Dr. Temple Grandin is a prolific author 1, beloved professor2, and world-renowned expert of animal welfare and autism 3 4 5. She is also the most famous autistic person in the world6 and has made animal agriculture drastically more humane.7 8 9 Grandin has championed both these marginalized groups despite being laden with extraordinary personal challenges. 10 11 12
Though Grandin’s autism has helped her empathize with animals13 and design guidelines and technology for handling animals,14 15 her autism was not always an asset. It caused her to struggle in school 16 and suffer socially. 17 18 On top of that she faced extreme sexual discrimination when she began to work with livestock 19 20.
She reflected “I didn’t know which was my greater handicap, being a woman or having autism.” For example, when Grandin began working with cattle in the seventies she was explicitly told “no girls were allowed”. 21 22 When she was undeterred, her colleagues smeared bull testicles on her car. 23
Fortunately, it would take more than disabilities, sexists, and testicles to stop Temple Grandin. She went on to earn a place on the national Women’s Hall of Fame1, the American Academy of Arts and Science24 and TIME’s list of the top 100 most influential people in 2010.25 Grandin doesn’t define herself by her autism 26 so perhaps what truly sets her apart and best explains her incredible success is her selflessness.
After Grandin’s TED talk about the importance of embracing autistic people, she was asked “What are you most passionate about?” She answered without hesitation “I’m passionate that the things I do are going to make the world a better place.” 27 28
The CDC’s definition of autism: “Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges. There is often nothing about how people with ASD look that sets them apart from other people, but people with ASD may communicate, interact, behave, and learn in ways that are different from most other people. The learning, thinking, and problem-solving abilities of people with ASD can range from gifted to severely challenged. Some people with ASD need a lot of help in their daily lives; others need less.
–https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/facts.html accessed on 01/08/22
[1] As of 2017 she “published 12 books and several hundred publications on topics ranging from autism through to livestock handling, temperament and fertility as well as environmental enrichment and animal safety.”
-“Introducing the 2017 NWHF Inductees.” National Women’s Hall of Fame, 18 Sept. 2017, https://www.womenofthehall.org/introducing-2017-nwhf-inductees/.
[2] “Temple also defines herself as a professor, and her colleagues and students agree that she is both effective and beloved… ‘She’s much beloved by her students. She’s utterly devoted to them. They follow her around like puppy dogs,’ said [colleague and Prof.] Bernard Rollin.”
-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[3] “ ‘Temple has been to domestic animals what Jane Goodall has been to primates,’ said Dr. Bernard Rollin of Colorado State University… Temple has provided many tools for progressive practices using principles from scientific literature and personal experience. ‘If the animals on America’s factory farms got together to award an Animal Nobel Prize, they would surely give it to Temple Grandin,’ says Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food.”
-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[4] “Temple Grandin – the Influence of Her Literature on Animal Welfare Policy.”–CABI Blog, 28 Nov. 2016, https://blog.cabi.org/2016/11/28/temple-grandin-the-influence-of-her-literature-on-animal-welfare-policy/.
[5] She “is considered one of the world’s renowned experts in two fields: animal welfare and autism. Few people ever achieve her level of expertise and fame in one area, much less two… [she] is a professor considered to be among the world’s most knowledgeable in her field.”-Phifer, Tony. “Temple Grandin – CSU’s One-of-a-Kind Mind.” Colorado State University’s SOURCE, Colorado State University, 5 Dec. 2019, https://source.colostate.edu/temple-grandin/.
[6] “The combination of her books, the HBO movie and her hundreds of speaking engagements around the globe have made her, inarguably, the most famous autistic person in the world.”And “’The interesting thing about traveling with Temple is it’s kind of like walking through the airport with a rock star,’ he said. ‘When you sit down in the lounge area or something like that, no matter what country we’re in, people are constantly coming up for autographs or wanting to have their pictures taken with her. She’s truly famous.’”
-Phifer, Tony. “Temple Grandin – CSU’s One-of-a-Kind Mind.” Colorado State University’s SOURCE, Colorado State University, 5 Dec. 2019, https://source.colostate.edu/temple-grandin/.
[7] Grandin explains in her autobiography: “Throughout my career I have worked on systems to improve the treatment of livestock. The principle behind my designs is to use the animals’ natural behavior patterns to encourage them to move willingly through the system.”- Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
The North American Meat Institute published Grandin’s estimate that in North America “50 percent of cattle and 20 percent of pigs are processed in plants that use my designs. More than 90 percent of cattle and pigs are processed in plants which are audited using the AMI Animal Care & Handling Guidelines and Audit Guide that I wrote. Surveys show that very few plants don’t use these principles today.”
- North American Meat Institute. If Meat Plants Had Glass Walls…, North American Meat Institute, Washington, D.C, https://animalhandling.org/sites/default/files/documents/Meat%20Plants%20Glass%20Walls%20Brochure.pdf. Accessed 8 Jan. 2022.
– “Introducing the 2017 NWHF Inductees.” National Women’s Hall of Fame, 18 Sept. 2017, https://www.womenofthehall.org/introducing-2017-nwhf-inductees/.
[9] “Using her ability to observe the world through an animal’s eye, she has been able to make an enormous impact on animal welfare. Her greatest achievement [up until 2006] has been in the area of slaughterhouses – she has fundamentally changed the way animals are held and slaughtered.”-“Horizon – The Woman Who Thinks like a Cow.” BBC, BBC, 8 June 2006, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/temple/.
