Showing posts tagged autistic spectrum
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You’ve probably spent your whole life being misunderstood, surrounded by people who don’t understand you. Maybe you’ve been told that you’re “aggressive” or “troubled”. People may have assumed that you’re stupid or treated you like a small child when you’re not one. It’s likely people have told you how “sorry” they feel for your “poor parents” or suggested that people like you should never be born. People have probably told you that you don’t feel empathy, that you can’t have friends, that you don’t feel love or pain and you’ll always be a cold, friendless loner.

I’m going to tell you something very important. All of those people are WRONG. All of them.

You’re not broken. You’re not stupid. You’re not a tragedy. You are absolutely brilliant and beautiful and loved and wanted *exactly* the way you are.

@AutistLiam to “I Wish I Didn’t Have Asperger’s” (via apiphile)

This, all of it.

(Reblogged from apiphile)

goldenheartedrose:

theredbluebird:

goldenheartedrose:

sherlocksflataffect:

heatherinanutshell:

shadowsighsilverlights:

TW for ableist language. 

Shared by a friend on G+:

“S#!t Ignorant People Say To Autistics” 

First time I’ve seen it. :\

There is a transcript of the video in the Youtube video description area thingy. 

Made my day. Seriously.

I will never stop loving this video (and I have heard EVERY. DAMN. ONE.)

OMG, the toothpick one. 

New rule for my tumblr: I re-blog this every time I see it :D

I like that rule and shall adopt it. 

(Reblogged from oppressionisyucky-deactivated20)
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For autistic activists like Gross and Paula C. Durbin-Westby, a professional book indexer and choirmaster at her Episcopal church in Virginia, Autism Awareness Day is not a cause for celebration. In their eyes, the dire messaging designed to frighten wealthy donors into opening their wallets every April 2 — such as the infamous 2009 ”I Am Autism” video, which framed the condition as a terminator of marriages that works “faster than pediatric AIDS, cancer, and diabetes combined” – reinforces dangerous negative stereotypes and increases the stigma faced by autistic adults, most of whom don’t wake up in the morning yearning for a cure or wishing that their peers on the spectrum had never been born. Instead, members of groups like the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network look forward to an era when their community no longer faces violence at home or discrimination in the workplace, in housing, in education, in the legal system, in health care, and in society at large.

Two years ago, Durbin-Westby proposed that autistic people and their families and friends recast April 2 as an occasion for promoting acceptance and understanding rather than vague “awareness,” and reclaim the day as an annual opportunity to celebrate their community’s diversity and vitality. ”I started Autism Acceptance Day as a corrective to the ubiquitous negative images we see every April,” she recalls. “The first World Autism Awareness Day referred to autism as an ‘equal destroyer.’ From videos that talk about autism as some sort of soul-sucking demonic persona, to 150 empty strollers signifying that autism has robbed parents of their toddlers, navigating April for many Autistics has been like walking through a field of (stroller-shaped) land mines. No more! Autism Acceptance Day takes back April and puts it where it belongs — into the hands of Autistic people, supportive family members, friends, and communities.
Autism Awareness is Not Enough: Here’s How to Change the World | NeuroTribes

QueerOctopus: People think autism is a disease, and epidemic. People think that...

queeroctopus:

People think autism is a disease, and epidemic. People think that we’re all horrible, unfeeling burdens on our parents, incapable of love or intelligent thought, incapable of having enough friends to make our parents feel good about themselves, incapable of ever doing anything that will make mummy and daddy able to pat themselves on the back and say “job well done”. We’re not useful if you want to play keeping up with the Joneses. We’re just ‘weird’, ‘awkward’, ‘stupid’. We’re everything you fucking fear, because we’re not ever going to be that tool all parents use their children as to make themselves feel good, unless they decide to hurl themselves into Autism Speaks and work their darndest to make our identities work for them, and talk about how much of a good job they’re doing a curing us.


Well I say fuck it. Fuck every parent who fears having an autistic child, who tries to cure their child, who would abort, were their testing for autism. Fuck every parent who cries on receiving a diagnosis for reasons beyond fearing how the world will treat their child. Fuck every organization that centers the experience of the parent rather than the child. Fuck every doctor who wants to prescribe me medication to make me more ‘normal’, when what bothers me isn’t being ‘weird’, it’s being treated like shit because of it. Fuck every person who tells me that I can’t be autistic, queer, and trans at the same time. Fuck every person who thinks FAAB autist folk don’t exist. Fuck every person who thinks if I wasn’t autistic, I would have been ‘smart enough’ not to be raped.

Fuck the world. Just fuck it completely. Because WE are autism, not our parents, not the charities which claim to work for us, not you. We are the children you bullied at school for being ‘strange’, we are the children you see as tragedies, we are the children of people like Jenny McCarthy who think we need to be cured, we are those ‘unruly’ children you judge in supermarkets who you think would be fine if your mother’s just hit us harder, we are the PEOPLE you stereotype as asexual, trainspotting, birdwatching ‘losers’ who live with our mothers who wear unfashionable glasses, and checkered shirts tucking into our chinos. We are autism. And we the only thing that needs curing is your ignorance.

(Source: campdracula5eva)

(Reblogged from prawnmael)

Reblog if you or someone you know is affected by autism

stophatingyourbody:

annieelainey:

April is Autism Awareness Month

Emily, Manny, Joseph, Eric, Stephanie, Mark, Daniel

Living with the Autistic Spectrum - a vignette.

(My son is visiting and we sat in the living room together. This is the actual conversation that took place.)

Me: hey son, it’s Autism Awareness Month

Son: oh cool, I guess in our family we know a lot about that *goes back to playing GTA 4*

Me: *pokes son in the arm*

Son: what?

Me: Just letting you know I’m aware of you

Son: *glancing at me briefly with his patent ‘the old dear needs to be humoured look*  Umm thank you ?

Both my children are on the Autistic Spectrum and we don’t think of it  as a disorder at all. They were great kids and are totally awesome adults.

(Reblogged from tyracreates)