Autism Awareness Month:

This is always a hard month for those of us who are autistic, or for parents who love their autistic kids. This month has been turned into a fund-raising event for Autism Speaks, an organisation with a TERRIBLE human rights record, which exists primarily to make money for its board, and also, to fund research into eradicating autism.

The only way to get rid of autism, is to get rid of autistic people.

I’ll say that one more time: the only way to get rid of autism, is to get rid of autistic people.

Autism like being left-handed, or being gay, or having red hair–these are things you can hide, but they are always a part of you. Denying that, trying to eradicate it from yourself, can only cause harm. In coming weeks, I hope to talk about “masking” and how harmful it is to autistics; it is, essentially, the same thing as left-handed people being forced to write with their right hand, and it causes untold psychological damage (bed-wetting, regression to a younger age, meltdowns which are sometimes mistaken for behavioural problems, PTSD, etc).

This month, I hope to share some links about autism, and I’m going to start with the history of Autism Speaks. You can find many posts on this subject, especially within the autistic community, but this one is relatively short and the links to Autism Speaks videos seem to work, so this is a good introduction.

Some of this is harrowing–one video made by Autism Speaks features a “mother” (I use the term loosely) who talks about wanting to commit child murder IN FRONT OF HER CHILD, for one thing–so be gentle with yourself:

https://swirlymind.wordpress.com/2017/03/11/please-dont-support-autism-speaks/