friendly reminder not to support lindt this easter season, or apparently ever again, because they support autism speaks.
Wowwwwwwww
SIGH.
can someone please explain why autism speaks is so bad?
because they’re adamant that autism is a disease that can be “cured”. They don’t have a single autistic person on their board. Autism Speaks produces advertisements, small films, ect. about what a burden autistic people are to a society. They only spend about 4% of their money on “family services.” They create a stereotype that makes it hard for actual autistic people, like myself, be heard and recognized as actually autistic. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder before they realized that I actually showed signs of Asperger’s. They don’t actually help us.
That’s the problem with Autism Speaks.
(tw for violence, ableism, abuse, murder, and death)
It goes deeper than not having any autistic board members. Many of the allistics running the organization promote the horrific notion that you’re better off dead than autistic, and their influence and “activism” only supports the ideology resulting in the continued murder of autistic children and adults by their parents and caregivers.
Former Autism Speaks board member Harry Slatkin, whose wife, Laura, continues to serve on the Board of Directors, stated in an interview with Town and Country while still a board member that sometimes he hoped their autistic son David would drown in the backyard pond rather than “suffer like this all his life.” Evidencing a pattern of similarly violent rhetoric, Autism Speaks is also responsible for the 2006 PSA “Autism Every Day“ in which their then Vice President states on camera that she considered putting her autistic daughter in the car and driving off a bridge, and that the only reason she refrained from doing so was because her other, non-autistic daughter would have been waiting for her at home—her autistic daughter was in the room as she made these statements. Furthermore, the producer of this PSA explicitly admitted that the film was intentionally staged to portray negative images of autistic people and their families.
Only four days following the release of “Autism Every Day,” pathologist Karen McCarron smothered her autistic daughter with a garbage bag. McCarron stated that she murdered Katie because her “autism had not been improving,” had thought about killing Katie, that made an earlier brief attempt at suffocation, wanted to cure Katie, thought killing Katie would make her “complete” in heaven, and wanted to live without autism and thus had to kill Katie. Investigators found that McCarron was obsessed with different treatments for Katie. (See People v. FRANK-McCARRON, 934 NE 2d 76 – Ill: Appellate Court, 3rd Dist. 2010.) Though it is not presently possible to draw a direct connection between Autism Speaks’ PSA and Katie’s murder, this crime and dozens like it only underscore how the kind of rhetoric that Autism Speaks favors only serves to recklessly endanger the lives of autistic people.
Autism Speaks also publicly supports the Judge Rotenberg Center, a group home for autistic and neurodivergent students that uses “treatments” like food and sleep deprivation and electric shock to try and train the residents into acting neurotypical. The center has changed states three times in an attempt to bypass regulation against abusive treatment, and their practices have resulted in the deaths of more than one student.
It’s not just an issue of Autism Speaks making it harder for us to get proper diagnoses and treatment. Autism Speaks is actively killing us.
Well shit.
I was eyeing up their strawberries and cream lindor the other day but this is more important than delicious chocolate.
you all need to know this. You really do. Please do not support Lindt or anything that supports autism speaks. Please.
Well shit. I used to really like Lindor…
At least now though I can get better chocolate from Aldi.
Absolutely re-blogging this, because more people need to know that what Autism Speaks has done (and still is doing) is not cool. I’ve known this for years, having autism myself, but it still needs to be said, and repeated, until everyone gets it.
Any organization who consistently refers to autistics as “taken”, “stolen” or otherwise “not whole”, or calls their movie “Sounding the Alarm”, which is basically connecting autism to a reference to the goddamn Rapture in the Book of Revelation (where, once again, a parent expresses their want to kill their adult child with autism), should not be supported. They are dangerous, they support a dangerous ideal towards people with autism, and their words can easily be taken as a justification to harm those with disabilities.
And the worst part is, because they are the biggest autism organization, a lot of companies fall for their “altruistic” bullshit. They are not altruistic. The bulk of their money does not go to helping actual autistic people or for other practical purposes – it goes to “research” for a “cure” and a “cause”. And they prey on the emotions of family members of people with autism, and the pursestrings of those companies those families buy from, to accomplish this.
Spread the word and reblog. Boycott these companies and tell them with your money how you feel about their sponsorship of Autism Speaks.