this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Autism

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Autism Sneaks (lemm.ee)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I didn't want to cook for myself tonight, but I read somewhere that the place I started ordering from is a sponsor of Autism Speaks.

Before placing the order, I tried to go on the AS website to check it out but I kept getting distracted by the stream of donation alerts that popped up at the bottom of the page.

It took me an additional five or so minutes to review their partnerships because it was so overstimulating.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Sadly on brand.

As an example of the opposite, I recently got into a YouTube channel that does very involved videos about appliances (technology connections). It’s absolutely my bag, and I suspect that the audience is more neurodiverse than average.

I was super excited to see a video about fire alarms, but nearly didn’t watch it at all, because I did not want to hear one. I put it on mute with subtitles and the first thing the creator said was, “just so you know, I won’t be setting off any alarm sounds.” 🥰

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago

At this point Technology Connections can be considered Lemmy's patron youtuber.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

I thought you were gonna say technology connections was advocating for autism speaks, and I was about to have my day ruined

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Technology Connections is fantastic. I'm usually very possessive of my attention but I always end up listening to him infodump for a hour about something I couldn't care less about.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How else will I learn about turn signals and dishwashing detergent

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Or about how my house's AC unit is way over built? And what the most efficient fridge/freezer design is?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Or how a pinball machine or jukebox work?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Okay, this is the silliest thing, and it's very autistic of me. I used to watch him religiously but can't anymore because of his opinion on power sockets. He believes that it's superfluous having switches by every wall socket. I grew up in Australia, where we do have those switches unlike the US where he's from, and I believe he is objectively incorrect. To be fair to me, this isn't a onetime rant or opinion, it's an ingoing series of videos, as well as many response videos by other creators. He does make good content though, and I don't mean to spoil you on watching him at all, because this is the mildest of reasons to dislike someone 😅

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Why do you want the switch??

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Tell us why you want the switch please?

I’m from the UK where we also have switches, but I never toggle them; so they seem useless to me. We also have the safest plugs, so more don’t really need switches.

The only people I’ve seen use switches are the people that think saving 2p a year by turning them off is good, or my OCD (not shaming, I’m neurodiverse myself) brother would turn everything off at night and it was a pain in the morning having to remember to turn switches back on.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

email them about it, they might not know. keep it anonymous I'd say

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Autism Speaks might not know how overstimulating their site is or the sponsor might not know Autism Speaks is a potential hate group?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

the second

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Hi! I got here from the "everything" tab, while I don't have autism myself I want to support those with autism as best as I can. I have often seen that Autism Speaks is problematic, but I don't fully understand why, can someone please explain it to me?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Just a few points, you'll find much more just putting "autism speaks controversy" into the search engine of your choice.

They view autism as a disease that needs to be cured.

They made videos saying autism will destroy your marriage, your family and your life.

They advocate to develop prenatal testing for autism with the goal of having women abort their supposedly autistic babies.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They treat autism as a disease to be cured, which is a disgusting way to think about it. Their founder also claimed that it's "possible" that autism is caused by vaccines, which is scientifically disproven. There are also no autistic members of their board, which means no actual representation for the people they claim to want to help.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There are a lot of reasons, but I think this article does a good job of listing the main criticisms: https://www.themarysue.com/the-autism-speaks-controversy-explained/

But in a nutshell:

  • They frame autism as a disease that needs curing
  • None of their board members are autistic
  • They spread fear and misinformation about autism
  • As a charity, embarrassingly little of their money goes to actually doing anything for autistic people
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Well, donation/purchase popups are already a very big red flag in itself. Scam sites use them to drive FOMO. I have never heard of Autism Speaks so I don't know about this particular case.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Is it intentional, that the person's face slightly resembles a down syndrome face? This is how they view us, no matter the evidence against it.

[–] carbon_based 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

~~Can you give a link?~~ Don't mind, I found it out (it's the AS website itself).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You mean this: https://www.autismspeaks.org/. I meant the evidence of us usually not being intellectually disabled.

[–] carbon_based 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, I wanted to see the Down-ish looking person is displayed but was too lazy to first look at the most obvious place, or recognise my ambiguity. Sorry to disturb.
And yes there are eugenicist agitators posing as experts. Makes it sort of mandatory to work against.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

As you started with this topic, how did those people even become the most popular autism related (to avoid the term advocacy, as they are not advocating for us, but against us) organisation?

[–] carbon_based 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not OP, and I learned about AS only through this community but didn't investigate further (different continent). So I can only speculate: there's a lot of revenue to be made from therapy and pharma if you find a new niche. A fundamentally wrong popular bias, reinforced by pouring massive money into advertising helps that a lot.

To me it also smacks a lot like a part of that post-humanism psy-op. Some (influential) people really want to have "Brave New World" become reality (or "Gattaca"?) -- the "perfect" human machine; engineered and gated; divergence is a flaw. The rest goes happily with the narrative. There was someone posting their dismay about an interview with a person they previously liked, maybe already a year ago. The person in the interview was speaking of how autism should get removed from the gene pool ...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

As for the Wikipedia I read, people in BNW are selective breading for intelligence, which is at least somewhat proven, so it's still better, than AS, who just seek to discriminate against autistics, which shouldn't even be considered as a bad trait. So it's worse, than the movies. PS: Thanks for the bonus movie recommendations.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Money.

Bob Wright who founded the organization with his wife was/is a lawyer, lobbyist and businessman, at the time they founded the organization he was chairman and executive of NBC. So he had the money and knew the right people.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In case you ever have to go back to Autism Speaks' website, or a similar one;

Try running NoScript browser plugin, or something similar. It shut down the distracting notifications for me.

Don't know which browser you use but I've found that if you put a little effort into it and use one that supports some good plugins you can cut out a lot of the most annoying things on the internet.