I gave Autism Speaks a shot in 2024

Here’s how it went.

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Hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth

One of the first things I noticed post-diagnosis after I started investigating a variety of autism services and community spaces, both online and in-person, was a widespread, almost unanimous, and highly visceral loathing of Autism Speaks. Upon further inspection, it appeared that the most common complaints were about the infamous I Am Autism PSA, their documentary Autism Everyday, allocation of funds, and publicly announcing that they wanted to fund finding a cure.

I’m definitely not thrilled about any of those things, to say the least, but a very stubborn, skeptical, peer pressure resistant part of me wanted to make sure I was forming my own opinion on the matter rather than simply following the crowd. I also wanted to make sure I was getting the most up-to-date picture of the situation and could formulate any gripes I had based on that. Furthermore, I have a bit of an inclination toward morbid curiosity about the taboo and controversial. This is all what ultimately made me want to poke around. I ended up downloading some of their tool kits, reaching out to their Autism Response Team (ART), playing around with their resource…