Reform or Revolution? Bridging the Divide in Neurodiversity Advocacy
This article explores the divide between reformist and revolutionary approaches in neurodiversity advocacy, drawing on my experiences as an autistic GLP educator. It critiques reform as a tool of privilege, examines enshittification as systemic oppression, and calls for solidarity in dismantling oppressive systems.
Introduction
Discovering the work of Dr Barry Prizant was, for me, like finding the missing piece of a puzzle I’d been fumbling with for years. His writings opened a door to understanding my own gestalt language processing, something I had struggled with all my life without the words or framework to explain it. For years, I lived with significant deficits in functional language and literacy, often feeling as though I were walking in a fog, unable to grasp the tools others used so effortlessly to navigate the world. Prizant’s work not only explained the “why” of my challenges but also gave me the first glimmers of hope that these deficits could be addressed in ways that honoured my neurotype, rather than seeking to change it.
That moment of recognition—realising my autism diagnosis and my struggles with literacy were not due to a lack of effort or ability but to the way my brain processes language—was transformative. It ignited a spark that led to an explosion of growth in both my language and literacy. Armed with this understanding, I was finally able to engage with words and ideas in ways I never had before. The world of communication, which had felt so out of reach, began to open up to me. It wasn’t just about “catching up” but about embracing a new way of thinking about language—one that saw value in how my mind works, rather than trying to fit it into a box designed for someone else.
This revelation ultimately shaped my professional focus, particularly as a teacher working in an urban Title 1 school. I realised how siloed the worlds of speech and language pathology and literacy instruction were—spaces that rarely talked to one another despite the profound overlap in their goals. This disconnect inspired me to write Holistic Language Instruction last year, in an effort to bridge these gaps and bring the insights of speech pathologist’s like Prizant into the classroom. It felt vital to create something that could address the needs of students like me—those who process language differently and deserve instruction that recognises their strengths, not just their challenges.
The Silos in Advocacy and Practice
Dr Prizant’s work, for all its brilliance and the profound impact it has had on my life, remains largely confined to the world of speech and language pathologists. It’s rarely discussed outside those circles and has yet to meaningfully influence literacy education or the broader neurodiversity movement. This is a significant missed opportunity, especially in education, where understanding how gestalt language processing affects learning could transform the way we approach literacy instruction for autistic students. Instead, these two worlds—SLP and literacy education—exist in silos, rarely interacting despite the shared goal of helping students communicate and understand language effectively. This disconnect became glaringly obvious to me as I reflected on my own experiences and those of my students, many of whom face similar challenges but are left unsupported by systems that fail to collaborate.
It was this realisation that pushed me to write Holistic Language Instruction. I wanted to create something that bridged these gaps, pulling Prizant’s insights into the classroom and offering practical strategies for educators. The goal was to provide a framework that recognised the strengths of gestalt language processors and integrated those strengths into literacy instruction, creating a more inclusive approach. For students like mine, who often have little access to private SLPs and face systemic barriers to support, this kind of integration is not just important—it’s essential. After all, SLPs focus on articulation and communication but do not teach literacy, whilst literacy instructors often remain unaware of the profound ways in which language processing differences impact learning.
Yet, as an autistic educator and gestalt language processor myself, I find it maddening that, despite my extensive research and expertise, the nature of my role as a teacher limits the influence I can have within the IEP process. Whilst I can test for GLPs in my diagnostic work and am highly skilled at identifying them in my school population, I am not permitted to officially share that information with students or families. That responsibility sits firmly within the silo of the school’s SLP and Psychologist. But the SLPs I’ve worked with—whilst aware of the premise of GLPs—do not screen for it, nor do they actively support GLP students. This leaves me in an incredibly frustrating position: aware of the critical role this information could play in shaping a student’s education yet unable to address it officially.
Instead, I navigate the cracks in the system by having quiet conversations with parents and students outside of IEP meetings. I explain what I’ve noticed, always careful to remain within the bounds of what I’m allowed to say whilst ensuring families have the information they need to advocate for their children. At the same time, I work behind the scenes to build supports into the IEP that reflect what I know about GLPs, even if I can’t explicitly name it. It’s a delicate dance, one made more difficult by the silos that fragment our understanding of language and literacy in schools, and it underscores just how much systemic change is needed to bridge these divides.
