Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “They want us to die: You wouldn’t believe how many people hate those of us with autism”

Excerpt from: Not Dead Yet (click for full article)

 

The adult autistic community dreads the cerulean lights of April. Another crop of anti-autistic hate sites will appear, invigorated by the artificial sunshine of that cruel spotlight. The pastel blue of Autism Awareness Month will be everywhere, together with the jigsaw piece that demeans us to the core. We aren’t fragmented puzzles; we experience ourselves as complete humans; we’re capable of empathy, despite that terrible prejudice perpetuated by some diagnosticians. We do communicate, even if it takes a receptive, unbiased ear to hear us.

Only hours after the horror at Sandy Hook Elementary, the shooter was fingered as autistic; the hate machine hit high gear. The bigotry was fanned by media outlets driven to find simple answers for a shatteringly complex event. My circle of online activists began tracking down and reporting the worst of the pages that appear every time attention is focused on us. Many hide under innocuous-sounding names like “A Cure for Autism.” The first toadstool rising from the rain of hysteria following the Newtown tragedy hid under a “solution to protect our families” identity. The single post announced:

Once we hit 50 likes, we are going to go out and find an autistic kid and set it on fire.