Does autism awareness month support the autism community?
Autism awareness month starts in April. You would think it would be a time to engage as an autism advocate, to really join in and amplify the needs of autistic people. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case for a lot of advocates that are themselves autistic, or for that matter generally autistic people throughout April.
Autism awareness month has a bad reputation within the autism community. Not from neurotypicals but from autistic people, the very people it supposedly sets out to serve. Why? Because it often allows for our voices to be shouted over by big corporations that propagate stereotypes and myths that aren’t true. Led by people that are not autistic themselves.
As an autistic community we generally ask for acceptance over awareness. It is not enough for people to be aware of autism. We need people to accept and support us, accepting us as we are.
It can actually be a month where we are held up and talked about by nations while ourselves told to be quiet and not raise our own concerns. It’s a month many of us quite frankly dread.
For all of these reasons I was facing a book launch problem. I new March was too early to release, I wasn’t sure ‘My autistic fight song’ would be ready in time. Equally I didn’t want to wait until May as I knew I wasn’t that patient! I was deliberately trying to avoid April as I didn’t want to fight to be heard. I didn’t want to get washed up in the corporations speaking for us – over us.
Then it hit me – screw that! It is about time the autistic community stood up and reclaimed April. It is our voices that should be heard.
Don’t get me wrong I think it is amazing that organisations want to stand up and raise awareness and acceptance of autism. But it is important to see which ones are sticking autism awareness on a profile picture and which are genuinely raising awareness. Much like in LGBTQ pride month. Some will ride the ability to get good credit and, in the process, may do more damage than good. Organisations sharing information that doesn’t represent the community and quite often upsets us, isn’t helping.
So, this April I ask you to consciously seek out the autistic voices. Support content by autistic creators. Support organisations that checked in with the community before running campaigns. Neurotypical led campaigns are fine, brilliant even, but only if they consulted with autistic people in the process.
April isn’t a month to shout you are supporting autism. April is a month to genuinely try to learn. To amplify our voices and our needs. The needs of autistic people. The needs of parents and carers supporting us.
How about this April parents of autistic children share heart warming stories instead of distressing ones? How about they share stories of overcoming and achieving against adversity? Share stories of things that helped, allowing others to see how to support us. Let’s see the beauty in our community.
We struggle. We fight. We celebrate. We love.
The autism community is brilliantly and beautifully resilient. Let’s spread awareness of that.
UPDATES:
Rosie Weldon’s Autism Community has been set up as a group over on Facebook. Feel free to join here. It was set up in response to the stress put on the community with the coronavirus and aims to support us through this and other day to day challenges we face.
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