Aba Price Quotes

The judgment, handed down by Judge Ian Chin of the Sarawak High Court, demonstrated astonishing independence from the Malaysian government. Chin knew the price of that independence. After a much-maligned judgment against a politician belonging to the ruling Barisan National government in 1998, he had been verbally threatened by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, and then enrolled in a five-day boot camp with other judges for “re-educational” purposes. While there, the primacy of the government’s interests was hammered into the judicial civil servants.3 Crushing the independence of the courts was done systematically under Mahathir. In 1988, the autocratic Premier had arbitrarily dismissed the country’s top judge, Lord President Salleh Abas, thereby keeping the remaining judges on a short lead.4 Even today, in 2014, Malaysia’s judges still have difficulty ruling independently when government interests are at stake.

For many Autistic kids, learning to obscure your pain often becomes a primary survival strategy; for masked Autistics, this isn’t taught within ABA therapy, but as part of regular life. I didn’t go through ABA, but friends’ parents did yell at me for squirming awkwardly in my seat.

Every masked Autistic person has a litany of experiences like this. Most maskers dodge the massive psychological bullet that is ABA therapy, but we still receive endless conditioning that says our unfiltered selves are too annoying, unusual, awkward, nonconforming, and cold to fit in. We also witness how other nonconforming bodies and minds are treated. When the entire world shames people for being into “childish” things, having odd mannerisms, or simply being irritating, you don’t need ABA to program you into compliance. Everyone around you is already doing it.

The founder of ABA, Ole Ivar Lovaas, used to coerce children into providing hugs and kisses to their therapists by giving them candy.[15]

One former ABA therapist confessed on an anonymous blog that she worries she conditioned her patients to be easy to manipulate and abuse.

Aba D is right, though, and he certainly knows all there is to know about never showing weakness. Unyielding strength and pure and absolute perfection on the battlefield were the prices he had to pay in order to marry the man he loved without suffering the stigma that often comes with such unions. Anything less, even the slightest slip of the foot or a moment of hesitation, and the stigma would have never left. An impossible standard to live up to, Salo would say, one he knows he could never achieve in a thousand years. In fact, sometimes he feels like he gathers stigma just by breathing. A walking, living scandal. A blot to be washed clean. Weak. Useless.

Forty-six percent of Autistic adults who underwent ABA therapy as kids report having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of the experience.[

Despite how loathed ABA is by Autistic people, the parents and teachers of Autistic kids tend to love it, and research broadly deems it “effective.” This is because the efficacy of the program is based on the neurotypical gaze, not how the Autistic child feels.