Anyway fuck autism awareness. It's acceptance time. Autism Speaks is ableist and doesn't care about the actual people. It advocates for eugenics, conversion camps and practices that are always harmful, and sometimes even lethal.

Autism is not an illness to cure.

Favorite autism resources!

This is a demanding question because I have a lot of favorite resources! I’ll give 5 in each of 10 random-ish categories, and focus on lesser known resources. Favorites are listed in no particular order.

1. Organizations: -AAPD (American Association for People with Disabilities) -CIL (Center for Independent Living- chapter based) -DPNYC (Disability Pride NYC- they run the parade) -INCLUDEnyc -PYD (Partners for Youth with Disabilities)

2. Advocates -Finn Gardiner -Chloe Rothschild -Sara Luterman -Shain Neumeier -Morénike Giwa Onaiwu

3. Assistive Technologies -iPad -Dragon Naturallyspeaking -Smartphone (alarms, GPS navigation, calendar) -Noise Cancelling Headphones -Livescribe

4. Blogs -Stim the Line -Autistic Zebra -The Autistic Bunny -Musings of an Aspie - Not Your Neurotypical Girl/Human

5. Other Websites/documents -Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism -Spaced Out and Smiling -Ollibean -ASAN’s book about college (PDF) -The Hidden Curriculum (Judy Endow)

6. Mental Health -Talk Therapy -Psychiatric Medication -DBT skills (modified) -Dogs -Journaling/writing

7. Coping Strategies -Integrated Routines -Bullet Journal (modified) -Social Stories -Yoga -Music (playing and listening)

8. Apps -iBreathe -Spiritual Me -StudyBreak -30/30 -Social Stories

9. YouTube Channels -Purple Ella -Autistic Changeling -Jayden (An Autistic View) -Phoebe (Phee N) -B Blushes

10. Sensory Items -Swings -Fidgets -Weighted Blanket -Balance Board -Noise-Blocking Ear Muffs

We don’t need your Autism Speaks awareness

We don’t need you to light it up blue

We don’t need false shows of support

We don’t need awareness that views us as burdens or tragedies

We don’t need awareness that calls for us to be eliminated (or as you would say “cured”)

You are aware we exist

You know we are here

We don’t need your awareness

What we need is acceptance

We need to be accepted by those around us

We need our stimming to be normalized instead of  stomped out

We need our differences to be accepted, not changed

We need a world that doesn’t care if we make eye contact

We need a world that allows for differences in communication

We need a world where children are taught not to bully instead of autistic children being forced to changed or blame for the abuse they suffer

We need a world without ABA

We need a world where Actually Autistic people are listened to about our own experiences

#RedInstead

It’s autism acceptance month. Unfortunately, hardest month for autistics (as a whole).

It’s the month that Autism Speaks takes over. Our favorite brands donate to them. Our friends and schools participate in “Light it up Blue” for them. And Autism Moms™ come out in full force.

Autism Speaks hurts us. They use under 3million to go towards helping the families of autistic people. The salaries total over 15 million. The Other category gets more than actual autistics do. From 2014 to 2015 (most recent reports available) their salaries went up while “family services” went down. They silence autistic people. They do not let us speak.

Don’t participate in Light it up Blue. Don’t donate to Autism Speaks.

I have what you might call a special interest in cats. I live with four of them and I feed three more of them outside in my yard. Everyone who knows me knows about my cats. My ex-girlfriend used to say: “I like cats, but I don’t like cats the way you like cats.” I spoke to a local politician and he said, “You have cats!” I guess he knows this because he follows me on Twitter. It’s weird when somebody I have spoken to maybe twice or three times in my life knows that I have cats, but it shouldn’t be, because everybody who has spoken to me for more than five minutes has heard about my cats. When I order pizza, the person who answers the phone says, “You’re the lady with all the cats.” When I was going to college, my classmates would come to me for cat advice. People I worked with always showed me pictures of their cats or asked me questions about their cats’ behaviour.

My profile picture is of my cat Inky. I sometimes say that Inky is autistic. She’s hypersensitive to touch, taste, smell and sound. Unlike my other three cats, she is very particular about when I’m allowed to pet her, and under no circumstances am I permitted to pick her up and try to hold her. She hates to wear a collar and will do her best to not only remove it, but to hide it so that I can’t find it and put it back on her. She is not at all interested in meeting new people and acts like it’s a betrayal if I dare to invite a new human into the house. It’s hard to say how she feels about new cats, because when I adopted two new cats in 2014, Inky got along well with one of them and badly with the other.

One thing I’ve found from Facebook, though, is that I’m definitely not alone in how I feel about cats. There are plenty of other people who feel the same way, and not all of them are autistic. If it weren’t for the fact that I dislike the pejorative way the word “crazy” is used, I’d be proud to be called a crazy cat lady.