 But let's have a look at this video. This is from Foster on the Spectrum, a closer look at Autism Speaks. Just want to highlight to anybody who's watching this, possibly Autism Speaks members. This does not represent my views at all. I'm not going to really divulge many of my views for fear of righteous judgement. I am autism. I will ruin your life and destroy your family. I will steal your money and burn down your house. Have you guys seen that video? Anyway, I am Foster. I'm an autistic adult and today I'm going to speak about Autism Speaks. I do speak for the entire neurodivergent community except for the fact that I completely don't and I only speak for myself. So Autism Speaks is the largest autism research organization in the United States as a whole. It's a very big and popular non-profit that has been criticized a lot by autistic adults for a lot of reasons. It's a very dividing topic. There are a lot of non-autistic parents of autistic children who really love Autism Speaks, as well as a lot of people who work with autistic children who are also non-autistic. However, a lot of actually autistic people absolutely despise this organization and frequently talk about how controversial it has been in the past. For anyone who isn't aware, the autistic community is a collection of autistic people online on different social media platforms. It sometimes goes in contrast to a lot of particular organizations like Autism Speaks, parents, researchers, things like that, to provide the more experiential angle of being autistic and sort of following with some level of self-advocacy for autistic people or advocacy rather. However, a lot of people say we should just get over that because it was in the past and they've changed. And today I'm going to talk about all of that. I did a lot of research and we're going to talk about the history of Autism Speaks and its old controversies as well as its current problematic behavior and some of the things they seem to be trying to keep hidden from all of us. So let's start at the beginning. Autism Speaks was founded in 2005 by Bob and Suzanne Wright. These were just two people who started the organization after their grandson was diagnosed with autism. They looked around, they went to doctors, they found out there was no cure. So they started Autism Speaks in 2005 as a way to fund research to find a cure for autism. The original Autism Speaks mission statement read, quote, we are dedicated to funding global biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments and the possible cure for autism. We strive... Yes, and I think this is kind of the central point of why the autistic community doesn't like this because the idea of a cure is terrifying. Or some kind of biomedical intervention where they can like test if someone's autistic within the room, you can imagine where that would. And so it's quite a touchy subject for a lot of autistic people. There are some things that they do which I suppose could be considered to be good. There's a lot of like backgrounds kind of stuff that I'm sure will be illuminated in this video. To raise public awareness about autism and its effect on individuals, families and society. We work very close to all those who deal with the hardships of this disorder. Their mission statement changed in 2016 but we'll get into all of that later. For now, all you need to remember is that the organization started as a way to cure, treat and prevent autism. The organization was actually founded with a $25 million donation from the founder of Home Depot, Bernard Marcus. Bernard Marcus also served as a board member for Autism Speaks in the past and Home Depot is still one of their main donors. They even sell blue light bulbs for hashtag light it up blue, which we will get into later. Remember that. The original Autism Speaks logo looked like this. However, this puzzle piece logo was actually based on this puzzle piece logo which came from the National Autism Alliance, which we're going to talk about right now. So the old National Autism Alliance logo was a black and green puzzle piece with a child crying in the middle, a little boy. And the creators of this logo said that the point of the puzzle piece was to say that autism was a puzzling condition and that we had to find the missing piece, that being the cure. They used phrases like until the puzzle is finished or until we find the missing piece. And I think that there are some people within the community who have interpreted the puzzle piece as something a little bit more good. In a way, I've heard some autistic people comment on it before saying that like, you know, it's like autism was the missing piece in my life. In a way, you know, so there's lots of different interpretations, but I think that the history behind it is pretty, pretty clear from what I know. That's all about curing autism. The crying boy in the center of the puzzle piece was supposed to serve as a reminder that autistic people are suffering from autism. And another thing that these two logo has in common is that they both kind of focus on boys, which is strange. So the green one has the boy crying in the middle and the autism speaks logo was originally blue. A lot of us think that this is because autism for most of its history was believed to be a condition only affecting boys and is still believed to be affecting mostly boys, even though the people who do that research completely ignore the fact that there is discrimination in that