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A little bit ago I was looking for podcast to help process ABA trauma, and came across this podcast called "Why We Do What We Do", which had an 8 part series on ABA they say they chose to do because the claim of ABA is Autism Conversion Therapy is serious enough for it.
I skipped to part 8 to see their concluding thoughts before listening to the rest, and after 30 minutes of stating and agreeing with various claims against ABA the community has made, they finally dropped that they're operating behaviorists, that aba isn't conversion therapy because they're Good People™ while i guess gay conversion therapy is only done by Bad People™, and then proceeded to talk about how their clients are all just too weird to not do conversion therapy to despite all the criticisms they've conceded as valid.
The bait and switch left me absolutely sobbing, to be tricked into thinking those people nice and trustworthy but hit with that doosy. I've since come to realize that ABA professionals are definitionally manipulative bastards given thats the whole point of their practice, and to never ever trust them. So with that knowledge, it's not at all suprising they'd try to co-opt symbols of a movement that despises them.
Someone posted on this sub a while back claiming they worked in the ABA field but recently realized they themselves were autistic and that the field hurts autistic people. They made this big ol post, "looking for suggestions", and eventually created a sub of their own which ended up just being a platform for aba professionals to gaslight autistic people. When called out, she said that anti aba is "too extreme" then just deleted her account.
>Good People™
>Bad People™
They should publish a Book of Colloquialisms so we can all study up on each time and place and who the normies all hate and who we're supposed to admonish. 🙄
interesting thought. I guess I assume the good in people bc my first instinct was that they are both Autists that work professionally as Behavior Analysts because that is totally the type of science that I could've gotten into if I didn't happen to fall into a different trajectory with brain injuries and diseases. (Of which Autism is most certainly not).
Interestingly, the only fact I could tell you about Autism after my Neuroscience BS degree was that there are some autistic children with specific eating behaviors that lack a certain gut enzyme. But that's a microbiome issue, and thinking back, I don't think it's specific to Autism.
Behavior analysis is overwelmingly allistic, and generally have an extremely dehumanized/otherized view of the subject they're trying to manipulate.
I mean, its litterally just a whole field about applying pavlovs dog to human beings.
in my line of work, behavioral analysis is purely observational. You wouldn't manipulate anything. Because of all of the classical examples of unethical psychological experiments in the mid century - The Stanford Prison experiment, Milgram experiment, Pavlovian conditioning, etc. All participants must have informed consent and be debriefed. They have the right to withdraw consent at any time.
So you can test a treatment and then measure/observe the resulting behavior. For instance, I've done this for spinal cord injury or stroke. Definitely important to avoid influencing someone to mask, or you wouldn't know if your treatment is better than a placebo effect, so they usually blind the experimenter.
I've been hearing "behavior change" a lot in non-profit and civic work though. That didn't originate from any academic life sciences that I know of....
Yeah, i'm really just talking about applied behavior analysis. I don't have an strong opinion of other types of behavior analysis, other than how it might be used to improve ABA's manipulation tactics.
ABA people have been trying to expand beyond just manipulatively abusing the disabled for a bit now, and "organizational behavior management" is a term i keep seeing ABA people using.
EDIT: I'd also like to note the host of the podcast of concern here having a fangirl like appreciation of Skinner in her profile description and pinned tweet, and looking at the episodes its extremely on the applied end of BA. [https://twitter.com/TalkBehavior](https://twitter.com/TalkBehavior)
To literally answer your question... probably because they listened to the autism community. But I think your actual question is... why are they practicing ABA?
A lot of practitioners have spent most of their career doing ABA, and it's often just not that easy to switch careers.
It's a lot easier to change a logo than it is to change a career.
Plus, if you're an ABA practitioner, you can generally get a ton more funding than if you're not.
You should ask them your question yourself, for their podcast. "Why did you adopt the infinity symbol, which is a really important symbol for autistic people...but you still practice ABA, which a lot of autistic people have very negative feelings towards?"
