I’m chiming in as another autistic person who has grave misgivings about Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks does not appear to do anything to change public perception of autism as a problem that must be erased with compliance to social norms. The key issue for me is that they do not have any autistic people in leadership roles. And their rhetoric is very problematic. They frame autism almost entirely as a disability, a sickness, a problem. But speaking as an autistic person, it isn’t the autism that is the problem. It is the way people react to neural diversity that is the problem. I think differently. I process stimuli different. That’s not the problem. The problem is being forced to comply and act “normal”.
John Elder Robinson sums this up very well in his resignation letter. He had been working with Autism Speaks, one of the only autistic people they had on staff.
It’s actually really great to get to the other side of the Autism issue. Neural diversity, speciation in humans, the need to challenge social norms for information processing and social behavior. We don’t want to be cured. We want other people to deal with the fact that we exist.
And as for parents of autistic children, there is a growing chorus of parents who have come out the other side. When they look at their children as just being wired differently, over and over they say their whole approach to parenting changes for the better. Autism Speaks doesn’t seem to be serving parents of autistic kids very well either.
