Today is Autism Awareness Day (and Autism Acceptance Day). I'll be putting out a post about that shortly, but for now I wanted to write a post on the idea of "lighting it up blue for autism". Light it up blue deeply frustrates me. I remember when I was in college there was an Autism Speaks U club on campus. They told me they had succeeded in convincing the university to light it up blue for autism. My initial reaction was, great!
Then I asked, are you going to have flyers to educate people about autism?
No.
Are you going to have people standing next to these blue lights tellling people why they're blue?
No.
So how is this at all helpful for autistic people?
...no response.
Even if on the off chance a bystander realized that it was blue because of autism awareness (and the mere recognition of that fact indicates that they're already aware of autism)....what does that blue light teach them about autism? Absolutely nothing. And that is just one of the many reasons why I'm not a supporter of light it up blue, the others being that even if facts about autism are given, they tend to be factoids like "1 in 68" that lead to "cocktail party awareness" as Diary of a Mom put it, and additionally I'm concerned the campaign feeds fear, not understanding.
So if you choose to light it up blue today, I'm going to ask you to PLEASE provide information along with that color. And make it meaningful information - if you're at a loss for what to say, feel free to go to the Characteristics page or the Myths page of the ASE website for some suggestions that would truly make the world a better place for autistic people if everyone understood. Out of the two, I'd say mythbusting is far more important since there are so many toxic ideas about autistic people out there.
No matter what we choose to do, we should always ask ourselves, is this going to make the world a better place for autistic people? Because that's the ultimate goal, but that's not always what we're accomplishing.
-Creigh
Characteristics page:
http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/characteristics.html
Myths page:
http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/common-myths.html
Then I asked, are you going to have flyers to educate people about autism?
No.
Are you going to have people standing next to these blue lights tellling people why they're blue?
No.
So how is this at all helpful for autistic people?
...no response.
Even if on the off chance a bystander realized that it was blue because of autism awareness (and the mere recognition of that fact indicates that they're already aware of autism)....what does that blue light teach them about autism? Absolutely nothing. And that is just one of the many reasons why I'm not a supporter of light it up blue, the others being that even if facts about autism are given, they tend to be factoids like "1 in 68" that lead to "cocktail party awareness" as Diary of a Mom put it, and additionally I'm concerned the campaign feeds fear, not understanding.
So if you choose to light it up blue today, I'm going to ask you to PLEASE provide information along with that color. And make it meaningful information - if you're at a loss for what to say, feel free to go to the Characteristics page or the Myths page of the ASE website for some suggestions that would truly make the world a better place for autistic people if everyone understood. Out of the two, I'd say mythbusting is far more important since there are so many toxic ideas about autistic people out there.
No matter what we choose to do, we should always ask ourselves, is this going to make the world a better place for autistic people? Because that's the ultimate goal, but that's not always what we're accomplishing.
-Creigh
Characteristics page:
http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/characteristics.html
Myths page:
http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/common-myths.html
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