Hi, I'm Amythest
You might know me as neurowonderful or from my Ask An Autistic series on YouTube. If you're part of the
autism community, you may have noticed a big kerfuffle going on in the last couple days.
It's a hashtag called Boycott To Siri, which I started on Twitter.
What the name of the hashtag is referencing is a book, published by HarperCollins and written by
Judith Newman. It's supposed to be an autism parenting memoir.
I was alerted to my presence in this book, To Siri With Love, by a Twitter follower.
And that really surprised me because the author, Judith Newman,
didn't reach out to me and did not ask my consent before including me in her terrible book. And the fact is that
it is terrible.
To Siri With Love is deeply, deeply ableist. It is anti-autistic all the way through and to its core.
At points the book is racist, transphobic, homophobic, and sexist as well. I
simply couldn't recommend it to anybody. In fact,
I'm wondering why it was published. When I first tweeted about the book, To Siri With Love, I
was tweeting from the perspective of an autistic advocate who had been included in what I
guessed was a problematic book without my permission.
I hadn't actually read the book, and I didn't realize how deeply deeply damaging it is to an autistic community
It wasn't until I brought all this up on Twitter,
my initial complaint being the sexist and demeaning way that I was described in the book, that people
perked up and took notice and started looking at what the book actually said. Judith Newman
consistently shows absolute disregard for the privacy and personhood and autonomy and
self-respect of her son, Gus.
This next part carries a trigger warning for incredible ableism and eugenics and mentioned a medical abuse and sterilization.
There are so many harmful and wrong and anti-autistic ideas in To Siri With Love that
I simply could not even get into it for how short I want to keep this video.
But one of the most
awful and horrifying things that Newman talks about in her memoir, a best-selling book, is her plan,
upon her, at the time 13 or 14 year old, autistic son turns 18, that she would acquire
power of attorney and have him
forcibly, non-consensually sterilized.
This is the very heart of eugenics despite what Newman and her supporters would have you believe.
Choosing who gets to reproduce.
Deciding that because someone is disabled or neurodivergent that they have less value, that they could not be a father, that they could
not be a parent. Even promoting the idea of eugenics of non-consensually sterilizing autistic adults in
2017. I
couldn't believe what I was reading. And then Newman's response to the autistic community upon my starting the hashtag
Boycott To Siri
Did Newman, who
professes to be autism-very-friendly in her Twitter bio,
actually listen? Did at any point
she take the voices of autistic adults seriously, or show any remorse whatsoever or a willingness to listen?
No. I probably wouldn't be here in front of a camera if she had. The fact is that she would have responded immediately with defensiveness
and ableism and name-calling, an absolute bad behavior. So as an autistic advocate,
I can't sit by and let this book
go accepted by society. It breaks my heart to know that so many non-autistic people,
people who have professed to care about autistic people, have read it and reviewed it favorably.
Now, the first thing that you can do to help is to share this video.
I'm already so impressed with how the Boycott to Siri tag has grown and spread on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr.
So please go and check out the tag. That's the second thing you can do. If you're wondering,
Surely Amythest is a little bit upset over nothing. Surely this is all a little exaggerated. Surely
it's like a game of telephone, and it can't be as bad as Amythest is saying it is, please go and look for yourself.
There's a hard work of other autistic advocates. There are screenshots aplenty, chapter-by-chapter reviews, and
personal criticisms and essays and blog posts in response to To Siri With Love, so please go check out the hashtag Boycott To Siri and
read. And listen. And please, listen with an open mind, because actual autistic people are speaking.
So please boycott To Siri
Don't give any money to HarperCollins over it, and if you see someone reading the book perhaps direct them to the hashtag.
And lastly, and this is probably the most important thing, is we need your help.
HarperCollins is not listening. They have not issued an official response.
Judith Newman has not issued any kind of apology to the autistic community.
Please tweet to HarperCollins and ask them what on earth they were thinking when they allowed this book that promotes eugenics that
dehumanizes autistic people, that invades the privacy of an autistic child in the way that we would never allow for a nonautistic child.
Ask them why they thought this was okay.
Tell them why it's not, and please, again, share this video, share the hashtag,
tweet, share your experiences, and let's keep it going and put pressure on HarperCollins to pull
To Siri With Love, and to not
not let anything like this ever happen again.
And to Judith Newman, who believes that she shouldn't be held accountable for what she wrote and her incredibly damaging memoir, I say
just like how lipstick and blush doesn't appear magically on my face, neither do words magically appear in your book.
Whatever your intent, your impact was harm. You have hurt the autistic community, and we deserve an apology
HarperCollins, same to you.
Now I need to go take a bubble bath or something because this is all way too much.
Now I need to go take a bubble bath or something. (hands clapping) This was way too stressful
Oh, I was- that was for the video. Thank you though.