![[I don’t want your awareness
I need your acceptance]
Feeling a little melancholy at the moment, and I can’t help thinking: Why can’t it just be okay that I’m me?](http://40.media.tumblr.com/bb2fa98f8abffbf03a8a7b0ccc09e21b/tumblr_mt2f0cf9m91rfhms3o1_400.jpg)
![[Defeat Autism Now!
Relax! I’m not a boss monster in a JRPG!]
But if I was, I’d be load-bearing, and you’d have 30 seconds to escape the extremely large, labyrinthine building you found me at the center of.
Seriously, of all the autism groups that teamed up to form Autism $peaks, Defeat Autism Now! has always been the one with the name that creeps me out the most. Not cure, not treat, defeat, as if autism is some hulking boss monster in a JRPG (Japanese role-playing game, for those of you not in the know). It’s spine-shivering hyperbole of Orwellian proportions.
The implications terrify me. The idea that who I am, that something integral to my very personality, is a thing that needs defeating, is staggering. Autism is not a disease. Despite the ableist fucks who compare it to cancer, AIDS and cystic fibrosis, it’s not an illness; it’s simply a difference. The idea that differences need to be erased and defeated…that is the nightmarish rhetoric from which the most horrific dystopias are born. And right now, entire groups of people are out there pushing for one.
Much scarier than any boss monster I ever faced down.](http://40.media.tumblr.com/7fb5cfd5031c16cb1beb38f4c5dc1a31/tumblr_ml7g4kLKYX1rfhms3o1_400.jpg)
Anonymous
So, Who’s Up for Angry Autistics April?
Just a thought I’ve been having, about countering the influx of fuckery that people have the nerve to call “autism awareness” with a bit of crankiness and spikes.
I’d love to have not just hedgehog memes, but articles, art, whatever people would like to submit, dealing in what this form of “autism awareness” actually does to us. What do y'all think? Does anyone have anything they’d like to submit to such a project?
It’s all well and good to promote autism acceptance, and I’m down with that, but I think we also need to fight back against the stigma that organizations like A$ perpetuate with their Autism Awareness Month and their Light it Up Blue shit. Anyone with me?
