Autistic community and our place in the conversation around eugenics and the prevention of autism. If we make the $15,000 benchmark, we’ll be able to pay for Julia to go on the road and collect interviews and footage, and cover production, editing, and initial distribution costs. Does this sound valuable to you? Will you help us make this goal?

If you want to see The Loud Hands Project move forward, past the anthology and into a tool for centering autistic voices and experiences in conversations about us, we hope you’ll help us out. Share this update, and the link to our indiegogo page (http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Loud-Hands-Project?a=351448) around. Donate if you can. Tweet it, facebook it, tumblr it, email it to your grandma, your coworkers, your cousins, your best friends and your arch-nemisis. Ask if they’ll pass the project along to their networks, too—the more people who know, the better our chances for success. Tell them why you want to see this project succeed, and ask if they’ll consider making a tax-deductible donation, starting from $10, to get us there. This is not the time to be shy.

We only have 18 days left. Let’s make them count.

Third and final part of our Blogaround Recap!

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:25:56 -0500

First part here, second here. The blogaround is over, but every single post is worth revisiting!

The final two posts of the blogaround were done by Twitchy Woman and Paula. Twitchy Woman talks about the tension between passing and living (see our call for video clips if you want to get involved there,) saying

So lately, as I’ve been becoming more and more “out” in various aspects of my life, I’ve been trying to not even try to control it. I walk through my apartment and neighborhood flapping, clapping, tapping my fingers, with my head turned to the side. I am a bit more subdued in the office and remain as subdued as possible in certain meetings, but overall am not spending much effort trying to suppress how I move. I attended a disability leadership conference earlier this month – which I’ve been meaning to blog about anyway but haven’t gotten around to – and spent a large part of it flapping and rocking side to side and tapping my fingers and ticcing.

I’ve been happier and more productive than ever. I think that maybe it’s actually impossible for me to feel happy when I’m not moving in certain ways. For such a long time there just weren’t that many times out of the day when I actually felt good, as opposed to anxious or angry or bored or something, because I wasn’t letting myself do the things that I need to do in order to actually feel good. It’s so much easier to transition from one activity to another when I let myself flap my hands. And it’s so much easier to think when I let myself tap my fingers, rock back and forth, or squirm into weird positions. I’m achieving levels of productivity that I normally only have when I force myself to stay at the office late at night when everyone has gone home, since those used to be the only times that I actually let myself move around in the office the way my mind wants my body to move around.

This, to me, is why the Loud Hands Project is important. It’s an opportunity for those of us with neurological disabilities to re-learn how to live in a way that many others take for granted: to go through our day without the constant self-policing, self-examination, and self-denial that it takes to look normal. To use all that freed-up energy for the things we want to do and the things we want to get done.

Meanwhile, Paula made a video of her loud hands. Check it out!

The blogaround is over now, but I’m humbled and enriched by the diversity of the postings and the different things The Loud Hands Project means to different people. There’s incredible diversity of experience in our community, and each post comes from a different background and speaks to something different. I’d encourage you to check them all out.

Call for video clips

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:40:00 -0500

Call for video clips

The Loud Hands Project, an initiative of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, is planning a video which looks at the impact of passing and the demand to pass on Autistics who can or are forced to attempt to mask their autistic traits. We are also interested in exploring the impact on autistic people of being told that they don’t “deserve” to qualify for a diagnosis. To that end, this video challenges assumptions about autism and passing, explores what passing is and if it’s even possible, and shares the experiences of autistics who have been compelled to “pass,” asking if extinguishing or masking behavior is the same as undoing autism. The role and value of the autistic community is examined, and we end by assessing the very real human cost of the passing demand as well as pressure to undiagnose autistics, cutting them off from their community and any hope of self understanding or acceptance.

How you can help:

Part of the video will involve assembling a wide variety of brief video and audio clips provided by members of the Autistic community discussing various facets described above. Specifically, interested autistics are asked to film short (10-15 second) clips of themselves answering any of the following questions:

What does Autistic Community mean to you?

Why does Autistic Community matter?

Why is Autistic Community important to you?

How has the Autistic Community impacted your life?

How has having access to the Autistic Community helped you?

What are the benefits of Autistic Community?

What would you lose if you were no longer considered a part of the Autistic Community?

What does it mean to “pass” as nonautistic?

What do you pass as? (Loner, eccentric, twitchy, intellectually disabled, high, stoic, robot, etc.)

How do you pass?

What are your tricks for passing?

What are you passed off as?

What does passing cost you?

Do you ever feel guilty or dishonest for passing? Can you tell us about that?

How does your ability to pass affect your autistic identity?

How does passing affect your self esteem?

Email your clips to jbascom@autisticadvocacy.org

A Query

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:06:05 -0500

If we sent our requests for people to film themselves stimming, enjoying an obsession, or simply moving autisticly through their life, would anyone send anything in?