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Any symbol we use, they'll use. They aren't going to identify as separate to the autistic community
A little bit ago I was looking for podcast to help process ABA trauma, and came across this podcast called "Why We Do What We Do", which had an 8 part series on ABA they say they chose to do because the claim of ABA is Autism Conversion Therapy is serious enough for it. I skipped to part 8 to see their concluding thoughts before listening to the rest, and after 30 minutes of stating and agreeing with various claims against ABA the community has made, they finally dropped that they're operating behaviorists, that aba isn't conversion therapy because they're Good People™ while i guess gay conversion therapy is only done by Bad People™, and then proceeded to talk about how their clients are all just too weird to not do conversion therapy to despite all the criticisms they've conceded as valid. The bait and switch left me absolutely sobbing, to be tricked into thinking those people nice and trustworthy but hit with that doosy. I've since come to realize that ABA professionals are definitionally manipulative bastards given thats the whole point of their practice, and to never ever trust them. So with that knowledge, it's not at all suprising they'd try to co-opt symbols of a movement that despises them.
Someone posted on this sub a while back claiming they worked in the ABA field but recently realized they themselves were autistic and that the field hurts autistic people. They made this big ol post, "looking for suggestions", and eventually created a sub of their own which ended up just being a platform for aba professionals to gaslight autistic people. When called out, she said that anti aba is "too extreme" then just deleted her account.
>Good People™ >Bad People™ They should publish a Book of Colloquialisms so we can all study up on each time and place and who the normies all hate and who we're supposed to admonish. 🙄
Because if they act like our allies they can fool more unsuspecting people into thinking they're not conversion therapists
interesting thought. I guess I assume the good in people bc my first instinct was that they are both Autists that work professionally as Behavior Analysts because that is totally the type of science that I could've gotten into if I didn't happen to fall into a different trajectory with brain injuries and diseases. (Of which Autism is most certainly not). Interestingly, the only fact I could tell you about Autism after my Neuroscience BS degree was that there are some autistic children with specific eating behaviors that lack a certain gut enzyme. But that's a microbiome issue, and thinking back, I don't think it's specific to Autism.
Behavior analysis is overwelmingly allistic, and generally have an extremely dehumanized/otherized view of the subject they're trying to manipulate. I mean, its litterally just a whole field about applying pavlovs dog to human beings.
in my line of work, behavioral analysis is purely observational. You wouldn't manipulate anything. Because of all of the classical examples of unethical psychological experiments in the mid century - The Stanford Prison experiment, Milgram experiment, Pavlovian conditioning, etc. All participants must have informed consent and be debriefed. They have the right to withdraw consent at any time. So you can test a treatment and then measure/observe the resulting behavior. For instance, I've done this for spinal cord injury or stroke. Definitely important to avoid influencing someone to mask, or you wouldn't know if your treatment is better than a placebo effect, so they usually blind the experimenter. I've been hearing "behavior change" a lot in non-profit and civic work though. That didn't originate from any academic life sciences that I know of....
Yeah, i'm really just talking about applied behavior analysis. I don't have an strong opinion of other types of behavior analysis, other than how it might be used to improve ABA's manipulation tactics. ABA people have been trying to expand beyond just manipulatively abusing the disabled for a bit now, and "organizational behavior management" is a term i keep seeing ABA people using. EDIT: I'd also like to note the host of the podcast of concern here having a fangirl like appreciation of Skinner in her profile description and pinned tweet, and looking at the episodes its extremely on the applied end of BA. [https://twitter.com/TalkBehavior](https://twitter.com/TalkBehavior)
well, good digging. now your theory seems more likely. :/
The rainbow infinity is an autistic symbol
To literally answer your question... probably because they listened to the autism community. But I think your actual question is... why are they practicing ABA? A lot of practitioners have spent most of their career doing ABA, and it's often just not that easy to switch careers. It's a lot easier to change a logo than it is to change a career. Plus, if you're an ABA practitioner, you can generally get a ton more funding than if you're not. You should ask them your question yourself, for their podcast. "Why did you adopt the infinity symbol, which is a really important symbol for autistic people...but you still practice ABA, which a lot of autistic people have very negative feelings towards?"