NeuroQueer Timelines: Conversion Therapy, Queer History, and ABA - The Pains of Watching History Repeat Itself
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Ivar Lovaas conducted experiments using rewards and punishments to shape "desirable" or "normative behaviors" in gender nonconforming and Autistic children.
My name is Lyric. My pronouns are they/them. I am also known online as the NeuroDivergent Rebel. I am Autistic, ADHD, non-binary, pansexual, polyamorous, and an openly queer, openly NeuroDivergent human.
This week I will be sharing about one of my topics of interest, the LGBTQIA plus human rights history, and important events along that timeline, as well as the NeuroDiversity history and timeline and where some of these events intersect and overlap.
Queer Medicalization & Human Rights Timeline:
1899 - we start to see increases in the medicalization of LGBTQIA+ people in this country when the psychiatrist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing claimed that, through 45 hypnosis sessions (and a few trips to a brothel), he had manipulated a gay man, managing to turn him straight. In 1899, same-sex relationships of any type were considered a criminal offense in America.
In the early 1900s, psychiatrists and doctors began to address homosexuality labeling same-sex desire in medical terms and looking for ways to reverse or prevent people from being Queer (similar to how many NeuroDivergent People are viewed today).
Queer people of the time were subjected to tortures and quack "normalization" treatments, such as conversion and electroshock therapies, lobotomies, and even testicular transplants.
Things would continue to worsen for Queers in the US as time progressed.
1952 the American Psychiatric Association added homosexuality to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM.
1953 - President Dwight D Eisenhower banned homosexuals from working in the federal government.
1956 - pivotal moment happened in 1956 when Evelyn hooker shared her paper, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual, at the American Psychological Association Convention. Hooker's experiment would become very influential and help change clinical perceptions of Queer People. After administering various psychological tests, to groups of gay and straight males, Evelyn's research showed that gays and straights did not differ significantly.
June 28, 1969 - the Stonewall riots.
June 28, 1970 - one year after the Stonewall riots, thousands of members of the LGBTQIA plus communities marched through New York to Central Park in America's first-ever Gay Pride Parade.
Up until 1973 - psychologists and psychiatrists will still consider homosexuality to be a form of illness.
In 1987 (the year I was born) - homosexuality was wholly removed from the DSM.
The 1960s & 70s - Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Ivar Lovaas conducted experiments using rewards and punishments to shape "desirable" or "normative behaviors" in gender nonconforming and Autistic children. This program would one day become Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), a multi-billion dollar industry that still targets Autistic People and their families today.
ABA seeks to train Autistic People to camouflage their Autistic traits, just as gay conversion therapy aims to teach the gay person to behave as if they are not gay.
Conversion therapy programs can instill feelings of rejection within children and can be highly harmful to people.
Studies by the APA have shown that attempts to change someone's sexuality can result in poor self-esteem, increased suicide risk, and mental health problems.
The Trevor Project provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention to LGBTQIA+ youth, stating that "conversion therapy amplifies the shame and stigma that so many Queer young people already experience. Parents who send their children to conversion therapy instill feelings of family rejection and disappointment, and risk seriously fracturing their relationship with their child."
The 1960s & 70s - an increase in gay rights organizations and movements in the United States pressured psychiatrists to distance themselves from conversion therapy for Queer People (but not Autistics and other NeuroDivergents).
1976 - the US National Institute of Mental Health took away Ivaar Lovaas's funding due to complaints of excessive use of corporal punishment against children.
October 14, 1979 - an estimated 75,000 Queer people, and straight allies, marched on Washington to demand equal civil rights for LGBTQIA plus people, urging for the passage of protective civil rights legislation.
The 1980s and 90s - would be a tough time for Queer People worldwide, thanks to the AIDS crisis.
1981 - the New York Times published an article titled "The New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials," – blaming gay men for the AIDS outbreak. This was a setback as it stigmatized the Queer community.
October 11, 1987 - hundreds of thousands marched on Washington to demand that President Ronald Reagan address the aids crisis.
1988 - the CDC would mail a brochure, Understanding AIDS, to every household in the United States. It is estimated that 107 million brochures were mailed. Also, the world health organization organized the first World AIDS Day to raise awareness of AIDS.
