Transformative Justice Ethics (Practice, Not Arrival)

Transformative Autism Education - Day 17

I’ve been thinking about what it actually means to do this work in a way that is ethical.

Not just in theory.
Not just in language.
But in how I am when I’m in it.

—

And I keep coming back to this—

I didn’t always move this way.

In my master’s program, I started to see it (or maybe more accurately, I started to see myself).

The way I would write.

The way I would speak.

So certain.
So clean.

“This is what autism is.”
“This is what it’s like for autistic people.”

Like I had found something true and finally had the language to name it.

(and to be fair, some of it was true… just not complete)

—

But something in that process started to shift me.

Not all at once.

More like friction.

Like being in conversations where things didn’t resolve neatly.

Where someone would say something that didn’t fit what I thought I understood.

And instead of dismissing it (which I could have done, and sometimes did),

I had to sit there and feel what it did to my certainty.

—

That’s where the work actually started.

Not in getting better …