As I navigated the challenges of supporting GLPs in a system that so often overlooks them, I began to see a broader pattern emerging: the disconnect between how behaviours are understood across different communities. One of the most profound insights I’ve taken from Dr Prizant’s work is the idea that all behaviour is communication. For gestalt processors, this is particularly true—what may appear as disconnected, sometimes inappropriate words or phrases are often rich expressions of thought, emotion, or need. But this principle doesn’t just apply to language processing; it underpins how we interpret and respond to behaviours in general. The problem is that behaviours, and the attempts at communication they represent, are too often filtered through the lens of bias, privilege, and cultural misunderstanding.
Within white, English-speaking advocacy spaces, for instance, there is often a failure to fully understand or appreciate the ways in which behaviour—especially behaviour that doesn’t fit the norms of the Global North’s neuor-majority—functions within different cultural contexts. These silos can create a kind of tunnel vision, where advocates champion ideas like ending ABA without considering how those ideas translate—or don’t—across diverse lived experiences. There is an assumption that behaviours labelled as “undesirable” can and should be allowed to remain as they are, but this often ignores the harsh realities faced by BIPOC autistic individuals, for whom those same behaviours may lead to criminalisation, exclusion, or even violence.
For many in marginalised communities, ABA, despite its many flaws, is seen as a necessary tool for survival in a world that punishes difference so severely. This perspective is not about accepting ABA as ideal but about recognising the hostile environments these families must navigate and the limited options they are given. BIPOC advocates, whose lived realities include systemic racism, white privilege, and capitalism, tend to focus not on reform but on the systemic dismantling of these oppressive forces. Their advocacy is often revolutionary, rejecting reform as insufficient in the face of structural inequities.
As a white autistic educator working in a Title 1 school, I find myself straddling these worlds. On the one hand, I see the privilege in being able to reject ABA outright or champion reformist approaches like those found in white advocacy spaces. On the other, I witness firsthand the systemic barriers that force my students and their families to navigate a world that is fundamentally hostile to their existence. This dual perspective has led me to align with the revolutionary camp, recognising that true equity can only come from dismantling the oppressive systems that perpetuate these divides. Advocacy that does not address the roots of these inequities fails the very people who need it most.
The Siloed Worlds of Neurodiversity, Literacy, and Advocacy
Dr Barry Prizant’s work is widely celebrated within the neurodiversity movement, particularly by white, English-speaking advocates. Its popularity stems in large part from its reformist nature—it offers an empathetic and respectful framework for supporting autistic individuals without fundamentally challenging the systems in which those supports exist. In a capitalist society, this makes it palatable, even desirable. Prizant’s approach allows for incremental changes, improvements that do not threaten the broader structures of power or privilege. Similarly, the calls to end ABA that often come from white reformist advocates reflect this same mindset: addressing one problematic practice whilst leaving intact the systems that create a demand for it in the first place. Reformist advocacy centres on assimilation into the status quo, offering a vision of acceptance that aligns with the existing framework of neoliberal individualism. But for many, particularly BIPOC advocates, this approach falls short.
BIPOC advocates often view ABA through a different lens—not as an ideal solution but as a necessary evil in a world that punishes difference, particularly in marginalised communities. Their advocacy does not focus on reforming ABA or ending it without alternatives but on dismantling the racist, capitalist systems that create the need for such practices. They understand that the behaviours targeted by ABA are often those that, in a white-dominated society, are misinterpreted as dangerous, non-compliant, or undesirable, especially when exhibited by BIPOC individuals. For many families, teaching children to mask or comply is a matter of survival, a grim calculation in a world that criminalises their existence. Advocacy in these spaces is revolutionary, rooted in critiques of racism, colonialism, capitalism, and the accelerating enshittification of public life that makes navigating the world as an autistic BIPOC individual even more perilous.
The stakes for BIPOC communities are starkly different from those of their white counterparts. For white advocates, the call to unmask or to resist behavioural compliance is often framed as an act of liberation. For BIPOC individuals, these choices can be life-threatening. Police violence, school criminalisation, and systemic exclusion disproportionately impact BIPOC communities, making masking and modifying behaviour a matter of life and death. This is why revolutionary advocacy, which seeks to dismantle these systems rather than reform them, resonates so strongly in BIPOC spaces. Reformist approaches fail to account for the material realities of systemic oppression, offering solutions that privilege white experiences whilst leaving marginalised communities behind. True liberation can only come from a wholesale rejection of the systems that perpetuate inequity, and until reformist advocates recognise this, their vision of progress will remain incomplete.
