Thread by @SachaJones93

I just have one thing to say about #AutismAwarenessWeek and that is this;
It’s fucking disgusting.

Look, I get you want to seem like you’re helping the autistic community, but so called ‘awareness’ is not the way to do that.
Most people are already aware of autism anyway.

What autistic people want is acceptance.

You can trust me on that one. I’m autistic. I don’t want people to be aware of me.
I want people to accept me for me, even though I speak straight, even though I flap my hands sometimes, even though I talk about Captain America for ages.

I don’t want people to fucking stare at me for one day out of the year and the rest of the year, go back to making fun of my autistic behaviour and traits.

This is where awareness doesn’t serve anyone except Autism Parents, or, the worst kind of people in the world. Now, I’m not talking about parents of autistic kids in general. I’m talking about a specific type of parent.

The parents that post photos and videos of their children having meltdowns and constantly invalidate the experiences and feelings of autistic people, including their kids, who they send to abusive ‘therapy’ so they can appear neurotypical.

I’m grateful and extremely lucky that my parents never did that to me. But I’m getting off track.

I know this thread is going to rile some people up. But I want you to actually read properly what is being said here. If you want to help autistic people, you can start by ignoring Autism $peaks (they don’t speak for me!) and start listening to #ActuallyAutistic voices.

I’m going to tell you now, why Autism $peaks are bad and why #ActuallyAutistic people, like myself, consider them to be a hate group.
1) Of all the money they raise, all the hundreds of thousands of dollars, only 4% of it goes to ‘helping’ autistic people.

2) The ‘I Am Autism’ video. Ugh. It’s just... it portrays autism as some kind of kidnapper that will take your children. I was never kidnapped as a child. I am still here. I am not suffering. I do not have any deadly disease that is worse than diabetes, AIDS and cancer combined.

3) If you’re wondering why I brought Autism $peaks into a thread criticising autism ‘awareness’, then it’s because they started autism awareness. Except they aren’t spreading it. They’re spreading fear and hatred. Something that can only be cured with acceptance and love.

4) Light it Up Blue. I cannot express how much I simultaneously loathe and fear that awful campaign. The colour is blue because apparently autism only affects boys.
Okay... so what am I? Invisible?

5) The Autism Every Day video. In this video, a mother talks about how she wanted to drive her car off a bridge , with her and her autistic kid inside, but didn’t because of her neurotypical child. And the kicker, she said this in front of her autistic kid.

6) When I started writing this list, I should have said ‘in no particular order’. It is in no particular order.
So remember that bit about the hundreds of thousands of dollars? Yeah, 22% of that goes on advertising, basically making those horrid videos.

7) Their end goal is to ‘end autism’. Autism is... well, it’s genetic. If a kid has it, chances are a parent’s going to be on the spectrum too. The whole ‘ending autism’ thing reeks of eugenics. You can’t cure autism without a brain transplant.

8) They compare autistic kids to a crisis, like they’ve been kidnapped or fallen ill to a deadly disease, except...
Nobody’s missing and nobody’s deathly ill. It’s gravely insulting to parents whose kids have gone missing or died of a deadly illness.

9) They treat Autism Parents like martyrs, like they’re holy saints for ‘putting up with’ their autistic children.
No. You shouldn’t be putting up with any of your children. If you’re not prepared to have a disabled child, then you’re not prepared for children. It’s so simple.

10) Just look up what John Elder Robison had to say about Autism $peaks.

I could go on from here, but a quick google search for ‘Autism Speaks is bad’ or ‘Autism Speaks is a hate group’ will get you all the information you need to know-with links too.

But if you want, here is a masterpost to some of the better links, to websites such as Forbes, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post.
medium.com/@KirstenSchult…

I hate participating in ‘Autism Awareness’, because it was created by such a bad ‘charity’. I hate this time of year because when I try to tell people this, they get rage-y and fly off the handle defensively. I

I hate when I tell people not to support Autism Speaks and tell them that I’m autistic, that they tell me that I’m not as bad as their cousin’s uncle’s nephew’s barber’s milkman’s niece’s barmaid’s daughter’s brother and I don’t know what actual autism is. I’m #ActuallyAutistic.

I hate being called a burden. I hate being called missing. I hate being treated as bough I’m invisible, because I happen to have female genitalia. I hate being treated as if I’ve ‘grown out of’ Autism, because I’m 24.

You don’t grow out of autism. It’s there for life.

I hate being treated as ‘vaccine damaged’. I never even had the MMR vaccine because my mother was an antivaxxer. Well... I had other vaccines and I eventually had my MMR vaccine. But not when I was 3 or 4 or whatever the age is.

Also, to me, an autistic person, antivaxxers not vaccinating their children feels like an insult. You have all these wonderful preventatives to these horrid, deathly and paralysing diseases and you’re not taking them? I-I can’t understand.

Seriously, help me out here. Do you think so lowly of autistic people that you’d rather a dead child to an autistic one?
If you answered yes, do you have any idea how insulting that sounds and how damaging that is?

Damaging because some people, like kids with cancer or those allergic to vaccines, can’t be vaccinated and depend on herd immunity to keep them safe from, say, the measles. If you don’t vaccinate little Timmy, his friend, little Johnny who has neuroblastoma could catch measles.

And if he catches measles, then because of the chemotherapy, Johnny’s probably going to die. Maybe your little Timmy will too. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll just be left deaf or blind. Or both. And maybe he’ll be autistic anyway on top of that. So congrats. You done fucked up.

I know it won’t be the last time anybody anywhere says this, but vaccines do not cause autism! Take it from an autistic person, it’s always best to vaccinate your kids. If you aren’t prepared to vaccinate your kids, then you shouldn’t have kids.

Here is a wonderful autistic charity that’s run by and for autistic people. I suggest you support this instead of the highly damaging Autism Speaks.
autisticadvocacy.org
But if you’re a feminist, maybe try this one.
autismwomensnetwork.org

There are so many more wonderful charities out there, helping autistic people. I ask on other #ActuallyAutistic people to weigh in, if they wish to, about #autismacceptance vs #AutismAwareness and about #autismspeaks.

Thank you for listening, if you did. I know it’s a long thread, but whatever. If you’re just going to pile on hate, you can, I’m just not going to be listening. I have to save my spoons, see. If you have a genuine question, I will do my best to answer.