All I Want For Christmas.....

This is a video i made last night.....

Dear Autism Speaks.....

I am an Autistic adult, and i matter.

I was born this way, i will die this way.

Being Autistic does not make me bad,

does not make me a monster.

I have a personality, thank you.

I have a sense of humor too, thank you.

I also have compassion and empathy, and i cry

just as you do.

I am not a burden, i am not the ruination of

anyone's family or anyone's lives.

I am not a research subject

I am not a tsunami.

Just because i can type and think and talk

does not mean my Autism is high functioning

and just because somone is non-verbal

does not make them anymore deaf to

what goes on around them

they can still hear, are still well aware of 

everything

and this includes all that you say in front of them

so if you talk about them as if they are a burden

call them names such as retarded and stupid

and complain that you cannot go out to eat, shop, do this or that

or make remarks to the effect that they will never do this or that

remember, they can still hear and understand what you are saying

Knock it off....just freaking knock it off already!!

Stop hating us and fearing us and get to KNOW us

let us speak when we want to speak and blog

and vlog and tell our stories

listen when we go to our nation's capitol to 

protest your hate and intolerance of us

all we want is to be included, accepted, and loved

as the wonderful awesome human beings we are

whether someone is low or high functioning

we ALL deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity

that you want.

Thank you.

Why I Hate Autism Speaks

My personal views on an organization that never helped me when i reached out to them in early 2008. I didn't know better and felt i could turn to them. I had written a blog about my experiences as an Autistic adult early that year, to see if they would help me to find friends, because i just needed some friends who would get me, and accept me, friends that i could hang out with and do things with, and i needed support in my endeavor to try to move from the neighborhood i live in, because i am, to this very day, being bullied by several employees of a few of the nearby auto businesses that are to the East and across from my house.. Litle did i know back then, the scope of Autism Speaks' negative, hateful, and very hurtful attitudes towards those of us who are Autistic. Back in 2008, i was still trying to better understand myself, and just wanted to try to find support. They published my blog, alright, but they never reached out to me to give me the help i was asking for. Then i came to Facebook and found all of my awesome Autistic friends, and parents of Autistic children who have all accepted me. Now i do have friends via Facebook who get me. But i still have very few local friends. And i am so very lonely because of that. And from Autism Speaks, i never got a darn thing. And then i began to read about them and see their videos which portray Autism and Autistic kids in a shockingly horrific light....not just negative, but it's like they really have a deep-seated hate for us......not only do they fund harmful research and biomedical and therapy/behavioral treatments that are also harmful, but they devote little time or money to actually helping us to be able to have real time supports that will help us to be able to live a decent life as Autistics. Instead, they want to cure us, fix us, and eradicate us....you know, the whole "Children should be seen, not heard" mentality? Insert Autistic children and adults. Yes, it seems to me that they want to erase and even murder us.

And then when they go to Washington DC and have conferences, without inviting us Autistics, and they continually won't let us speak.....you have an organizatio that, in my strong opinion, does NOT truly represent the Autistic community.

And then you have them saying that we are a crisis and a burden. That we are dumb, and even the R word.

They say that we will never have normal lives. That we will ruin the lives of our families. They seem to think it's a bad thing for us to be Autistic. That is all they want to think about.......and they still won't listen to US, the very ones they perport to represent.

Just my take. 

And i, for one, feel that they need to be stopped from spreading their hateful campaign of fear, gloom and doom.

We are human beings, not blue puzzle pieces. We are alive. Very much alive. And we have ears that hear this hate.

It needs to stop.