Online autistic communities/advocates really seem to forget that it isn’t exclusively “uwu cute hyperfixation hehe stim break hand flap.”
You’re not advocating for autism if you don’t include the weird kids who have strange interests and are socially awkward, but not in the cute way. The ones people often describe as creepy, or call freaks.
Or the nonverbal special education students who groan and scream in the hallways at school while people in classrooms hold back laughter because for some reason they find it funny.
Or the violent aggressive autistic people who cause damage to themselves and everything around them at one minor inconvenience and will never live independently.
Or autistic adults with picture perfect families and lives, who do not relate to the autistic “culture” that’s now been portrayed online.
Or autistic people who don’t benefit from stim toys, who don’t look at it as a huge factor in their lives, who went through therapy to help them learn skills that they struggled with.
If you don’t advocate for the scary cases and symptoms, the weird autistic people, the incapable autistic people, you’re not advocating for autism. It’s a spectrum and it’s not going to be pretty sometimes. If you don’t acknowledge and include those cases, especially if you’re autistic yourself, can you really say you’re advocating for autism, or is it just yourself?
When you refer to the autistic community, you’re talking about them too. Remember that.
