an important update:
PETA: They’d rather spend their money on publicity campaigns than on the animals in their care. PETA killed 73.8% of the animals in their care in 2015 (x)
FCKH8: Is a for-profit company that exploits oppressed groups for money. They’re also wildly uninformed, and spread misogyny, cissexism and bi/panphobia, as well as stealing their posts/designs (x)
Autism Speaks: They spend most of their money on researching a way to eliminate autism, heighten the stigma against autism and don’t have a single autistic person on their board (x)
Please support other, better charities, and feel free to add any others you can think of to this.
^ Important reminder to NOT waste any money donating to these groups
Reblogging because of the added info about Wounded Warrior.
A good way to know if a nonprofit you’re donating to is allocating their money in the right way is to check out their Charity Navigator rating: http://www.charitynavigator.org
Signal boosting, the bell ringers are out in force, and this info is too important.
This is fairly common knowledge among autistics, but I wanted to make a quick post explaining this for everyone.
This is an example of how it’s used:
[image description: an awareness ribbon with red, yellow, and blue puzzle design]
The puzzle piece is meant to symbolize that autism is “puzzling”, that it is a “mystery”, and that autistics have a “missing piece” in comparison to allistic (non-autistic) people. Put like that, you can probably see why we find it offensive. We are normal people who do not need to be “cured” or “fixed”, and we’d be a lot less “puzzling” if people just treated us like human beings with different needs. Autism becomes a lot less of a mystery if you listen to what autistics have to say.
It’s also the symbol of Autism Speaks, which we consider to be a hate group who shamelessly promotes and condones the abuse of autistic children. Their focus is “curing” the “disease” of autism to “get our children back”.
We don’t need a cure. We need acceptance.
A much better option is the neurodiversity symbol.
[image description: an infinity symbol in rainbow colors]
This design is not entirely specific to autism, but autism is what it most commonly represents, and it is meant to celebrate natural human variation, rather than labeling us an “other” to be “made normal”. The neurodiversity movement is about autistic self-advocacy, and about us being accepted as we are instead of being told there’s something wrong with us.
I don’t mean to make anyone feel bad if they’ve supported the puzzle piece symbol in the past, because I’m sure you thought you were genuinely being supportive. You didn’t do anything wrong in being misled. All I want to do is correct that misinformation so you can know better in the future.
If you’re interested in doing some more reading, you can browse my autism tag, or you can read from here and here.
I'm fucking sick of seeing this shit in my feed. AUTISM IS NOT A DISEASE AND DOES NOT NEED A CURE. FUCKING GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEADS. AS A PERSON ON THE SPECTRUM IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE SHIT TO SEE THAT PEOPLE THINK AUTISM NEEDS TO BE "CURED".
Lindt Chocolate doesnt support Autism Speaks anymore
time to party
Huge news everyone !!! :D
Nothing about us without us. Image description: [pale purple and yellow background with dark text] This April, don’t support an organization that harms autistic people. [crossed out logo for Autism Speaks] Support one built by autistic people, for autistic people. [logos for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Autism Women’s Network]
Reblogging to spread the word, cause evidence shows that Autism $peaks are classic horror movie villains.
Reblogging because I’ve always wondered who to support instead of AS.
To every friend of mine who reblogs this, thank you. It means I can trust you. <3
Another hashtag that hilariously backfired …
Also one of those tweets is from John Elder Robison, who USED to work for Autism Speaks until he left because he couldn’t support their message.
THIS IS THE SINGLE BEST THING I HAVE SEEN ALL DAY
As a high-functioning autistic man (diagnosed back when they still called it Aspergers) I will never not laugh at AS getting roasted by the actual autistic people they shit on.
I agree with this, but just out of curiosity if you don’t mind, why do they not use the term “Aspergers syndrome” anymore? I actually haven’t heard of that until now.
There was as lot of argument on whether it was a separate, but similar condition or just part of the autism spectrum among the psychology community.
They eventually just eliminated the term and folded it into the high-functioning end of the Autism spectum in the DSM-5 when it was published in 2013.
As a person with Asperger's it makes me happy to see these assholes at AS being called out on their bullshit.
