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I get pissed off by a tweet


This is by no means the worst thing I've read about autism:
Nevertheless, it struck a nerve, and pushed me over the line from 'maybe I should write a blog' to 'yep, definitely need to start writing a blog'.

 Over the past year, I've found myself increasingly assertive in opposing misconceptions and lies about autism wherever I find them. At the heart of these, so often, is the idea of autism as a disease - one you can catch, one you can perhaps cure. When this rears its head, you'll often find scientifically-literate folk fighting back - and I'm glad they do, it's important work. However, there's a personal perspective that I always want to add, something very simple yet so often overlooked:

 I am not a disease.

 Look at that tweet. It's not shouty and crazy, it's not full of woo. In a very level and apparently considered (if scientifically nonsensical) manner, it presents autism as a dreadful condition that one can catch from a particular diet. Moreover, autism is a terrible thing, although SIDS is even worse: if we rank terrible things that can happen to a child, death is at the top, but autism is just behind.

 I am not a tragic mistake.

 I was born autistic, I will die autistic. I am autistic, just as I'm tall, blue-eyed, balding, tending towards overweightness. I didn't develop some horrible condition from drinking milk or being vaccinated or standing outside under a waxing gibbous moon whilst the owl cried thrice. I'm just like you, dear reader, except that my brain doesn't work in the way that society expects brains to work (yet it nonetheless works well, in its own way).

 I am not to be feared. 

Autism is not some horrendous nightmare. It is not the bogeyman with which you should seek to scare parents away from whatever it is you've set your mind against. If you are ever inclined to say something about causes or cures of autism, please, remember: you are talking about human beings, with feelings (also, frankly, don't say whatever you were going to say, not without peer-reviewed evidence). If autism is the bogeyman, I am the bogeyman, we autistic folk are all the bogeyman. We are demonised, we are less than human.

 This is not a road that any of us should be walking down. It ends in a very bad place.

 I'll finish with a couple more tweets. First, my reply to the above:

And finally, a very wise response by James Wong (follow him, he's great, I plan to make one of his indoor ponds) on the subject of 'causes' of autism:
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