2022 Ally’s Guide for Autism Acceptance Month

Image description: two rows of text, with the top saying AUTISM NEVER SPEAKS (with autism and speaks in blue and never in red) and bottom saying UNLESS AUTISTIC PEOPLE ARE TALKING in black text with a light purple background

Today is World Autism Day, or what autistic activists alternatively call “Autism Acceptance Month” or “hell month.” It’s a month where people light it up blue globally  for Autism $peaks (in 2017 basically every landmark in over 150 countries lit it up blue according to their website which I’m not giving traffic and multiple countries have done it in the years since), the hate group I have written about 5 times and made this toolkit with a lot of different resources and talking points to help people fight their supporters including those articles. Years ago I made a guide but am revamping it for this year with some updated information.

For myself and a lot of autistics this month is hell. It’s when the whole world joins together to support an organization that is incredibly harmful to us and has fueled and fed off of stigma against us for the past 17 years. It makes me want to hide in a hole and not come out until May 1st, last year I spent the whole doing whatever it took to get my mind off of the hatred represented in the blue lights and puzzle pieces (a symbol for autism that has a long history of being horrible before AS). A lot of businesses will be making partnerships for the month for portions of any profit or of a certain product going to them (in addition to their 10 year-round corporate sponsors) along with the infinite well-intentioned people who are going to be lighting it up blue intending to be supportive of us unknowingly reinforcing our oppression.

While my articles on allies are…often my most incendiary, we need you this month because the more activist-oriented an autistic is, the more the utter futility of standing against this behemoth is rubbed in. It’s always there though I can usually ignore it but April focuses it like a laser into my brain so it’s impossible to not feel the lurking despair.

If you want to help us, you can start now. This flyer from last year shows their budgeting (they spend .16% on family services and a total of 40% on lobbying, advertising, and fundraising, 250 times as much), key facts, and alternative organizations to donate to (although my current recommendation is Foundation for Divergent Minds, an all-queer mostly-POC led organization operating off the principle “What if we didn’t break autistic children?” To this end they have both an educational model and classes designed to assist both caregivers and professionals in supporting their autistic kids/students. Please join me in supporting this organization that is actually led by multiply marginalized individuals and doing great work). I would recommend printing them and giving them to places that supported AS last year, they’re in color but shouldn’t be affected if printed grayscale. Also please boycott places that are supporting them for the month, it’s not that long and they don’t need the help.

My usual tactic when talking to people (I talk about this…a lot in person) is drawing attention to their vile ad campaigns. First and most horrid is “Autism Every Day” (transcript here), which was so terrible it had me breaking down crying wondering why they hated us so much. In particular, I mention the mom talking about wanting to drive her autistic daughter off of a bridge, with said daughter in her lap, and the only thing stopping her was having an allistic (non-autistic) daughter. Second is “I Am Autism” (transcript here) which had a creepy stalker voice saying that autism ruins marriages, is faster than pediatric AIDS diabetes and cancer combined, and makes it so you can’t go into public without struggle, embarrassment, or pain…I’m linking the transcripts instead of the videos because I’m only willing to put myself through so much suffering to write this and can’t handle actually seeing and hearing them.

Most (regrettably not all) people have issues with Nazis which is why I mention to people that they almost had the Soldiers of Odin, a very obviously named Neonazi group, at one of their fundraisers until people pointed out who they were, more info in the aptly named Autism Speaks: How Long Does It Take to Look into It?

The last point I make (after the others because it…might be taken skeptically on its own) is that no autistic activist was surprised by them having Nazis at their fundraiser because they’re eugenicist as well. A bold claim but…still accurate. They spend the second-most money on research to find the cause and a cure (with the death of their founder they found a thesaurus and use “solution” now) for autism. Another organization that is trying to find the cause and cure of something they think is horrible, the American Cancer Society, is looking for the cause so they can prevent it from existing in the first place. When trying to do that for a neurology instead of a disease that is eugenics.

So, there’s a lot of stuff for what not to do, there are however multiple ways to do things that do actually support us. Instead of lighting it up blue for them, try lighting it up gold or do #RedInstead (I wrote both a nice and a pissed-off article for that). Instead of a puzzle piece, try the rainbow infinity symbol of the neurodiversity movement or the autistic specific gold infinity symbol. If you want to suggest organizations to donate to the donation link for FDM is here (note because some people are going to be shocked by their exclusion, but I no longer support ASAN due to the many concerns listed here and the description of working there from the FDM founder here, FDM is unique because it is mostly led by extremely underrepresented autistic POC and they deserve support a lot more than the giant organization that plagiarized an Indigenous person and hired a crisis firm to bully them for speaking out). If you want to get our voices heard instead of theirs here’s a list of a lot of great pages and blogs from my friends. Instead of calling for awareness call for acceptance instead (you’re already aware of our existence, now we need a world that accepts us as equal humans. Also, awareness months are for horrible things, as this list shows April is also STD and IBS awareness month). Last but not least, check in on your autistic friends this month, it’s really hard and your support will matter quite a bit.

-Laoch Onórach

Autism Speaks Resource Toolkit

One of the main aspects of my activism has been spreading awareness (to steal their term) of how horrible Autism Speaks is as they are the main organization that people think of when it comes to autism and also a hate group. As I’ve been doing this for three years now I have amassed multiple resources including my own writing to cover the problems with them.

I asked on my page An Articulate Autistic if people would be interested in resources to also become better activists and advocates against the organization which has been screwing us over for the past twelve years and the answer was a resounding yes so I thought I would make it…and then completely blanked on it for probably months.

This collection isn’t just a dump of links (though I do have an aggregate of many links in here), but organized in argumentative points to better equip you to articulate issues.

