2011 to 2013 - Advocacy

In the time that I have been typing there has been an attack on Facilitated Communication Training (FCT).  I have written in support of FCT and against the attackers.  My writing is below.

Words written to be read at a gathering to celebrate
20 years of FCT in Queensland, 1992-2012
(Written December 2011)

I am optimistic that I will one day be a great writer of words that reflect the agony of whispered songs and hushed answers to pathetically easy questions.

I am always wishful that the good people in my life will outweigh the angry.  That they will have time for me and learn to facilitate.

Only encouraging people should be allowed to work with me.  The rest should be sacked because they waste my life.

(A video of me working on this can be seen here.)

Submission to International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) committee to develop an official position statement on Facilitated Communication
March 2013

For the naysayers: 

Wondering if there is any point acknowledging your existence? 

That is what you do to me. 

By doing that you conveniently discount my voice.

If I refuse to acknowledge you as having a legitimate voice, where does that leave us?
It leaves me in a much better place – not the subject of some uneducated witch hunt.

The way forward is not about you or I proving that we are right.

I do want change.

I do need great minds working together to help me, not silence me.

What is to be gained from painting a picture of someone as being non-thinking?
I am unsure.
To me it is unclear whether the naysayers have given this much thought.

Don’t begin with the assumption that we operate and think in the same way.
I get that, so why can’t you?
My differences are pointed out to me frequently, but not considered when I can achieve.

Rather than considering how I achieve, your conversations focus on why I could not possibly - refusing to listen to voices united in experience.
These are disallowed to inwards focus on your typical experience.
This appears to me as self-indulgent and self-centred.

It is time to banish careers based on proving narrow-minded arguments.
I have no room in my life for such people.

Response to news that support for FC has been withdrawn for two people under Queensland Government care
April 2013

The people who have no-one are the most easiest to destroy in society.

To destroy someone is quite simple.  You just make them non human.

It is quite easy to do.  You just don’t listen, don’t look, and don’t acknowledge potential for humanness.

To communicate is to be human.

To stop someone from being human is simply evil.

Why there is outrage at ill treatment of animals but not when dehumanising people confuses me.

Is it ignorance?  Is it a lack of understanding?  Or is it an unknown for society?

The people without supporters will slip into the unknown too easily, discarded into non-humanness unless someone makes noise.

To remain silent is difficult but it’s hard to make noise when so many are content

with not looking, not listening, and not acknowledging.

More about physical support

The video with Jane in my last blog is over a year old.  This one was taken in April of this year and shows me using even less support again.