"Building a Person": Legal and Clinical Personhood for Autistic and Trans Children in Ontario. Issue 2 (August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pyne, Jake
• Editors: Singer, Samuel; Katri, Ido
• Is Part Of: Canadian journal of law and society. Volume 35:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 341
• Page End: 365
• Publication Date: 2020-08
• Subjects: critical disability studies, -- youth, -- conversion therapy, -- autism, -- applied behaviour analysis, -- transgender; études critiques sur le handicap, -- enfants, -- jeunesse, -- thérapie de conversion, -- autisme, -- analyse appliquée du comportement, -- transgenre; Sociological jurisprudence -- Periodicals; Law -- Canada -- Periodicals; 340.11505
• DOI: 10.1017/cls.2020.8
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-9324

Abstract

Abstract: In the 1960s and 1970s, psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, operated two behaviour modification programs: one aiming to eliminate "feminine" behaviours in male-bodied children ("conversion therapy"), and one targeting autistic children's so-called problem behaviours (applied behavioural analysis or ABA). The head of the autism program referred to his work as "building a person." Decades later in Ontario, a radically incommensurate legal context sees conversion therapy banned while ABA receives millions of funding dollars. Drawing on legislation, case law, media, and clinical literature, I argue that the process of trans communities wresting themselves out from under conversion therapy involved discursively shifting from having a condition to being human—a process of "building a person"—still incomplete for autistic communities. While legal reforms protect some trans youth from harmful therapies, this does not extend to autistic trans youth, leading us to question at whose expense a rights-bearing trans person was built.