Workshop on Autism and Girls

A mainly photographic account of this morning’s excellent session on autism and girls at the Masonic Centre, King’s Lynn.

INTRODUCTION

This morning, through the good offices of NAS West Norfolk, especially branch vice-chair Rachel Meerwalk who gave me a lift both way, I was able to attend Sarah-Jane Critchley’s workshop on autism and girls at The Masonic Centre, Hamburg Way, King’s Lynn. The battery in my camera ran out before the end, but the whole presentation should be available at https://differentjoy.kartra.com/page/amazing/adiclub 

THE TALK

Sarah-Jane covered a vast range of topics in the course of the morning, all relating to girls and autism. There were a couple of interactive bits – one involved describing the previous night’s meal without using any words containing the letter N – a task that required some crafty paraphrasing on my part, as one part of the meal in question for me had been a glass of Pinot Grigio, which I could not describe by name or by the generic white wine. Later there was a party game – she asked various people what they would bring to a party and told them whether they were invited or not – but the test was not what they said they would bring but what body language they used. The third interactive bit as three sets of three as follows:

  • Things you are good at
  • Things you are grateful for
  • Things you enjoy

This was an excellent session, though I was tired by the end of it, and well and truly ready for lunch by the time I arrived home.

PHOTOGRAPHS

I have left my photographs to tell you what they can…

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The NAS West Norfolk display board
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The handouts (two shots)

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For more on PDA visit www.pdasociety.org.uk

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These websites are: www.gids.nhs.uk www.genderedintenlligence.co.uk www.mermaids.org.uk www.gires.org.uk and www.stonewall.org.uk

Marxism 2015 1: Getting There and The First Couple of Meetings

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my first blog post about Marxism 2015, a five day political festival taking place in Central London. In this post I will be covering the journey down, and the very start of the event. The way the event works (at present) is that there are two sessions on the Thursday afternoon before the Opening Rally on Thursday evening (which will have a post to itself), then three full days (Fri, Sat, Sun), before two sessions on Monday morning and the final rally at 2PM on Monday.

GETTING THERE

Following the advice contained in Sutcliffe’s first law of travelling by public transport I selected the 10:56 train, which arrived at King’s Cross bang on time at 12:38, giving me oodles of time to walk to the Institute of Education (where the event is happening), deposit my larger bag in the left luggage room, eat my sandwich and locate the venue of my first meeting.

THE FIRST MEETING: GENDER AND SEXUALITY

This meeting which took place in Clarke Hall was bedevilled by technical problems but nevertheless a very fine meeting. Just some of the things covered were Istanbul Pride (over 100,000 last year, attacked by riot police this year), the votes for gay marriage in Ireland and the USA, and two high profile transgender cases, Kelly Maloney (who was formerly boxing promoter Frank Maloney) and Caitlyn Jenner (formerly 1976 Olympic gold medal decathlon winner Bruce Jenner).

It also introduced me to an acronym: TERF which stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. The example cited was Janice Raymond.

Before moving on to the second meeting, here are some photos from these early stages of the event…

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Our main speaker at this meeting, Laura Miles.
Our main speaker at this meeting, Laura Miles.

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MEETING 2: ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND SECULAR STAGNATION

i went to this meeting after a last minute change of heart, and regretted the decision. Although there were some points of interest, it was the one meeting I have been at so far (near the end of Saturday) that I did not particularly enjoy. However, I have some photographs…

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Andrew Kliman, main speaker at the second meeting I attended.
Andrew Kliman, main speaker at the second meeting I attended.

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