The Role of Enshittification in Deepening Divides
Enshittification—the deliberate degradation of systems to maximise profit and control—is not just oppressive; it is inherently disabling, especially for neurodivergent individuals. For autistic people, the increasingly enshittified systems in education, healthcare, and social services strip away the accessibility and predictability needed to navigate the world with dignity. Platforms and services that once offered support or connection now prioritise profit-driven algorithms and user exploitation, eroding the very structures that made them useful in the first place. Marginalised communities, particularly BIPOC autistic individuals, are hit hardest. As these systems decay, they encounter more barriers, fewer resources, and greater precarity, further compounding the systemic inequities they already face.
This degradation is disabling in both a practical and psychological sense. For neurodivergent people, the loss of predictability and accessibility inherent in enshittification leads to heightened stress, reduced autonomy, and increased dependence on systems that actively work against them. The Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) offers a critical lens to understand why this is the case. It invites us to explore how the enshittification of systems creates not only structural barriers but also psychological harm. From an intersectional perspective, the PTMF reveals how neurodivergent individuals, especially those from BIPOC and/or economically marginalised communities, experience compounded layers of oppression: the systems designed to support them become actively harmful, and the societal narratives that define their worth become increasingly dehumanising. This framework makes it clear that the disabling effects of enshittification are not just incidental but are a deliberate outcome of systems designed to maintain power hierarchies.
Enshittification also reinforces the siloes that keep advocacy efforts divided. White, reformist neurodiversity advocates often fail to see how these degrading systems uniquely harm BIPOC communities, focusing instead on incremental changes like ending ABA without addressing the broader systemic forces that make such practices necessary for survival. Meanwhile, BIPOC advocates—dealing with the combined effects of systemic racism, capitalism, and colonialism—are forced to focus on survival within these systems rather than liberation from them. The division between these two camps is deepened by enshittified systems, which isolate communities and perpetuate competition over scarce resources, ensuring that collective action remains fractured.
The ruling class exploits this division. By disabling neurodivergent individuals and marginalised communities through enshittification, they ensure that these groups are too busy struggling within the system to unite against it. The siloes created by these systems are not accidental; they are a deliberate strategy to weaken revolutionary movements. Fragmented advocacy spaces—debating reform versus revolution, focusing on individual practices rather than systemic change—play directly into the hands of those who benefit from the status quo. Enshittification becomes not just an outcome of systemic oppression but a tool to perpetuate it.
If we are to dismantle these systems, the siloes within advocacy must be broken down, and the disabling effects of enshittification must be confronted head-on. The PTMF provides a pathway forward, offering a deeply intersectional lens to explore the shared experiences of harm and oppression across communities. By framing these struggles as interconnected rather than isolated, we can begin to unite reformist and revolutionary camps around a shared understanding of the systems that harm us all. This work requires recognising enshittification as not just an obstacle but as the mechanism by which oppression is sustained and deepened. Only through collective action that addresses these intersectional harms can we build solidarity across advocacy spaces and dismantle the systems that disable and divide us.
Bridging the Divide – Reform vs. Revolution
Reformist goals—like ending ABA or increasing accommodations—are often positioned as victories for the neurodiversity movement. But these goals, whilst well-meaning, function more as pressure relief valves than genuine pathways to liberation. They create the illusion of progress whilst leaving the oppressive systems that harm whole communities intact. Reform does not fundamentally challenge the structures of capitalism, racism, and colonialism that necessitate practices like ABA in the first place. Instead, it preserves privilege and place, allowing the status quo to continue largely unchallenged.
For example, if white reformist advocates succeed in removing ABA as a Medicaid-covered “evidence-based practice” or eliminate government funding for it, what happens next? Whilst this may seem like progress to those with the privilege to access alternative therapies or supports, it leaves BIPOC communities, who rely on Medicaid and similar programmes for survival, without any viable alternatives. The need that ABA currently addresses—however imperfectly—still exists. Without systemic change to replace it with something better, families in marginalised communities are left in the lurch, fighting for their lives in a system that continually erases their needs. Reform without revolution perpetuates inequity by addressing surface-level symptoms whilst ignoring the deeper structures of oppression that create these inequities in the first place.
