Blue shirts, blue buildings, blue ribbons. It’s Autism awareness month again ain’t it? Every year I have to watch the same damn thing unfold. Once again Autism Speaks is out on another mission to sound the alarm about a threat that doesn’t exist in order to pull in money that won’t go towards helping the very people the organization has sought out to exploit. You’d think creating this panic about Autism would be more played out than Drake songs on the radio but, unfortunately they’re always at it and have gotten increasingly more successful at duping unsuspecting people into throwing money at an organization that does not give a flying fuck what us Autistics actually have to say. For an organization called Autism Speaks, y’all sure as hell do a lot of the speaking for us. Due to the organization’s heavy presence during the month of April, people automatically assume that these guys are the gold standard of Autism organizations. Unfortunately, these guys have been responsible for a lot of the negative stigma surrounding Autism. Famous pieces like Susanne Wright’s “A Call to Action”, the documentary “Sounding the Alarm and, “I Wish My Kids Had Cancer: A Family Surviving the Autism Epidemic” seek to make Autism so scary that people will run to their senators and force them to provide more funding to Autism research,. Now don’t get me wrong Autism is still one of the least funded disorders but, the type of research Autism Speaks is seeking has all the wrong intentions behind it. They see Autism as something that should be eliminated instead of trying to advocate for better supports that would allow those on the spectrum to be the best possible versions of themselves. I shall leave you with a few things to think about. Continue reading →