For Autism Awareness Month, Listen to Autistic People

April is Autism Awareness Month. The first thing you need to be aware of is that organizations like Autism Speaks aren’t helping autistic people. They’re harming them. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, I’d like to make you aware of some things.

  1. I don’t have a formal diagnosis, but it’s 99.998% certain your humble blogger is autistic. I’ve done a bunch of assessments for autism overall and how women (girls) present as autistic, and everything comes back as “Whelp, you’re autistic as fuck. Congratulations!”
  2. Note I say I am autistic. Not “I have autism.” Nor “I am a person with autism.” That’s because it’s not a disease or a disability (except insofar as the world isn’t built to accommodate autistic people). It’s the way my brain processes the world. Those personality quirks that make me the unique me that I am? The vast majority come from me being autistic AF.
  3. I don’t want to be cured. I like my autistic self just fine, thank you. So when you say you want to find a cure for autism, it sounds an awful lot like you’re saying you want to erase me and my autistic friends.

That last one’s pretty shocking, right? I mean, we all hear about how horrible and disabling autism is. Pitiable parents appear on television, blogs, and in glossy magazine articles talking about how their bright and beautiful babies suddenly became aloof aliens. No eye contact, no hugs, no words, no love! Meltdowns! Delays! My kid is a lemon and I want my money back! Oh, and it was probably because of vaccines. My abnormal psych book had a whole section devoted to how you could only maybe rescue an autistic kid from a life of certain complete dysfunction and probable institutionalization by devoting yourself full-time to rescuing them. Otherwise, they’d spend all their lives unable to even wipe themselves after taking a shit.

Who wouldn’t want a cure for that terrible disease?

(PS: I assumed I wasn’t autistic for over 40 years because my life wasn’t the empathy-devoid wasteland these folks assured me it should be.)

Only it’s not as bad as all that.

Autistic brains just process things differently from non-autistic brains. A good number of our “disabilities” aren’t so disabling once people make allowances for that fact. Like, if you don’t insist on us making eye contact all the time, we can connect and converse just fine. If you let us do our stims, we won’t melt down so much. If you listen to us, we can tell you just what we need to thrive.

You can even listen to those of us who can’t speak. Technology allows that to happen. Just because a person can’t speak doesn’t mean they don’t have plenty to say.

So, at the end of this post, you’ll find a list of blogs and organizations that will tell you more about autism, what autistic people need, and how you can be a good ally. Now we’ll talk about one way to definitely not be a good ally: Continue reading “For Autism Awareness Month, Listen to Autistic People”

For Autism Awareness Month, Listen to Autistic People
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Not Only Is The Accountant a Shit Movie – It Could Kill You

So. The Accountant’s out. And if anyone thought we were going to get a nuanced film with an autistic hero which doesn’t objectify or other autistic folk, well, looks like they’re wrong. Go read all of the reviews here at my friend Ronja’s Facebook post. I hope you have an ableism bingo card of some sort handy, because you’ll win big just from what the reviewers talk about.

Special notice:  if you’re epileptic or have migraines, or if those health issues run in your family, this movie might physically harm you. More on that later.

If you’re a neurotypical person who goes to this movie and laughs at the awkward things the autistic dude does because hur hur hur he’s awkward, you should probably exit my life until you’ve learned why that shit’s not funny. My autistic friends have a hard enough time in the world neurotypical folk made without you adding to their misery. I mean, seriously, don’t be these jerks: Continue reading “Not Only Is The Accountant a Shit Movie – It Could Kill You”

Not Only Is The Accountant a Shit Movie – It Could Kill You