[10] “She’s renowned worldwide as a speaker, has written many books—two on the New York Times best-seller list—and has educated a new generation. This woman, who had to be taught how to talk, has given voice to two formerly voiceless groups: animals and people with autism. For those with autism who can talk, Temple has added greatly to our understanding of the condition.She’s also contributed a great deal to our understanding of animals. Her insights into animal awareness are fascinating and groundbreaking. Born with a disability severe enough that, had she been born into different circumstances, it would have required her to be institutionalized, Temple Grandin turned her disability into an asset. Her story is one of profound courage and determination.”
“Though born with severe autism, Temple has become a beacon of hope for those with autism. ‘Temple broke through the barriers of autism to show that people with autism and Asperger’s add value to our society,” said Dr. Kurt Vogel of the University of Wisconsin in River Falls, one of Temple’s former students.”
-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[11] “She is revered by animal rights groups and members of autistic community, perhaps because in both regards she is a voice for those who are sometimes challenged to make themselves heard.”-“Temple Grandin.” TED, https://www.ted.com/speakers/temple_grandin.
[12] “Grandin possessed an awareness that intense fear, born of a hypersensitivity to sound and touch, is common both to autistic people and to animals, and she devoted her life to devising systems to alleviate the anxiety of both groups.”– Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Temple Grandin”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Aug. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Temple-Grandin. Accessed 30 November 2021
[13] Grandin wrote in her autobiography: “Being autistic has helped me to understand how they [cattle] feel, because I know what it is like to feel my heart race when a car horn honks in the middle of the night. I have hyperacute senses and fear responses that may be more like those of a prey-species animal than of most humans.”And “You can read Animals in Translation to see my full views on how autistic thinking and animal thinking are similar. Briefly, the most important similarity is that both animals and people with autism can think without language.”
-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
[14] “A great deal of my success in working with animals comes from the simple fact that I see all kinds of connections between their behavior and certain autistic behaviors”-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
[15] “Dr Temple Grandin has a unique ability to understand the animal mind – and she’s convinced her skill is down to her autistic brain. Temple believes she experiences life like an animal. Her emotions are much simpler than most people’s and she feels constantly anxious. It’s this struggle with overwhelming anxiety that led her to discover just how much she has in common with animals and, in particular, cows. Using her ability to observe the world through an animal’s eye, she has been able to make an enormous impact on animal welfare.”-“Horizon – The Woman Who Thinks like a Cow.” BBC, BBC, 8 June 2006, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/temple/.
[16] Grandin wrote in her autobiography “I was a miserable, bored student and I did not study until I was mentored by Mr. Carlock, my high school science teacher”“There were two kinds of college courses: easy ones, like biology, history, and English, and impossible ones, like math and French. Mr. Dion, the math teacher, spent hours with me after each class. Almost every day I went to his office and reviewed the entire day ‘s lecture. I also had to spend hours with a tutor to get through French. “
-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
[17] “Few people had heard of autism in the 1970s. They only knew Temple radiated weirdness… Temple saw that her isolated social life was symbolically epitomized in an image of glass. ‘She was a graduate student in her twenties, washing the bay window of a cafeteria, which consisted of a series of glass sliding doors. Slipping between the two doors to clean them, Temple suddenly found herself trapped inside. ‘It was almost impossible to communicate through the glass,’ she writes. ‘Being autistic is like being trapped like this.’”-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[18] Grandin wrote in her autobiography: “When I was in high school being teased by the other kids, I was miserable. The only place I was not teased was during horseback riding and model rocket club.”-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
[19] Grandin wrote in her autobiography: “What people call sexual harassment today is nothing compared to what I went through.”-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
[20] “‘You can’t believe how hard it was for Temple,’ said Jim Uhl, president of Agate Construction Company in Scottsdale, Arizona. ‘I remember one guy said, ‘I won’t have any woman teach me how to do cattle facilities!’”-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[21] Grandin wrote in her autobiography: “I remember the time when I drove into Scottsdale feed yard and walked up to the door that led into the cattle working area, and a man named Ron put his hand on the door and said that no girls were allowed. Back in the early seventies, no women worked in feedlots. Today many do, and many yards prefer women for handling and doctoring cattle, because they are gentler than men. But back then I didn’t know which was my greater handicap, being a woman or having autism.”-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.
[22] “Especially for women, she created jobs [in the cattle industry]. ‘Until I came along, secretaries were the only women in this industry’ said Temple”-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[23] “Many of the workers and managers taunted her as she broke into this formerly all-male world. Temple was an anomaly as a woman in the world of cowboys, construction workers, and slaughterhouse employees. The men decorated Temple’s car with bull testicles. They showed her the blood pit on several occasions. Finally, Temple splattered blood all over the plant manager.”-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[24] “American Academy of Arts and Sciences Elects…”–American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 20 Apr. 2016, https://www.amacad.org/news/american-academy-arts-and-sciences-elects-213-national-and-international-scholars-artists.
[25] Hauser, Marc. “The 2010 TIME 100.”–Time, Time Inc., 29 Apr. 2010, http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984949_1985222,00.html.
[26] “She’s also explained autism from the inside, but her autism remains secondary. ‘Don’t focus so much on autism that you forget everything else,’ Temple says. She certainly follows her own advice…. Temple is known worldwide for overcoming the challenges of autism, but her primary identity isn’t autism. She thinks of herself as an expert on livestock, a scientist, and a professor.”-Wood, Annette. Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless. Perseus Distribution Services, 2016.
[27] Grandin, Temple. “The World Needs All Kinds of Minds.”–TED, Feb. 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.
[28] She expresses similar sentiments in her autobiography: “I am motivated by tangible accomplishment, and I want to make a positive contribution to society. “-Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2006.