eldritchesoterica:

Because April is coming and I’m already seeing this on posts concerning Autism Acceptance Month:

If you are allistic (not-autistic) please do not make your usual “my cousin is on the spectrum and I think…” or “I work with autistic kids and I think…” or “my partner is autistic and I think…” comments on our posts about autism or autistic advocacy. Do not.

It doesn’t matter if you agree with what we’re saying. Please understand that you are not helping by intruding in on our conversations, as a speaker who is not autistic, in a world that right now still listens to allistic people who work with autistics over the words of actually autistic speakers.

When you make those comments on our posts, even in support of us, you are reinforcing a world where allistics behave as though they can know as much about autism as we do and feel entitled to speak with equal authority about us. You’re reinforcing a world where I see Autism Parent (an allistic parent of an autistic child, not an autistic person who is a parent) posts on my general news feed at least once a week, allistics talking as though they are an authority on a neurotype they cannot know from the inside. (Seldom do I feel supported by these articles.) You’re reinforcing a world where we are spoken over by allistics, however well-meaning, every day of our lives. You’re reinforcing a world where some autistics are told that we can’t be autistic because we speak too well–because we are only deemed properly autistic if we need allistics to speak for us about autism.

Autism Acceptance Month–that we have renamed because “awareness” wasn’t helping us–is our month. Please step back, quietly like or reblog our posts, and leave us to do the talking.

Link what we say, yes. Reblog it without additional commentary, yes! Please, boost our voices, because our voices are powerful and strong, and it is past time that the world heard what we have to say about autism without the expectation of an allistic voice to explain, translate, emphasise or reinforce.

I’d also remind allistics that autistic advocacy does not start and finish at condemning Autism $peaks. For one, that’s an incredibly singular viewpoint–the #problematic autism organisations tag on my stim blog shows that this goes beyond one organisation and even beyond the US, and that tag does not encompass all damaging and dangerous groups. For another, we autistics are creators and business owners and advocates and communicators and storytellers, and in an allistic-dominated world, having A$ condemned is only part of our battle. Your help in getting our stories to the world is, I’d argue (as an autistic writer struggling myself to find an audience) just as important an act of activism.

In April, donate to the Patreon and Ko-Fi accounts of autistic creators. Donate to the YouCaring accounts of autistics in need. Buy books from autistic writers. Reblog art and promotional posts from autistic artists and makers. Seek out autistic musicians and filmmakers. Link to autistic bloggers and autistic advocates. Celebrate our creativity by sharing our crafts, our stories, our creations, our thoughts, our communications, with your friends and family. Support autistic creators and activists financially so we can keep on making and advocating, and if you can’t help us financially, do what you can to make the world notice us and our work more than it actually does. I swear to you, we autistics have some amazing things to say!

We don’t need you speaking what we are already saying. We desperately need you to help us get our words outside autism spaces into the wider world, and this is where you, our allistic allies, can make an incredible difference to the autistics you care about this April.

Hand us a microphone and help our words reach allistic audiences. Please.