process. Yes, the diagnosis process has been made for, particularly for boys. It's very steered in that way. We're still very much looking into the differences in terms of biological sex and how it can present differently in each person. If you do search it up, there is a, I think, more of a ratio of men that get diagnosed, boys that get diagnosed, as opposed to women. There has been some debate about that by being an actual thing. It could be. I feel like it is inflated a lot and there is a possibility that it's just, you know, we're looking for the wrong things. And there's a lot of autistic AFAB individuals who are just kind of slipping through the diagnosis cracks. Autistic people don't like the puzzle piece logo because we are not confusing. We don't like being told that we are missing pieces. We don't want to cure and we are not all boys. But when we criticize the puzzle piece logo, a lot of people will say, oh, it doesn't symbolize that there are any pieces missing or like, oh, it means that all the pieces fit or it symbolizes community. Autism Speaks actually even has this defense up on their website of why they still use the puzzle piece, but no. Like, you can look at the history of where the puzzle piece came from and they will directly say, it's because autism is confusing and we need to fix it and find a way to solve the autism problem. It does come from that. Like, all of those things that you want to use as an excuse sound great and you're free to use this if you're autistic and you like it. But, uh, that's not where it comes from. So when it comes to what Autism Speaks does, Suzanne Wright, who has now passed away, but was one of the original founders, has said that raising awareness is the first step and raising awareness is one of the things that Autism Speaks is most known for. They create videos, public service announcements, advertisements, and like, documentaries all to spread awareness of autism. They have also actually consulted with multiple like, television producers and producers of movies who want to add autism representation. They worked with Sesame Street on creating the character Julia, but a more interesting example is that they worked with Sia, the musician on music. So if you don't know, that movie has been very widely criticized by the autism community as well. It's bad. Like, really bad. Like, it needs a warning at the start of it, sort of bad. Bad enough that it's promoting lethal methods to help autistic people. An absolute vomit of a mess of loud noises and vibrant colours, an entirely unwelcoming film set and an entirely unwelcoming film for any moment sensory issues which autistic people have. One thing that really got me shocked was watching her interview with a variety. At one point the interviewer says something about how this autistic girl is non-verbal, which we prefer non-vocal because non-vocal doesn't mean you can't communicate. She goes, she's basically, because she's non-verbal, she's like an inanimate object, like a wig. And Sia's like, she's like, but you gave them a voice. You gave them a voice. And Sia's like, yeah, you know, I really did give them a voice. But when we brought up those criticisms, Sia was like, I actually know what I'm doing. I'm working with Autism Speaks. And then the whole- That's where you went wrong, Sia. Oh, we hate them. Why would we do that? But yeah, they apparently worked with Sia on this terrible, terrible movie. That's an example of some of the work they've done to raise awareness, but we are also going to watch some of their advertisements and videos that they have posted in the past. We're starting off with a video called Autism Every Day. This focuses on mothers of autistic children and how hard it is to be the parent of an autistic child. Before we get into that, I think there was something that they mentioned about autism awareness work. And I feel like within the community, there has definitely been a shift away from using the word autism awareness just because it is used so widely by a lot of organizations like Autism Speaks. I actually think that to some degree, awareness is pretty important, but it depends what people are becoming aware of. If people are becoming aware of the negatives of it, if people are becoming aware of what autistic people can be like and the variety of the ways that they can be, how they think, how they communicate, the positives, all of that stuff should be covered under awareness. It shouldn't just be, right, this is how it affects people negatively and people around them, which is what a lot of the old content used to be kind of centered around. The other aspects of it is the acceptance, which is more along the lines of like, okay, we're here, people know that we exist, now we got to accept that this is the way that we are and we don't need fixing kind of thing. I think the approach could be better. I think awareness and acceptance are both very, very important aspects to that and even more so action on that, actually making some changes within society. Let's have a look at these educational videos. Clenching my teeth. The full video is linked below. It's on YouTube for free if you want to watch it, but I'm going to react to a few of the highlights. One notable thing about this video is that it starts with just a montage of autistic children screaming, crying, having meltdowns. Some of them are hurting their parents or running away. Yeah, this is super upsetting and they just like cut all the clips