So, I am friends with the person who writes Autistic Hoya. I read everything (yes, EVERYTHING) that she writes, but not usually the comments. For her most recent post (about saying no to autism speaks) I did read the comments. It was actually mostly OK. There was one person who assumed that it was just the ``high functioning" autistics who don't like Autism Speaks, which is patently false, and one person who accused autistics who don't like Autism Speaks of trying to speak for all autistics (not so much, just complaining when people who aren't autistic insist that they can...). But mostly? I think the people who actually support Autism Speaks and people who read self-advocate blogs have fairly few people in common. It's hard to listen to the legitimate concerns with their organization, understand that yes, we have fact-checked on those concerns, and still support them, so if any amount of logic will convince someone, they won't support Autism Speaks for long after starting to read self-advocate blogs. So maybe we should just get EVERYONE to read them? Make ``Don't Mourn For Us" required reading while we're at it? It would at least help with the assumptions that not liking Autism Speaks does not automatically imply being ``high functioning." Might even help with the dumping of functional labels, since they don't REALLY help anyone.
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