Better much late than never, here they are:

• You See A Puzzle Piece was a poem-esque thing that I wrote before I started on the old blog was originally a Facebook note/mental allergic reaction to seeing a plaque in an old job, it’s what comes to my mind when I see the symbol
• You Have The Choice was my nice Autism Acceptance article from last April asking people to choose acceptance.
• A Red Rage #RedInstead was my article this year demanding people to accept us because acceptance of our humanity shouldn’t be a choice but a moral obligation (note on language: Autism Awareness Month is what A$ calls April it’s pretty much their main fundraiser. In response autistics have created multiple Autism Acceptance Month movements, including #RedInstead. I started wearing red shirts and shoes for Acceptance the whole of last April [2016] and it’s become my aesthetic).
• Please Don’t Support Autism $peaks was a letter I wrote to a sorority that has become an aggregate for links. While it has the stuff that I’m linking in here its main design was to overwhelm with a total of 20 links from various sources (autistics, autistic mothers of autistic children, allistic mothers of autistic children, and The Daily Beast along with various others), it wasn’t really meant to be read as much as show there’s a lot of people, I’m putting my favorite ones in here.
• Why You Should Not Support Autism Speaks is a persuasive essay I did for my class for teaching writing, I linked the sources of information within the essay like I would with an article in the doc, it’s definitely more professional and it does do something others don’t, give a fair mention of the arguments that the opposition would make. I don’t usually do that because thinking about the arguments people make to support a hate group kinda hurts and they’re wrong and don’t deserve my time in articles (some of the info is now outdated).

Now for the other useful tools:

• Honestly, this is one that shouldn’t be arguable, their horrific I Am Autism ad. I share the transcript because I have sensory processing issues and I couldn’t handle the stalkerish voice from the perspective of autism saying horrible stuff about us. Read at your own risk, it’s…really bad.
• If that doesn’t work here’s a much worse ad…Autism Every Day, this is so bad it made me break down crying wondering why they hate us so much. The only one still in my head is a mom talked about wanting to drive her autistic daughter off of a bridge with said daughter in her lap and saying the only thing stopping her was having an allistic (non-autistic) daughter.
• The main therapy that A$ supports is Applied Behavioral Analysis or ABA. It’s also child abuse, designed to make us look allistic by forcing us to suppress behaviors that are coping mechanisms. Julia Bascom wrote her perspective from going through it in Quiet Hands (with the haunting line “And when you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. It’s therapy) and my friend at Ink & Daggers Illustration wrote this view from the perspective of an ABA therapist which I call by the first line “First time I hurt a child”. It’s also the main therapy which is why you’ll get “Not my ABA” apologists. The thing is, as this article Screams, Slaps, and Love shows, it’s the original form (the article is as bad as you would think an article with slaps and love regarding autism would be, but it’s about the creator of it). There’s a form of it that many have called “diet ABA” which only has positive reinforcement but as this picture shows it’s still dog training (edit: here’s a dog trainer saying it’s worse than dog training) if you just use treats to reinforce behaviors that might harm us (stimming is a coping mechanism and eye contact takes focus away from me and hurts others) instead of using a spray bottle and treats (spray bottle is actually used and the treats are skittles when it’s humans). This is an autistic reading of The ME Book which is the original manual…this is real ABA. One place, the Judge Rotenberg Center, uses electric shock in order to do this, a fellow activist made this masterpost on that horrible place. (edit: awesome masterpost on ABA resources) 
• They use a blue puzzle piece as their symbol, they weren’t the original to use it for autism so Why you need to stop using the puzzle piece to represent autistic people is useful for the history and why it’s a problem and their blue is because blue is for boys and only boys get autism, which isn’t true at all. According to the CDC, the diagnosis rate is currently 1 in 45 and 4 times as many diagnoses are male, which is solely due to diagnostic criteria problems and societal misconceptions, the latter of which isn’t helped by the fact that the main organization reinforces this myth with their color scheme. You See A Puzzle Piece was my mental allergic reaction to seeing it in the break room at Sprouts (a corporation that used to donate 1 million to AS)
• This is a handy printable flyer showing their financials (they spend .16% on family services and a total of 40% on lobbying, advertising, and fundraising, 250 times as much) It also shows that they spend the second-largest amount on research for the cause and cure (their mission statement now says solutions but they found a thesaurus after the co-founder died) for autism…a point my teacher said was too much but still accurate is that another organization that looks for the cause and cure of something they consider to be horrible is the American Cancer Society…and the reason for they’re looking for a cause is to prevent it from existing in the first place…and when it comes to trying to prevent a neurology from existing that’s eugenics. 
• From other bloggers, the Caffeinated Autistic made this bulleted masterpost and Radical Neurodivergence Speaking wrote this beautiful Autism Awareness piece I’m aware of your hate.
• Most people have major issues with Nazis and would regard organizations as suspect if they would allow them at their fundraisers…which isn’t a common situation, but was the case with an A$ fundraiser in Canada which was going to let the Soldiers of Odin walk until multiple people called them out on it. They responded saying they would look into it, which honestly considering the first article that pops up is this Wikipedia article calling them an “anti-immigrant street patrol group” it should have been rather easy to look it up beforehand. However, no autistic activist I know was surprised…Nazis and A$ both hate autistic/disabled people, so they’re natural allies.
• For a much better charity to support and recommend, my current recommendation is Foundation for Divergent Minds, an all-queer mostly-POC led organization operating off the principle “What if we didn’t break autistic children?” To this end they have both an educational model and classes designed to assist both caregivers and professionals in supporting their autistic kids/students. Please join me in supporting this organization that is actually led by multiply marginalized individuals and doing great work.

They have the advantage in every single way, but something we do have is our voices. So please boost ours and speak against them.