aphobehaterofficial:

sentientviolets:

I saw that one advert supporting autism $peaks that said sth like “it costs $60,000 more per year to care for a person with autism” and let me tell you.

those figures only made me feel like a burden on my family. my first thought wasn’t “this is something in support of autistic people!” it was “do I really cost my family that much?”

it’s not like the advert gave legitimate sources for that statistic. it’s not like they made it clear what the donations going to autism $peaks would be used for. it mostly just made us out to be a burden.

that advert wasn’t “help autistic people”, it was “give sympathy points to caregivers who have to deal with an autistic person”.

it didn’t read like “we’re here to help people!”. it read like “look how awful it is to deal with an autistic person”.

it didn’t paint us as people, it painted us as problems.

that’s the issue present in all adverts published by or in support of autism $peaks. the goal isn’t to help us. it’s not about the autistic people. it’s about the caregivers. it’s about making sure the general public thinks society is better of without autistic people.

it’s “look at this poor caregiver! their life wouldn’t be like this without that nasty autism!”

to support autism $peaks is to support the idea that autistic people are not people, but problems.

we are not a problem to be fixed. we are autistic people, and we don’t need autism $peaks to speak for us.

ALL CHILDREN NEED MONEY

NEEDING MONEY IS NOT EXCLUSIVE TO AUTISTIC CHILDREN