cllynchauthor:

Autism $peaks

Let’s not argue over whether autistic people want to be cured. Because it doesn’t matter.

Many people, autistic and allistic alike, are under the misapprehension that Autism $peaks is seeking for cures and/or treatments for autism.

Some autistic people say they support it because they would love to be able to understand the NT experience and be more comfortable in the NT world.

Yeah… so I went to the Autism Speaks website and looked into their research.

It seems to boil down to three categories:

1. A project that examines genetic causes of autism, which they call Missing, because they think we have something missing. They plan to use this knowledge to prevent autistic children from being born or to try to replace the thing that’s “missing”. Because we aren’t whole people I guess. Because being different means being broken.

2. Research into autistic “medicines” to make us stim less, have fewer meltdowns etc. Rather than, oh, say, letting us stim so we don’t meltdown in the first place.

3. Funding research into behavioural therapies that force autistic children to stop stimming, look people in they eye and generally act more like NTs. Note that many autistics who have received these treatments often say it makes their personal experience worse because they feel like being their natural selves is wrong or bad and when deprived of comforting stims their anxiety levels and discomfort increase.

None of this is going to help us understand NTs. None of this is aimed at making us enjoy life as an autistic person more.

All of it seems directed at preventing NTs from having to deal with or understand us.

That’s not a cure.

That’s a paper bag for our heads.