So my son’s teacher posted a ‘light it up blue’ graphic on the classroom Facebook page. I’m sitting here wondering how to handle this, because I didn’t want to ignore it. Did some quick googling and commented with a link to the Autism Acceptance Month page created by ASAN. She commented back with a thank you for pointing her there! So I decided to post the link to my Facebook wall too.

And that’s my little bit of advocacy for the day.

If you’re interested, here is the website: http://www.autismacceptancemonth.com/

autisticsherlockinelementary:

I want to touch base on something that’s not Elementary, or 221B Con related for a moment.

Tomorrow starts the month of April, known to the autistic community as, “the month where non-autistic people pretend to care about us by spreading AWARENESS, but in actuality do not ACCEPT us, and use us as cookie points for being a “Good Person” ™.

More commonly named, “Autism Awareness Month”.

“Awareness” in this context, is either used as a scare tactic (”1 in 88 or 1 in 50 people are autistic, based on something that we-believe-is-anything-other-than-genetics”)…

Or is used to passively spread the knowledge that we exist, and that’s it.

The autistic community retaliates against Autism “Awareness” Month, and instead celebrates Autism Acceptance Month, because we deserve nothing less than acceptance.

I encourage you to read the following, if you yourself are not familiar with Autism Acceptance Month:

• What Is Autism Acceptance Month?
  
• Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN)
• ASAN Resource Library
• #walkinred (Combats Autism Speaks’ “Light It Up Blue” campaign)
• Anti-Autism Speaks Masterpost

To my autistic readers, and my fellow autistic Holmesians/Sherlockians - Be safe. 

This month is hard on all of us (my workplace, where I don’t disclose my autism status, sells chocolate that donates to Autism Speaks), but please know that we have each other in this fight.