together so that the viewer can know how bad it is to live with an honest child. I also noticed that in several of these clips, specifically the ones where no one is getting hurt and no one is running away, there are several parents grabbing and restraining their children to make them stop self-regulating and stimming, which is gross and not called out by Autism Speaks because... That's another aspect of it. A lot of autism advocates within the autistic communities are very, very against people stopping autistic people stimming because it is an important method of self-regulation for a lot of us. And it's something that's taught out of us a lot of the time and replaced with other habits which are not so good for us. I actually had to... It's not really something that was taught out of me in childhood. I was very much allowed to... I used to sit in the living room. I used to be in the living room with my parents watching TV and I used to spin around on the spot like about ballerina constantly just to get like that, vestibulating point. It just relaxed me so much. And when I got to secondary school, obviously or school indeed, those type of things, they get looks, they get attention drawn to you so I stopped doing them. And I've actually tried to very much so in adulthood. I'm just like manually telling myself to stim nowadays because it's so trained out of me. I get such a natural way that I can regulate my anxiety and it's really sad that it's just not so much like a normal part of who I am, I guess, like the things that I do. I tend to do it a lot more if I'm having like a meltdown situation, high anxiety, panic, that kind of thing. But just every day, usually. Not so much. Other than perhaps a chewing gum which I quite often have. It's good or a motor stimulation. I was raised in a Mormon church. There has always been acceptance of disabilities in general. I remember a song we sung every star is different where we're told we are fine the way we are. I like that. You know, I'm not going to show those clips on screen because it is super disrespectful and humiliating to show your child having a meltdown to thousands of people. Like when you click play on the video, it's just automatically immediately a montage of children in extreme distress and their parents not helping them. And nobody benefits from you posting meltdowns online. It's not educational. It's not helping the child. It's not helping the parents. It's literally disgusting. And I don't really see why anyone has ever done this. But they still keep doing it. And the whole point of this in this video. People find it funny. Like, I think one of the biggest search terms, you know, as part of being a content creator, sometimes you've got to like research and see what people are searching for so that you can make videos around it. Man, there's so much searching going on about autism meltdowns, autism adult meltdowns, autism boy meltdowns and girl meltdown. People just really want to see it for some reason. It's quite bizarre. And some people find it funny, which is even more so. To make it seem like autism is just entirely bad and that autism is a disease that is torturing these children and making them a burden on their families. But don't worry. It gets much worse. Remember how I said that posting a video of your child having a meltdown is very humiliating and you shouldn't do that? Five seconds later, one of these mothers is changing her kid's diaper just live in front of a cameraman. Also in front of the 200,000 people that watch this video. The kid's like five or six and she's talking about how much of an inconvenience it is to still have to change his diaper while recording almost like barely censored footage of her wiping her kid's ass. I feel like if I said this to the mother in that video, she wouldn't see what the problem is. I posted a video of her wiping her ass and showed it to a couple of thousand people. If I showed it to even like five people, I think she would take me to court. Weird how that is. Okay, next the moms start talking about how autism ruined their lives basically. That they had to give up who they are or they had to give up their friends. All of their lives revolve around autism now. They will quit their jobs. Autism is a disease. It's a disease that will infect your family and destroy your life. All of your energy and your time and tear apart yourself from the inside and tear about your child from the inside. That's the kind of stuff that they go for. The fear mongering. I mean, not nowadays, but like definitely before. The fear mongering was real. If you haven't seen that video of I think at the beginning of the video they did something that was like they were copying a particular viral video that a lot of autistic people point to when people ask them about their views on autism speaks, which is like some kind of horror movie esque like depiction of this demon that's inside of this child that's called autism and it destroys their life and destroys their family and like, oh, God, if you haven't watched it, you've got to have a look at it at some point. Man, it's terrible. Actually, you know what? Let's take a little bit of break. Let me try and find this that is something to see indeed. They probably pull it off YouTube, to be honest. I think they've probably got some people on the case to try and remove it because it is like one of the worst things. I'm going to search for it somewhere else. It's called I Am Autism. Let's have a look