persephon(y)

Autism is essential to your child’s identity. If you took away her or his autism — which isn’t possible — your child would be a different person. - If you want a different person for a child, you don’t love your child. - So, you aren’t hating autism. Autism isn’t a thing that exists to hate. It does not exist outside of its expression in actual human beings. We’ve just created an idea and given it a name and clustered definition, representing a shared way of being for some people. The only place autism exists is in people — it exists as real people. Instead, you are hating your child, despite your words and beliefs to the contrary. And you are teaching your child self-rejection and self-hatred. - Autism is no different than race or sexual orientation or humanity itself. It is simply part and parcel of a person’s being. - I love my black child, but I hate blackness. I love my gay child, but I hate homosexuality. I love my son, but I hate men. - I love my autistic child, but I hate autism. - Like the others, that is a failed formulation, incoherent thought and emotion and obviously harmful. - It is not love. - It is abusive parenting. - Autism is integral to every part of your child’s personhood. It informs the way he or she thinks, feels, acts, and engages —receives and expresses — with the world, including interacting with people, most certainly including you.

Yes