On Vaccinations and Autism

Here’s a note for ya, world- I am autistic.
Vaccines do not cause autism.
Avoiding vaccines can cause death for your child and for many others who are exposed to them.
AND YET:
There are idiot parents out there avoiding vaccines because they think vaccines will cause autism. 

They would rather their child and many other children die horrible deaths than (in their minds) have their child grow up autistic.


Let that little bit o’ eugenics sink in.
They would rather their own child died in agony than grow up to be what I AM.


Vaccines do not cause autism. If they did, you’d still be a horrible person for deciding it was better to cause the suffering of hundreds of infants too young to yet be vaccinated, not to mention the agonizing death of your own CHILD, because you were afraid your kid might be different from you.

Autism Awareness is Not Enough. (warning, Hate Speech shown)

This Month is for Autism, but Awareness is not enough. We need Autism Acceptance. These are screenshots from Google earlier this month (4/2014), unedited, unaltered.

 This is what people are “aware” of. They think they know autism already.
Most of what people are “aware” of about Autism is wrong or negative. That has got to change. We have to change it.

Autism Acceptance: I don't HAVE Autism, I AM Autistic.

Another thing for Autism Acceptance Month: "I don’t Have Autism, I am Autistic. It is not a thing you have. It is a way you are."
A conversation I had recently online:

"You’re not Asperger’s, you’re a person WITH Asperger’s, it doesn’t define who you are." You see, that would be a nice sentiment if Asperger’s was a separate part of me or of us, a disease we have, or a thing that is just one facet. People with MS for instance, are not defined by their MS even though their suffering is great, it doesn’t change who they are except as another experience they deal with with and learn from, as human beings. If you could take away the MS, they would still be the same person, though with different experiences, without the MS, and probably much happier, since MS is a painful and debilitating thing.

But please understand, autism is not a separate thing. If you could somehow take away what makes someone autistic, there would not be them left, un-autistic. There would be a different person, and not a whole one either.

I don’t Have Autism, I am Autistic. It is not a thing you have. It is a way you are.

You would never say to someone of a certain race, “You aren’t ‘Race’, you just HAVE ‘Race-ness’.”  Think of Autism Spectrum people like that. This is not a separate thing we have, and have to “overcome”, that we can’t “let it define us as a person”. It does. It is. But that’s okay. That’s good, even. I am autistic, and that is how I am. I am many other things too, but it isn’t something I have to  ‘not let define me’. Of course it defines me. Everything I am defines me.

If Autism was an unfortunate thing, then of course we’d be right to say, You don’t have to let it define you. But what if it is a good thing? I have been deciding this last year or so that I am happier when I let it be one of the things that defines me, because it is not a thing I have. It is the way I am. I am me, like this, improving all the time in my way, and that’s okay.