I’m Autistic and It’s Awesome

Our current world is prejudiced against autistic people in a way I never understood until I was diagnosed myself in 2017 and suddenly felt the weight of all my own feelings of disgust about autism and autistic people (unempathetic, inhuman, useless, etc) crash down on me. I’d spent so much of my life being taught that autism was such a terrible diagnosis that parents all over the country had convinced themselves that it was worth risking not vaccinating their children to avoid having them face this disability. They would rather their child got polio or died of measles than turn out like me.

Autism Speaks, the main charity that people give to if they’re concerned about autism, is an organization that is staffed almost entirely by non-autists and it’s all about finding a “cure.” Because of course all neurotypical parents and other family members want is for their autistic loved ones to be “normal.” To do normal things, to participate in normal social life. And if they can’t be normal, then at least they can teach them how to pretend to be normal, how to “mask” sufficiently that no one ever finds out they have autism. Because, as one of my family members told me after I talked about my diagnosis, you can’t tell an employer about that or they won’t hire you.

Why don’t you want a cure?

I talked to a friend of mine who struggles with schizophrenia, and when I told him I’m not interested in being cured, he was genuinely confused as to why. He would love to be cured, to not have to take medication anymore, to be the person he was…