at this. It's about three minutes long but it's... This is the type of stuff that they used to do. I am autism. I'm visible in your children but if I can help it I am invisible to you until it's too late. I know where you live and guess what? I live there too. I hover around all of you. I know no color barrier, no religion, no morality, no currency. I speak the language fluently and with every voice I take away I acquire yet another language. I work very quickly. I work faster than pediatric aids, diabetes combined. And if you are happily married Pediatric aids, cancer, diabetes combined. My god. I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain. I don't sleep so I make sure you don't either. I will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend the temple, a birthday party, a public park without a struggle, without embarrassment, without pain. You have no cure for me. Your scientists don't have the resources and I relish their desperation. Your neighbors are happier to pretend that I don't exist, of course until it's their child. I am autism. I have no interest in right or wrong. I derive great pleasure out of your loneliness. I will fight to take away your hope. I will plot to rob you of your children and your dreams. I will make sure that every day you wake up, you will cry wondering who will take care of my child after I die. And the truth is, I am still winning and you are scared and you should be. I am autism. Isn't this just like the most fear-mongering horror movie-esque kind of depiction of autism? It's almost laughable. Like it really is. It really does bother me because I am like it's about the fear-mongering. It's about the parents who just they don't know better. They see some information by this really big organization and they start fear-mongering telling them that all these problems and they start trying to look for cures and they start trying to look for crazy therapies and like diet changes that they can do. What am I watching, indeed? Let's turn it off that gives you a good idea. It's ridiculous, isn't it? It's just like, what the heck? Okay, back to the video but we're not going to watch any more of that stuff because I don't want to like trigger or upset anyone. I'm sure there's probably going to be some more stuff like that in here that's probably going to be quite upsetting so just a warning, obviously probably should have done at the start. Everything I do is about autism. I really had to give up my entire life and left the job that I never intended to leave. And I did have to quit my job. Our entire social life revolves around autism. I think it's interesting that these are the people who would likely correct me to using person-first language and saying like a person with autism instead of autistic person because they think that you have to like remind yourself that the child is more than a diagnosis but when they're talking about it one of them, I think multiple of them say my life revolves around autism and my life revolves around my disabled child. And I think it's kind of this interesting thing about person-first language where it allows you to separate the person from the autism as if those two things aren't innately like together so they can say how much they hate autism without having to admit that they hate their child and that's something I find really interesting about this video. Although in a few seconds we are going to see some of them directly talk about how much they hate their children. And that is the thing about person-first because usually the arguments that come for person-first language is that if you view autism negatively as someone who is an outsider it does kind of give you kind of free reign to say like oh you're better than this and this is not my child and my child is afflicted without saying that this is my autistic child and that I love them and saying that sometimes it's difficult sometimes it's great and there's a lot of in-betweens and I wouldn't change them that would be the ideal but there is also I think autistic people who again the view autism primarily is a negative thing and so separating out the difficulties that they have in life into autism into this kind of separate entity it makes it a little bit easier to view sort of not view it as who you are I guess if you view it so negatively I mean the issue there is that autism is not just all of these negative traits it's a lot of different things and it's a neurodevelopmental thing it's your brain you are an autistic person if you weren't autistic you would not be the same person there's so many aspects to it and I do find that a lot with people who do autistic people who do use that person first language I never someone wants to be referred to in that way I always refer to them in that way because it's just the kind of thing to do they have a rainbow of how they want to be referred to which is cool with me but it does tend to be people who really just view it very negatively and not as like a whole thing the things that they're good at they don't necessarily attribute to being autistic and saying that this is the good part of me and they kind of box off these negative traits into what they describe as autism if that makes sense just from my experience listening to people it's definitely the way that I used to view it when I was a bit younger it's normal to want to have something to blame and not sort of internalize that as something to do with you it's a bit more dissociating