You cannot maintain conservative political leanings and be an ethical BCBA.
I said what I said.
“Unity” and “respecting opinions” have been buzzwords since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It sparked a lot of us to think, potentially for the first time in our lives, that maybe some opinions are actually right and others wrong– that there is a limit to “agree to disagree.” As such, an overwhelming majority of discussion groups in the ABA world began expressing and reinforcing increasingly leftist viewpoints. Those expressing conservative viewpoints often had their behavior punished and found themselves feeling shunned for their “beliefs and values.” Every now and then, someone would create a post announcing their departure on the grounds of feeling discriminated against for, say, voting for Trump.
Usually that person would find themselves eviscerated in the comment section within minutes– and it was kind of hilarious.
Things taste better when seasoned with bigoted tears.
Why should opinions matter?
I’m not saying we can’t ever agree to disagree. I know of people who willingly put pineapple on pizza, and I still manage to be friends with them (most of the time). I remember having heated discussions with my friends over who was hotter, Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt (100% Team Leo in 1997). Preferences on subjective topics are inconsequential in the long run (even if pineapple is a gross insult to pizza’s inherent greatness, and Leo is a solid 10), but people tend to overgeneralize “respecting opinions” and take it to an extreme. There is a big difference between Leo’s inarguable sexiness and a person’s right to exist and access healthcare. Some things are not subjective or inconsequential.
While these are opinions by the specific definition of the word, the subjectivity of these opinions is called into question when you dig deeper. World views that are discriminatory are often based on religious conviction and/or incorrect understandings of the underlying complexities in the given subject. Both of those come with their own specific sets of problems, but the focus today, as it always should be, is on the client.
Dangerous opinions
Let’s consider the general opinions expressed by the conservative party as a whole between 2016 and 2021 (because the party went through a lot of… change… during that time period). The overwhelming majority of conservative voters are against trans people’s rights to exist and live as their true gender, instead insisting that they should live only as the gender they were assigned at birth.
Autistics are 3-6 times more likely than neurotypical people to identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth (Warrier, V. et al., Nat Commun. 11, 2020).
If you receive a client who is expressing gender nonconformity, are you going to properly support them? All clients have the right to effective treatment, though the term “effective” is itself subjective. What if the client’s family also disagrees with a person’s right to express the gender that fits them (i.e. they agree with the hypothetical “you” here). There is now overwhelming pressure from the family and your own belief system to do not what is best for the client, but what is most comfortable for those around them.
Many conservatives will argue “I don’t have a problem with it, just so long as they don’t try to push their lifestyle on me,” or “it’s not my values, but people can do whatever they want.”
First of all, I call bullshit on all of that. I’ve had enough interactions with conservatives on this topic to know that it is never that benign.
People who make those arguments are also incredibly ignorant about trans issues and gender as a whole, even if they think they aren’t (lookin’ at you, J.K. Rowling). Those statements alone grossly oversimplify the issues. Yet, I have never heard a single person claim they wouldn’t treat an individual who was not cisgender. On the contrary, in an attempt to further drive home the point of how not prejudiced they are, they insist that they would absolutely take on that client and treat them with the best of their ability!
Great, but that’s unethical.
Ever heard of practicing outside of your scope? If you think it’s OK to check people’s genitals before allowing them into a bathroom, because “all people with penises are child molesters,” you are in no way qualified to treat that individual. If you think science actually supports that there are only 2 genders or even only 2 sexes (neither of those statements are true), you are way out of your scope on this one.
Your beliefs are also absolutely going to come through in your treatment. If you believe that behaving and presenting in any way other than what is expected from the gender you were assigned at birth is inherently wrong, there is no way you are going to provide the proper support for that client to be their authentic self. You are going to emit microaggressions, say problematic things, and dismiss massive problems because you think they are trivial. If you maintain that belief system, all behaviors to the contrary are going to make you uncomfortable and your client is absolutely going to pick up on that.
In short, you will do damage by attempting to treat that individual, even if you make every effort to put your own beliefs aside.
Also, can we talk about the sheer hypocrisy of behaving in one way and voting in another? How can you say you really want to help an individual when you are attempting to help pass legislation that would make life harder, if not dangerous, for that person? You cannot have both. At that point, it doesn’t matter what you say or do in your client’s presence, your voting practices are doing them harm.
There is no middle ground here.
A person’s right to exist is not a personal belief
You do not get to decide who is acceptable and who isn’t, and then turn around and put yourself into a position of power over a member of a marginalized group. This is especially true when the person in question has limitations with communication and/or social skills. They also likely have learning histories that reinforce submission and punish self-advocacy. Especially with your own gaps in competence regarding these complex subjects, there’s no way you can not do harm.
You see, this is where the left started to polarize. Attempting to control another group’s levels of freedom just because some people find them “icky” is pretty scary for those of us who passed middle school history. Things such as access to proper healthcare and freedom from humiliation cannot depend on a person’s appearance, sex organs, or disability. Deciding that any group should not exist on these bases leaves no good choices. Either that group is forced to assimilate to whatever the ruling class finds comfortable at the expense of that group’s own health, or they are eliminated through eugenics or murder.
The belief that certain people are sub-human is literally at the core of ABA, and the source of the rot that haunts the field to this day. If you cannot see your client as equal to you, there is no way you can not violate their rights and cause harm just by simply being in their presence.
Ethical practice and doing better relies on seeing our clients as equally human and deserving of dignity and freedom as much as any other human. It is treating clients the way you would want to be treated if you were in their position. Conservatives are not exactly known for their ability to empathize and relate to others. That’s not a statement of judgement, it’s a statement of fact. Conservative belief is based on imperialism and capitalism. Both of those systems function based on strict social hierarchies that benefit very specific people and only those people, at the expense of others. It’s in direct conflict with removing harmful practices because it seeks to submit marginalized communities and prevent them from rising in society.
You cannot have it both ways.