While looking at the Autism Speaks website in preparation for my previous post this evening, I saw that their home page now features Ron Suskind’s New York Times article and video that I posted a few days ago. By way of Disney movies, his family learned to communicate with their autistic son and help him to adapt to the everyday world. It’s a success story. But Autism Speaks calls autism an “epidemic” and a “tragedy.” They advocate the elimination of autism. Autism, however, is an integral part of autistic people. The only way to eliminate autism is to eliminate autistic people. As an autistic person, with an autistic son, I—shall we say—disagree with their view. Suskind’s Times article is titled “Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney.” The title of the Autism Speaks page, however, is “Watch Father and Son with Autism Communicate using Disney Movies.” It refers to “journalist Ron Suskind with his son Owen who has autism”—not “his autistic son, Owen.” Once you see enough of this “person with autism” language, it gets to look awkward and forced. And this is a crucial point: The Autism Speaks site NEVER uses the word “autistic.” It appears to be a rule for their organization. They always refer to a person “with autism,” as if autism were not a part of the person—a disease, like tuberculosis, that you can remove or “cure.” And that’s a flat-out lie. It’s a naturally occurring variety of human neurology. But you’ll never hear that from Autism Speaks. The Suskind family’s success doesn’t fit the Autism Speaks narrative. Tragedy and pity are their bread and butter. I can only conclude that Autism Speaks is cynically exploiting the popularity and feel-good aspect of this story, featuring it on their front page to get attention and donations while tacitly denying that there is no tragedy to be found here. I’m not going to link to the Autism Speaks page; I don’t want to give them the web traffic. But the original New York Times article here is fantastic, and the five-minute video embedded in it is great.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 04:15:28 +0000
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