1992 - the world health organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from its ICD classification with the publication of the ICD-10.
The 1990s & 2000s - Though medical professionals had distanced themselves from conversion therapy many years earlier, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, many self-proclaimed "experts" and faith-based groups started to get involved in gay conversion therapy, launching camps where Queer People would be isolated from family and friends, mocked, abused, hypnotized, coached on "proper" gender roles, and told that they were unnatural, sinful, and disgusting and must pray until their homosexuality would subside.
Though the concept of gay conversion therapy still exists today, people are starting to wake up to the harm and turn away from these practices.
Most people today accept that conversion "therapies" harm LGBTQIA+ People. However, ABA is still widely recommended by doctors and medical providers as a "treatment for autism."
Today, many states and countries have laws banning conversion therapy practices (unless you're NeuroDivergent).
1993 - Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
1996 - Clinton signed The Defense of Marriage Act.
2004 - Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, and it was found that the prohibition of gay marriage was unconstitutional because it denies dignity and equity to all individuals.
2008 - would be a tough year, as proposition eight would be approved in California, making same-sex marriage illegal.
2009 - the Matthew Shepard Act was passed, which expanded the 1969 US federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's gender, sexual orientation, or disability. This is good news for Autistic and Queer and Queer Autistic People everywhere.
2010 - A federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Prop eight was unconstitutional, and the US Senate repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
June 24, 2011 - New York State passed the marriage equity act.
June 26, 2015 - Obergefell v. Hodges made it to the US Supreme Court, declaring same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
2016 - the United States government removed its ban on transgender service members (temporarily).
2018 - Donald Trump signed a memorandum that banned some trans people from military service. Since then, there has been a wave of anti-trans bills sweeping the United States.
Pride Month 2023 - It’s a scary time to be Queer in the US.
From state to state, the ACLU is tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills from "Don't Say the Gay Bills," not allowing trans children to participate in sports, drag bans, DE&I bans, book bans, various bathroom bills, bills targeting NeuroDivergent Trans People specifically, and more.
As a Queer NeuroDivergent Person, I feel helpless watching history run backward, repeating itself.
Autism Medicalization & Human Rights Timeline:
Please NOTE Some of these events repeat and are duplicated from the list above because the events are related to both groups at once.
1911 - the German psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler describes Autistic children as child schizophrenics.
1925 - Grunya Sukhareva published a detailed description of autistic "symptoms" in 1925.
1943 - Leo Kanner's paper on Autism was published.
1944 - Hans Asperger described autistic children with "high nonverbal intelligence quotients, and using large vocabulary appropriately."
The 1960s & 70s - Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Ivar Lovaas conducted experiments using rewards and punishments to shape "desirable" or "normative behaviors" in gender nonconforming and Autistic children. This program would one day become Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), a multi-billion dollar industry that still targets Autistic People and their families today.
Conversion therapy programs can instill feelings of rejection within children and can be highly harmful to people.
ABA seeks to train Autistic People to camouflage their Autistic traits, just as gay conversion therapy aims to teach the gay person to behave as if they are not gay.
The 1960s & 70s - an increase in gay rights organizations and movements in the United States pressured psychiatrists to distance themselves from conversion therapy for Queer People (but not Autistics and other NeuroDivergents).
January 1974 - Lovaas (who didn’t believe Autistic people were fully human) stated in an interview for Psychology Today:
“You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense – they have hair, a nose and a mouth – but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.”
1976 - the US National Institute of Mental Health took away Ivaar Lovaas's funding due to complaints of excessive use of corporal punishment against children.
Though the concept of gay conversion therapy still exists today, people are starting to wake up to the harm and turn away from these practices.
Most people today accept that conversion "therapies" harm LGBTQIA+ People. However, ABA is still widely recommended by doctors and medical providers as a "treatment for autism."
Today, many states and countries have laws banning gay conversion therapy practices (unless you're NeuroDivergent).
1980's - Jim Sinclair (who did not speak until around 12) would share their anti-cure autism rights perspective.