separating kind of experience I guess your heart is breaking all day long you know you think about his future and all the pain he's in I don't think they can understand that okay this mom says that child is in constant pain even though autism is not an inherently painful condition so the only part of autism that should be like painful I think is sensory issues which can be accommodated like he doesn't have any sensory gear he doesn't have any headphones, earplugs he doesn't have sunglasses he's in pain then maybe that's why or she is falsely attributing the signs of a different comorbid condition to autism to make autism seem worse or she's seen too many autism speaks ads and now thinks that autism causes them suffering and misery vote below yeah and it's like that kid did not look in any pain he was just like stimming away which is cool I think some people just they see like it's odd for them it's like a novelty for some people they're like oh this person is making these strange movements that most people don't do and that must be a bad thing and they must be trying to cope with pain yeah maybe with a sensory environment could possibly be the reason why they're regulating but it's not like a often people they want like a visual representation of it and they think that stimming is always going to be this thing that is associated with pain a lot of people enjoy stimming just for the sake of stimming it's nice, feels good we have a lot of real issues that are actually really interesting to hear about so firstly they talk about eloping which is autistic children and adults tend to just like get up and leave dancing ran out the door himself which was absolutely terrifying it was freezing cold lucky dolls Daniel had walked at the front door he got away from me and he was running down the middle of first ab and she took off once and we had to call the police and all of the moms have a story about this happening this is absolutely a real thing that happens it's happened to me when I was a little kid I just get up and leave also when I was 14 I just like walked away and it just happened with some of the kids that I told they tended to do that as well stayed that I had never been to I just walked away from my family and they had to call the cops to come and find me I also still get lost in like grocery stores and stuff so I can imagine for someone who is a very young child who is under support needs this could be very dangerous and then next they go on to talk about how they're perceived by other people that people assume that they're just bad parents or they can't control their kids or they must be like hurting their kid to make them like scream in public we're just judged more harshly and more constantly and I feel like this is something that I can perhaps empathize on because there has been a lot of misinformation about parents of autistic people as well the whole refrigerator mother hypothesis about you know cold parenting producing autistic children and you know if their autistic kid has a meltdown in public then it's seen as like a tantrum you know it's something that the parents fault you know obviously in these cases you know a bit of sensory aids would probably help a little bit but every teen planning going to places where it's a little bit less busy you know I empathize to some degree with that but it's just the way that they just blame it on their kids it's like come on you just gotta stay strong for your kid you know be their advocate don't worry about what random strangers think of you as much as you can I say well you know are you an expert in autism and those parts may even have been good parts of a video to watch if they weren't like spliced up with also footage of children screaming and in extreme distress and their parents ignoring them and complaining about them as well as if they focus at all on what the children are experiencing that's something that goes throughout this entire ad other than that one woman who seems a little confused and is saying that her son is in extreme pain like for the rest they don't talk about how the children who are autistic have to deal with autism and being autistic no they only talk about how this affects parents and I know this specific video is about parents but that is a common theme you will see among all of what Autism Speaks does okay this is the part this is the part that we need to talk about this is the very bad part trigger warning if you don't want to hear this when I realized I had sat in the car for 18 minutes and actually contemplated putting Jodi in the car and driving off the George Washington bridge and that that would be preferable to having to put her in one of these schools and it's only because of Lauren the fact that I have another child that I probably didn't do it so that woman just sat there and laughed and like smiled with her child in the background while she talked about how she thought about ending her own life and murdering her daughter disabled because she would rather that than have her that's just so disgusting like God damn it WTF I don't know how to direct other than crying my eyes out and this this has been put in a video remember this has been disseminated that Jesus like like in a school that she doesn't want to go to and she said that the only thing stopping her from doing this is the fact that she has a non disabled child and she needs to stay alive for that kid she just said this in front of that child I don't care how little she thinks