I've been listening to other opinions because I personally don't want to fall into the tumblr trap of believing every word and not accepting anything else so I'm not exactly against the idea that autism speaks is a hate group but I am having trouble understanding fully what they are doing that leads to that conclusion.
Gosh that’s such a good way to think.. I do enjoy tumblr but people jump in on things without giving it a second thought or doing research, and that’s how misinformation spreads on here like wildfire. So it’s a really good idea to not just dive in head first and do research!
Autism Speaks, however, really is a bad organization. Even typing in “autism speaks” into google, you’ll find “autism speaks bad” in the top results... /:
Autism Speaks is infamous for spreading the whole “autism is a disease” and “autism MUST be cured!” and “autism ruins everything” kind of mindset around, when in reality autism is not at all a bad thing and isn’t something that needs to be cured, nothing that people should be ashamed to have.
Another thing, Autism Speaks isn’t run by any actual autistic people. No one running the organization is autistic. An organization for autistic people, and you don’t have a single autistic person working with you? Now there’s a huge problem there, clearly.
Anyways, I found such a great article that breaks down and explains why Autism Speaks is so bad and why you shouldn’t support it, as well as gives you other autism organizations that you should support instead!
Really if you just talk to any autistic person here on tumblr they can pretty much explain to you why Autism Speaks is bad and why they despise it, and why they’re horrible representation for autistic people and do some crappy things in the background as well.
In conclusion, Autism Speaks demonizes autism and spreads fear by claiming autism is some sort of awful disease that’s “taking our children” and whatever else. They’re ableist pieces of crap and shouldn’t be supported.
* Now I’m not autistic so hopefully I didn’t overstep here, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about anything or add anything!
