It's April, So It's Time To Argue About Autism Speaks - NeuroClastic

Every April, social media is bombarded with blue puzzle pieces, “Light it up blue” filters on everyone’s profile picture… and angry autistic people who want it all to stop.

If you’ve ever wondered why, hold onto your butt, because this is going to be a wild ride.

First you need to understand something very important:

Almost everything you have ever learned about autism has come from non-autistic people.

Why does that matter?

Well… mostly because autistic behaviour is so damn confusing to neurotypical people that for decades psychologists and parents have had to guess at why we do the things we do.

Why do autistic kids flap their hands and spend hours staring at light reflections on a wall? Why do they sometimes act totally oblivious of their surroundings, but then do something that seems very intelligent and aware?

Theories abounded. Was it schizophrenia? Many people thought so. Was it inborn? Was it a mental illness?

They had no fricking clue.

So they observed, and took notes, and developed theories, and those theories somehow became fact, and now you hear them repeated every April.

People with autism are incapable of empathy (wrong).

People with autism struggle to escape their autism and need help (inaccurate).

People with autism have obsessive tics that need to be stopped (mostly wrong).

People with autism can’t learn without intense behaviour modification techniques similar to what you would use on a dog (SO VERY WRONG). 

People with autism are intellectually disabled and cannot advocate for themselves (some of us are and some of us aren’t, but we can and do advocate for ourselves).

Autistic people keep speaking up and saying that none of this is accurate, but no one listens to us because everyone knows that REAL autistic people can’t speak for themselves.

For that, we have Autism Speaks.

Autism Speaks is a relatively new organization, but its awareness campaigns were so effective that it spread like a virus, and now its blue puzzle piece logo is considered synonymous with autism.

Autism Speaks was founded in 2005 by Bob Wright – a former NBC executive – and his wife Suzanne after their grandson was diagnosed with autism.

In 2006, they debuted a powerful documentary to raise awareness about autism. Specifically, to let the public know how much the families of autistic people suffered.

The film was screened at the 2006 Sundance Festival and a seven minute version of it is still on the Autism Speaks YouTube channel.

The most notorious part is where Alison Singer, former vice president of NBC and then-executive vice president of Autism Speaks, talks about wanting to drive herself and her autistic daughter off of the George Washington Bridge… in the presence of that same daughter.

Many people living without autism think that “severely autistic” people do not understand what is happening around them.

This is untrue.

And that means her daughter heard her mother talk about committing murder-suicide.

Thanks to the power of MSNBC’s network coverage it is now commonly believed that murder-suicide might be preferable to living with an autistic child.

In 2009, they went a step further and asked Alfonso Cuaron to produce a creepy film called “I Am Autism,” where autism describes itself as a malicious entity coming to destroy families.

Not only did this video present autism as a terrible disease, but it filled the public’s head with false statistics. The divorce rate claim, for example, is entirely false.

Autism Speaks has since removed this video from their channel, but they have never apologized for it.

Autism Speaks’s marketing tactics were powerful and effective.

The founder’s connections to NBC made sure it got airtime and soon its blue puzzle piece and “Light it up blue” campaign took over the US, and absorbed three other autism charities, including Cure Autism Now.

The Wrights’ daughter, Katie, firmly believes that her son’s autism resulted from vaccine damage– a myth that science had already discredited in 2005.

Autism Speaks spent a significant portion of its scientific spending on studies investigating a link between autism and vaccines –which they never found — and helped fuel the anti-vaxxer movement.

In summary– Autism Speaks has done a lot of harm to autistic people, from the anti-vaxxer movement to the portrayal of autistic children as terrible burdens who ruin their families’ lives.

And so every April, when that blue puzzle piece shows up all over our Facebook feeds, we get upset.

Every April, we see the organization that demonized us promoted as an organization that represents us.

It doesn’t.

Autism Speaks does not, and never has, represent autistic people.

Autism Speaks is not, and never has been, represented by autistic people.

Autism Speaks is created by and for families who “live with autism” – in other words, have autistic children.

Their board of directors, which over the years has contained big celebrities (currently Tommy Hilfiger) and many parents and grandparents of autistic children, but few-to-no actually autistic people.

Currently they have one listed on their list of board members.

None of the autistic board members have ever been what is often dubbed “severe” or “low-functioning” – in other words, autistic people who are non-speaking or who require a lot of care and support in adulthood.

“But surely,” people argue, “non-verbal autistic people can’t serve on boards and advocate for autism. That’s the whole point of Autism Speaks.”

Yeah, uh, that’s a myth.

Many non-speaking people with very high support needs can and do communicate their thoughts and opinions. If you haven’t discovered any of these vital voices in autism advocacy, it’s time you do.

Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay

Ido Kedar.

Trevor.

Philip Reyes.

Hari Srinivasan.

Damon Kirsebom.

Many non-speakers can write. They can communicate.