I stim, therefore I am [Loud Hands Blogaround].

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:17:06 -0500

I stim, therefore I am [Loud Hands Blogaround].

Second Blogaround recap!

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:12:52 -0500

The Loud Hands Project Blogaround is still going strong, with some excellent posts this week. Before we begin, I should note that I forgot to provide a link to Lydia’s post last week. My apologies. It’s excellent, go read it!

And we’re back.

First, a different Lydia made a post about Autistic community and the value and promise of The Loud Hands Project. She says

Community.

In the early days of my autism diagnosis, while I was a college student, my autism community consisted of my best friend Leigh and only Leigh. Now, this is not to say that Leigh doesn’t make for some pretty awesome camaraderie, but a pair of two does not community make. I longed to meet people like me. I didn’t know that approximately 1% of people my age had ASD. I didn’t know about all the bloggers and authors and organizations. All I knew was that I was different, and I felt left out.

and

And this experience of mine has left me with a dream, that when any person is diagnosed with ASD, somehow, magically, they are enrobed with community. They hear not “you’ll never be…” and “you can’t…” but rather will find themselves at the center of a community which works together to ameliorate our weaknesses while building each other up in our strengths. I dream that no child will grow up in isolation, wondering who he is and why he is here. That no child will be afraid to speak his mind– his beautiful, unique, autistic mind.

There is a way to make this dream one step closer to reality.

Next came Melanie, who made an astonishing video. Click over to see it, and it’s going to get its own post in a moment.

Setrain also had things to say, about the functionality of stimming and having loud hands. The post is a delight, go on over. Technical difficulties are preventing me from quoting right now, but it would be hard to chose just one quote anyway!

I wonder how many other posts like this might be lurking in corners of the web I don’t frequent. If you see one, let me know!

Happy reading!

Lydia has a post up!

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:58:10 -0500

Lydia has a post up!

youneedacat: Loud hands! Or loud hand, anyway. Was happening...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:22:49 -0500

youneedacat:

Loud hands! Or loud hand, anyway. Was happening while trying to write, so filmed.

Blogaround!

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:44:00 -0500

So I’ve completely dropped the ball on mentioning this, but The Loud Hands Project is currently taking a tour of the blogosphere, and some of the posts are phenomenal.

We started over at Shift Journal, where a post was valiantly constructed by Mark when a migraine prevented me from forming sentences. Next up was Amanda, who says

No matter what you do, please try and live with loud hands at all times.

Then it was Savannah’s turn. She shared a lot of little details about the project and our context, which is really cool to read about all in one place—and she did it in very accessible language, which was even cooler. Then on Tuesday, Melody made a post, noting that her favorite part is that The Loud Hands Project is an ASAN project she isn’t responsible for.

Well, okay, she also said

We have long needed a way to show what and who the Autistic community is. To define who we are. Loud Hands is meant to be just that. Not only that, but a way of introduction for those who come after.

Kassiane went next, explaining why the project matters to her personally.

And we need the Loud Hands Project so that the next teenage autistic kid who comes to the conclusion that she isn’t broken, that everyone else’s perceptions of her are what is wrong, has a community. So that she knows that there are people out here who embrace her beautiful brain and her loud hands.

Today, Lydia made her post. She echoes Kassiane, saying

This is why the Loud Hands Project is important. So that the next generation of Autistic people will have a precedent for having loud hands and embracing themselves as complete human beings with value and dignity as Autistic people. So that there will be no more “There’s something wrong with you.” So that little by little, we can strike down the bricks that have institutionalized ableism across our society, in our schools, in our policies, in our everyday interactions.

And goes on to add

And this is why I am supporting the Loud Hands project — to empower Autistic people to be leaders now and to provide a role model for the next generation of Autistic people. They could be your children. Let’s work toward a world in which your children will face less discrimination and stigma. Let’s work toward a world in which your children can have pride in being who they are, and can find stellar examples of activism, advocacy, philanthropy, and self-fulfillment in today’s generation of Autistic adults and youth.

That’s what money to the Loud Hands project will do. It will make these projects possible, and expand the platforms that currently exist for Autistic people to express themselves and seize the mantle in our own advocacy. The Loud Hands project will be accepting donations for the next two months — through 15 March 2012, and can be made here, which is also where you can watch the project’s introductory video! (And yes, I made a donation — better to put that money toward this phenomenal project than toward food not from the campus dining hall.)

So I’d say that, so far, the blog tour has been a pretty successful journey! You should definitely check all of the posts out. And please note that with the exception of Savannah (who has been invaluable in making blog badges, captioning, and transcripts,) none of the posts thus far have been written by anyone actually working on the project. I’ll be doing the very last one at the end of the month, but everyone else blogging is an autistic person who expressed an interest. If you’d like to participate—and I’d love that—send me a note using the “submit” feature with your name, email, and blog, and I’ll get in touch with you re: scheduling.