Recently, Stephen sent us a photo of him carrying an Autistan t-shirt, during one of his presentations at the annual meeting of the’INSAR in Melbourne, Australia (15-18/05/2024).
Stephen Mark Shore is a very famous autistic professor (perhaps the most famous autistic person in the world after Temple Grandin).
He loves and supports the concept of Autistan (as you can see in this photo), and for several years already he has kindly and spontaneously agreed to be Autistan Ambassador for the State of New York in the United States.
For now, we haven't done anything yet in this country due to a lack of resources and because there is already a lot going on regarding autism, therefore the need for information and advice does not seem acute.
There are enough autistic activists in the United States, our contributions would be very minimal, and it is more useful to concentrate our efforts on other countries.
But we can take specific actions for particular cases with this country, if necessary and if possible (and we already have at least one project, quite important).
Not only does Stephen support us, but also he sometimes gives us advice.
For example, recently:
- He advised us to use, in English, “The Autistic World” instead of “The World of the Autistic People”.
And indeed, it's better because it's shorter and more general, and this formulation refers more to the dimension “Autism” (word which is quite synonymous with “Help”) rather than that of a world which “would belong” to autistic people (more indirect formulation).
However, in French, in Portuguese and Spanish, for now we will keep “The world of autistic” because in French “The autistic world” appears “bizarre”. It's less weird in Portuguese (“The Autistic World”), but all this remains to be discussed. - He also recommended a variation of the Autistan T-shirt., so as to see more of the Autistan disk.
- So we prepared a new T-shirt for him., for his trip to India in July 2024:
Mots in Hindi : “Help – Autistic Vishwa” (= Autistic World) - Encouraged by this idea, we also made a new badge (for in-person participation) with this logo:
- So we prepared a new T-shirt for him., for his trip to India in July 2024:
Stephen is a great traveler, as our other friend and support Josef Schovanec, Besides, they wrote a book together (Josef translated and adapted Stephen's book: “Understanding Autism for Dummies”).
What we do is holistic, global and coherent:
- See the participations and declarations of Josef Schovanec in relation to Autistan
- See our recent meeting with the Vice-Ambassador of India in Brasilia
- See our explanation on the choice of “Autistic Vishwa” en No to translate “Autistic World”
- See our recent Full review of Australia's National Autism Strategy
- See our recent participation au C20 (G20) to Rio de Janeiro, where this pretty badge (thanks to Stephen) was used
All these things allow us to move forward little by little, in the hope that one day the public bodies concerned will finally understand that our concept is not only “a cool idea with a nice flag”, but above all a very useful resource to truly understand the difficulties and needs of autistic people, in order to improve or create the necessary and truly appropriate public policies, thanks to all the explanations, details, nuances and real examples we can provide.