Autism... something Month

Not awareness. Awareness is scary because people who think they're "aware" of autism are mostly folks who are working off a whole lot of fear-mongering and Not Like My Child and all kinds of yucky stuff.

Not sure about acceptance, because I'm not sure that's enough. Acceptance and tolerance often feel similar, with a "well, fine, we'll deal with you as you are as long as you're close enough to normal" vibe to them. And I can't help but remember that acceptance is listed as one of the stages of grief. I think Autism Acceptance Month has actually been used that way, in a co-optation. The people I like and trust and work with on this sort of thing go with Autism Acceptance Month, and I won't argue with them over it while they're actually doing good stuff. (Language is, in fact, not the most important thing to me, even while words mean things. Language is imprecise sometimes and connotations make things tricky and that's OK. Language changes, too.)

There's already an Autistic Pride day, and it's in June.

Realistically, I'm just going to stick with Autism Acceptance for the time being. I'm also going to do stuff. National Poetry Writing Month is April, and I'll be writing a poem a day for the month. I'll be putting them up in chunks again so that I can post other things as well, but that's a thing that's happening. I'm considering putting some echolalic poetry in again this year. 

And I'm making my short stories with autistic characters in them free for 5 days apiece in April. First up is "The Beginning of Her Hell", which is free for April 1-5. Warnings for ableism and threats of institutionalization and violence in this story. (Ok, so as of right now there are two such short stories, but I'm hoping to get one more up this month.)

Image of the cover for "The Beginning of Her Hell" by Alyssa Hillary. A pair of blue eyes stares out over a typewriter.