Recently, Stephen sent us a photo of him wearing an Autistan T-shirt during one of his presentations at the annual meeting of 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.
So far, 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 advocates 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, rather 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 “Autistan”) 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 Autistic World” because in French “Le monde autistique” appears “bizarre”. It’s less weird in Portuguese (“O Mundo Autista”), but all this remains to be discussed. - He also recommended a variation of the Autistan T-shirt, so as to see more of the Disc of the Autistan.
- So we prepared a new T-shirt for him, for his trip to India in July 2024:
Words in Hindi : “Autistan – 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” in Hindi 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) has been used
All these things allow us to move forward little by little, in the hope that one day the relevant public bodies 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.