Revolutionary advocacy offers something fundamentally different: the dismantling of the systems that make practices like ABA, masking, and compliance necessary for survival. Capitalism, by its very nature, is not broken; it is functioning exactly as designed. It requires exploitation, extracting value from labour and marginalised bodies to sustain itself. Revolution recognises this and seeks to abolish the exploitative systems at their core. Revolutionary change doesn’t just seek to improve conditions within the system; it seeks to build an entirely new system, one where true equity is possible. The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and Fanon paint a compelling picture of what lies beyond capitalism, offering frameworks for organising a world where exploitation is not the foundation of economic and social life. Yet capitalism has convinced the world that there is no alternative, that it is the only viable way to organise human societies. Revolutionary advocacy challenges this myth, envisioning a future where marginalised communities no longer have to fight for scraps within a system designed to oppress them.
White advocates have a critical role to play in this fight, but it requires more than good intentions. It demands that they use their privilege to support BIPOC-led revolutionary advocacy, even when it is risky. Advocacy without risk is little more than performative allyship. Real advocacy requires standing in solidarity with those on the frontlines, leveraging privilege to amplify revolutionary goals rather than settling for reformist compromises. It requires a commitment to dismantling oppressive systems, not assimilating into them. Capitalism thrives on exploitation and profit extraction; to accept its terms is to perpetuate the very harm we claim to oppose. There are other ways to organise a political economy, ways that centre justice, equity, and collective well-being. Revolutionary advocacy dares to imagine and fight for those alternatives, knowing that liberation cannot be achieved through reform alone. It is a call to action for all advocates to recognise that the stakes are too high to settle for anything less.
Final thoughts …
s an autistic GLP and teacher working in a Title 1 public school, my journey has been one of balancing privilege and purpose. I have the privilege of understanding my own neurodivergence through frameworks like Dr Prizant’s, but my privilege extends beyond that. My light skin and eyes, as well as my height—6’7”—grant me a degree of safety and authority in a world that often values these traits. I also carry the privilege of being able to write as I do, a skill that allows me to articulate my thoughts and experiences in ways that are often inaccessible to others. Yet, this privilege is complicated by my identity as a trans woman living in a society that is deeply uncomfortable with tall, strong women who defy traditional expectations. This duality sharpens my sense of responsibility: to use the advantages I have, however conditional, to advocate not just for reform but for revolutionary change that addresses the systemic inequities my students and their families face every day. It is not enough to tinker at the edges of oppressive systems when those systems are the very root of the harm being done.
In envisioning a world free from enshittification, we can draw inspiration from the concept of matristic civilisations, as explored by Marija Gimbutas. These societies, egalitarian and community-focused, rejected hierarchical dominance in favour of cooperation and mutual support. Imagining such a world today—a world where oppressive systems are dismantled and BIPOC advocates no longer have to choose survival over liberation—is both a revolutionary act and a necessary one. In this world, neurodivergence would not be pathologised or commodified. Instead, diversity would be celebrated, and communities would prioritise the well-being of all their members, creating spaces where individuals could thrive as their authentic selves.
This matristic vision of the future includes a deep connection to nature, gender fluidity, and a commitment to egalitarian values. In such a society, neurodivergent people would be supported holistically, not forced to mask or modify themselves to fit into systems that punish difference. There would be no enshittification—no deliberate degradation of systems for profit—because the systems themselves would prioritise collective care over exploitation. This is the kind of future that revolutionary advocacy offers, a future that demands we challenge the myths of capitalism and patriarchy that have convinced us there is no alternative.
To white reformists, I issue this challenge: align your goals with revolutionary advocacy. Recognise that reform alone cannot create a world where everyone—especially the most marginalised—can thrive. Use your privilege not to preserve your own comfort but to support the dismantling of systems that harm the very communities you claim to advocate for. Advocacy without risk is advocacy without meaning. True solidarity demands that we step beyond the safety of incrementalism and work toward a world that values equity over profit, connection over hierarchy, and liberation over survival. Together, we can build that world. But first, we must commit to the revolutionary work of imagining it—and fighting for it.