1992 - Autism Network International (ANI) was started by Jim Sinclair, Kathy Grant, and Donna Williams
1992 - It is at ANI and InLv that the NeuroDiversity Movement began in the 1990s. The concept of NeuroDiversity was formed by members of the Autistic Community, based on the work of Jim Sinclair and the members of Autism Network International. However, it wasn't called NeuroDiversity... "yet."
1993 - Jim Sinclair's essay "Don't Mourn for Us"
1996 - the first Autreat, hosted by ANI, was a United States retreat and conference hosted by Autistic People for Autistic People. The annual retreats ran from 1996 to 2003.
1998 - Judy Singer (who's recently expressed racist and anti-trans views unapologetically) published her thesis on Neurodiversity, based on the discussions she was part of at ANI & InLv, introducing the ideas of the Autistic Rights Movement to the world of academia (with her own problematic twist of including ONLY what she describes as "high functioning" Autistic People (though many of the original ANI & InLv members and true founders of this movement wouldn't have met her criteria).
2000 - the term Neurodivergent is coined in the year by the multiply neurodivergent activist Kassiane Asasumasu of Radical Neurodivergence Speaking. Kassiane has stated that "Neurodivergent refers to neurologically divergent from typical, which includes Autistic people, ADHD people, People with learning disabilities, Epileptic people, People with mental illnesses, People with MS or Parkinsons, or apraxia or cerebral palsy or dyspraxia or no specific diagnosis but wonky lateralization or something. Neurodivergent is not another … tool of exclusion. It is specifically a tool of inclusion."
2005 - the first ever, Autistic Pride Day, on June 18… and Autism Speaks being funded by Bob and Suzanne Wright.
2006 - Autism Speaks anti-Autistic Propaganda film “Autism Every Day” was released. Content warning: with a title like that, it is just as bad as you would think.
April 2, 2008 - the first-ever World Autism Awareness Day.
Spring 2008 - NeuroQueering is first conceptualized by Dr. Nick Walker for a grad school class.
2009 - the Matthew Shepard Act was passed, which expanded the 1969 US federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's gender, sexual orientation, or disability. This is good news for Autistic and Queer and Queer Autistic People everywhere.
2009 - Autism Speaks released its controversial PSA titled "I Am Autism." Content warning: it is horrific.
2010 - Autism Speaks launched their first-ever light-up blue campaign for little Autistic boys in April.
2014 - Autism Speaks released another stigmatizing documentary titled "Sounding the Alarm, Battling the Autism Epidemic” which I cannot currently find online for free viewing.
2016 - due to a lot of pressure, Autism Speaks removed cure language from its mission statement. However, even to this day, this organization still has a lot to answer for and leaves much to be desired, in my opinion, as one Autistic Person.
Drop your comments below: What do you think about Autism Speaks? Autistic People only, please.
2023 - there are many arguments around NeuroDiversity, Autism, and Autistic Rights in online spaces. Sometimes people say it's Autistics versus parents. However, many parents of Autistic Children are Autistic themselves.
There are even Autistic People who are in favor of Autistic Conversion Therapy. So this isn't even an "Autistic versus non-autistic" issue.
The real fight comes down to people who favor Autistic Conversion Therapy as a tool to "manage behavior" and people who feel that Autistic Conversion Therapy is a major human rights violation at best (and torture at its worst).
It's all part of a more significant issue that this world that we live in makes it an unsafe space to be openly and authentically yourself if you're an Autistic Person.
You know which camp I am in. I believe many practices used in ABA and other Conversion "Therapies" are harmful and abusive.
I'm not shaming parents who choose ABA. There's a lot of pressure on them. Sometimes they are given no choice (if ABA is mandated by the family court, for example).
Out of those who chose ABA willingly, many carers are desperate and want to do what they have been told is best for their children.
Often parents are so desperate to see their children succeed (or survive) that they will try anything to get what they've been told are desired outcomes.
It doesn’t help that we still have many organizations out there (like Autism Sp#@ks) spreading these fear narratives about Autism, talking about an "Autism Epidemic" and how people should be "aware" and afraid of Autism (and Autistic People).
It's not unlike propaganda spread against Queer People over the years, including recently.