Awareness or Acceptance?: Autism Awareness Month Announcement

Well, April is here, ladies and gentlemen.  And that means it’s time for my annual Autism Awareness Month Event!  And this year was probably the hardest one yet.  But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, I wanted to talk a little bit about today, given that it’s actually Autism Awareness Day.

Autism Awareness Day is when we celebrate autism awareness.  I’ve talked about autism and my own experiences with Asperger’s Syndrome before, so I’m not going to repeat what’s already been said about autism and its effects.  But while I was planning this year’s event, I came across an alternative movement called Autism Acceptance.  The premise is simple, rather than making the public aware of autism and autistic people, the group encourages people to accept autistic people.  The idea here is that the public may already be aware of what autism is, but now it is time for the public to accept it and the people who have it.  A vast majority of autistic people support this movement as it claims to support people with the disorder as well as their families rather than just the families.  A lot of this also comes from the controversy caused by Autism Speaks.  The major argument here is that the renowned organization does not support autistic adults, puts their money towards researching for a cure rather than supporting families and autistic individuals- as well as lining their own pockets-, and negatively advertises autism as a major problem that needs to be fixed.  Supporters for the Autism Acceptance movement have gone as far as to renounce the iconic puzzle symbol and don red instead of blue.

Learning about this alternative movement, I found myself on the side of the Autism Acceptance movement, but still clinging to the Autism Awareness fence line.  I agree that Autism Speaks could do a better job at advocating autism as a spectrum disorder –meaning it ranges in severity- and for actually helping people with autism and ASD.  But I don’t think they’re a terrible resource for information.  They have some good definitions of autism and related disorders and have links to state organizations that can be helpful for individuals and families.  In fact, I’ve used them as a resource for numerous grad school projects, including my Capstone paper.  But at the end of the day, if I’m going to help advocate for any autism related organization, I’m going to put my support in other organizations.  Granted, that doesn’t mean there are some things with the alternative that are perfect either.

Hands down, the Autism Acceptance, or the #REDInstead movement, is probably the most inclusive of the two movements in that it genuinely shows support for people with autism.  Granted, there are a few things that they reject that I don’t think they should.  One of those is the puzzle piece symbol.  To me, I think this is a very accurate symbol for representing autism.  I know that many people often associate it with Autism Speaks and their Light it Blue movement, but there is another way to look at this symbol.  Yes, I do believe the puzzle piece represents the complexity and mystery of autism; there is a lot about the disorder that people don’t know about, and everything we learn is just another piece of the puzzle.  But you can also look at it like this:  think of the puzzle piece as the autistic person.  We all fit into society in some way, including people with autism.  The puzzle piece can be taken as a figurative representation of how we all fit in the big picture of society.  Plus, if you look at the picture above, my Autism Awareness ribbon has puzzle pieces of different colors, not just blue.  In fact, I avoided using a ribbon with a monochrome blue puzzle piece because I love the different colors as it represents the variation of autism in people.  Plus the colors look nice.

And finally, I actually still use Autism Awareness as opposed to Acceptance.  That’s not to say I don’t think calling it acceptance is a bad thing, but I feel like the moniker isn’t justified.  To explain, if I were to hear some tell me to call Autism Awareness Autism Acceptance, my answer would be, “Ok, why Acceptance?”  If the person’s answer is because we already know enough about autism and that it’s something that needs to be accepted, then I wouldn’t except that answer.  Sorry, but it’s not that great a justification.  If the answer to that is because people with autism are just as capable as living fulfilling ives as an atypical person, I would accept that.  But still, don’t you think people should know that?  Shouldn’t they be aware of that fact?  For me, Autism Awareness is more than just knowing what autism is.  It’s showing that despite the struggles autistic people face on a daily basis they can still do great things.  Autism Awareness Month, not just Day, puts autistic people in the spotlight to showcase their strengths.  It helps us prove that being autistic really means that being different is a good thing.  But still, we have to let the world know that rather than just make them accept that fact.

That being said, let’s talk about this year’s festivities.  Honestly, I wanted to branch out from the usual talking about autism and Asperger’s Syndrome and how it affects me every day.  I’ve already talked about that in a variety of ways almost every year.  So this year, I decided to be a little different.  I’ve talked about how Asperger’s has affected my life, but I’ve never really talked about my life.  Well, ok, maybe I don’t need to talk about my daily life cause that would be boring.  And I’ve already talked about relationship stuff thanks to a certain someone and a certain something that shall not be named.  No, I thought it would be fun to talk about the things that I like that aren’t related to anime at all.  The idea came from Robbin Barry-Cotter at Anime America.  On one occasion, she did a countdown of her top ten favorite non-anime TV shows.  I loved the idea, so this year, I decided to talk about my favorite non-anime shows and movies.  So starting April 12, as part of my Autism Awareness event, I’ll be posting Top Ten Lists of my favorite non-anime shows and movies and YouTube Channels.  The YouTube list was also another Anime America idea that I’m using and may or may not have some anime ties to it, but I’ll talk about that when we get to it.  This Thursday will be an actual Talkative Thursday post, but it’ll be a discussion post that’s still related to Autism Awareness.  But we’ll talk about that Thursday.

So yeah, I wore red today and preached about acceptance, but whether you wear blue or red, or say awareness or acceptance, autism is just something that makes you a little more different!  Stay tuned this Thursday for a special Autism Awareness Talkative Thursday post and my usual review this Sunday!

-Hanime on Anime