They have opinions, and they have a LOT to say about how autistic people should be treated, and what type of supports are most useful.

Despite this, Autism Speaks fans will insist that autistic activists are “high-functioning” types who don’t care about the needs of people with “severe” autism.

They believe that anyone who types on Twitter must not really be autistic, because they believe that “severe” autistics can’t advocate for themselves. As you can see from videos and links above, this is quite untrue.

It’s remarkable how tightly people cling to the insistence that the people above are some kind of hoax. I can’t see any puppet strings – can you?

Why do people think a board full of non-autistic celebrities know more about autism than non-speaking autistics? We have no clue.

People who live without autism can be puzzling and mysterious.

And so, every April we have the same old arguments.

We insist that we are indeed capable of empathy.

We explain that our stims are actually important to our emotional health, not an affliction that needs to be eradicated.

We point out that non-speaking autistic people also hate Autism Speaks.

“But Autism Speaks has changed!,” some people insist.

It’s true, it has. It is better than it used to be.

In 2013, Autism Speaks finally changed its position on vaccines, admitting that there is no evidence linking vaccines to autism.

In 2015, Autism Speaks removed “cure” from its mandate, accepting that autism is genetic and inborn, not an illness that needs to be cured. The Wrights resigned that same year. Their daughter Katie now sits on the board of SafeMinds, a charity dedicated to “resolving the autism crisis.”

They also put two autistic people on their board of directors, one of whom is still listed as of March 2019.

“So, everything’s all better now, right?”

Sorry, no.

It’s great that Autism Speaks is trying to step away from their autism-demonizing, anti-vaxxer roots. But they have not apologized for, “I am Autism.”

They still have the edited version of “Autism Every Day” on their YouTube channel.

Their board is still overwhelmingly non-autistic.

They still don’t have any non-speaking or high support needs autistic people on their board, and they don’t consult with non-speaking activists.

They still refer to us as “people with autism” or “people living with autism” as if autism is some kind of parasitic twin.

And they are still, first and foremost, an AWARENESS organization. The majority of their spending is in media, where they promote autism awareness. Blue puzzle pieces in the background of “The Good Doctor.” News pieces on autism support for families.

Stuff like that.

In other words, when you donate to Autism Speaks, you donate to the “Light It Up Blue” campaign, but that’s about it.

Yes, they do some scientific research (currently they are trying to find genetic causes for autism and medical tests to identify– and presumably eliminate– autistic people before they are even born), but their research spending is dwarfed in comparison to their media spending.

Their 2017 spending report – the most recent report available on the Autism Speaks website – shows $2 million in spending on science, $1 million on families, and a whopping $51 million in spending on MEDIA.

https://www.autismspeaks.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/2017-audited-financial-statements.pdf

By contrast, my local autism charity, the Vancouver Canucks’ Autism Network, spent 2.7 million of its 3.7 million raised on local autism programs.

But none of their board of directors are autistic either.

The fact that so many autism charities lack actually autistic people– particularly the high support needs people that these organizations claim to represent most– just perpetuates the belief that autistic people cannot speak for themselves.

The problem with being autistic is that you are either considered too “high functioning” to be REALLY autistic and therefore your opinion doesn’t matter, or you are considered too “low functioning” to have an opinion.

In either case we are assurred that the best people to speak for autistic people are people who are living with people who are living with autism, not autistic people themselves.

We are puzzles to be solved, mysterious beings. If only they could understand us, know why we do the things we do.

But there’s no way to know, because autistic people who can talk aren’t really autistic and autistic people who can’t are cognitively impaired burdens who don’t understand and aren’t really writing when they write.

When we try to speak up, we are told to be quiet. Autism Speaks is busy speaking about things we can’t possibly understand.

Maybe if they took some tips from actually autistic adults, they wouldn’t have to consider throwing their kids off of a bridge.

But most parents of autistic kids don’t even know where to find autistic adults – many of us parents ourselves – who can help them.

Our voices are buried under the fundraising monolith that is Autism Speaks.

It’s Autism Awareness Month, and they don’t want autistic people messing it up.

To make a tax deductible donation to NeuroClastic, click here.

To help raise REAL awareness of autism, please share this article and other articles by the actually-autistic writers on Neuroclastic.

Help us promote ourselves, because we need neurotypical allies to help us be heard. Or, share the following posts by non-speaking autistic people:

Top 10 Things You Should Know About Apraxia According to a Nonspeaker

Fresh Starts: After the meltdown

Want more? We have a whole list:

Directory of NonSpeaker Pages, Vlogs, & Media

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C.L. LynchC.L. Lynch is an award-winning fiction author and socially awkward autist living in Vancouver, B.C. with one husband, two children, several fuzzy animals, and uncountable unwashed dishes. She enjoys smashing tropes and hiding from adult responsibilities.If you enjoyed this article, consider buying her a diet pepsi: https://ko-fi.com/cllynch Latest posts by C.L. Lynch (see all)

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