this girl comprehends I don't care how little she thinks her daughter is able to understand you're a terrible fucking parent and you hate your child and you just said that in front of them this part is fucking emerging and it gets worse so let's talk about it one month after that video was released a different mother in Illinois did kill her child she took her three year old autistic daughter to the park put a plastic bag over her head and suffocated her for being autistic and that murder has nothing to do with autism speaks right so why am I bringing it up I am bringing this up because there is an article this article that I read about that and the tone of that article is extremely similar to the tone of this autism speaks at and pretty much like how autism speaks wants people to think about autism and autism mom they show us this mother who's complaining saying that she thought about killing her kid and we're supposed to feel bad for her the point of that is that we're supposed to know how hard she struggles and how hard this much be for her instead of thinking that she's a terrible mother who wanted to kill her child and this article written about the person who actually did kill their daughter this article is extremely similar the entire article is about how hard it is to be a parent of an autistic child rather than being about this woman who murdered her daughter in cold blood for being disabled. Christopher it's terrible isn't it it's you just can't really believe it to be honest it's just you know it's it's ridiculous. Kenny autism dad and legislative director of the autism society of Illinois said this about the murder quote whatever comes out of the McCarran case it is already clear that many many people in our community have seen something of themselves in it I bloody hope not God damn it that's him literally saying whatever happens whether this mom killed her kid or not a lot of us know what it's like to be that mom we know what it's like to want to murder our children we think about that all the time and we really should feel bad for us I know there's a little girl who's dead but maybe this is about me you know he continued to say quote concern parents have communicated the feelings of despair and isolation so many of us have felt at different times in our lives with autism we cannot ignore the bigger picture in context within which this and other such acts occur so in that part he's basically saying that this isn't just like a crime that happened and it shouldn't be talked about as one we need to talk about how hard it is to be a parent and we need to understand why she did that and that is because there aren't enough resources which there aren't and the entire article kind of just goes on like that in a very similar tone to the autism speaks video it just talks about how we can't really blame the mom because it's so hard to be an autism parent and I'm not blaming this girl's death on autism speaks unlike the people in this article I am blaming the death on the murderer the reason that I'm bringing this up in the conversation about autism speaks is because it first of all came out one month after they released a video of a mother saying that this is what it's like to be an autism mom but also because the tone in that video and the way that they make it seem like whatever these parents do to their kids and whatever they feel about their kids is completely like valid and okay when it isn't is extremely similar to how this article is written and I will have the article linked below if you want to read it and see how similar these are but for the rest of the autism everyday video they go on to talk about how autism destroyed their lives their marriages drained their entire bank accounts and put them in debt and instead of blaming the fact that we don't have a healthcare system we don't have support for these kids we don't have like free counseling or mental health treatment for parents instead of blaming any of those things we're supposed to blame autism and want to find a cure to autism even more next we're going to talk about a more popular ad the reason why I'm saying so quiet is there's just nothing really that I can add to that it's like I don't know if this person is called Foster but Foster is doing a very good job of reflecting how I think and feel about this you know it's it's tragic like the way that they talk about it and saying that like this is the consequence of being autistic it's like no this is like murder like this here's how it does the one that I was referencing in the beginning of this video this is the I Am Autism video from Autism Speaks Autism Speaks has deleted this video and apologized for posting it but it's still free on YouTube I'm going to react to it right now and then we'll talk about the apology and everything later the full written out transcript of this video is also linked in the description there we go I am autism I'm visible in your children but if I can help it I am invisible to you until it's too late I know where you live and guess what I'm laughing because it's stupid and it's mean that something like this is being created it's like a god time horror movie I live there too I work very quickly I work faster than pediatric aids cancer and diabetes combined oh my god exactly the same position this is supposed to be narrated by autism itself it has a deep demonic voice and that is supposed to be the voice of autism this disease that is out to kill your children away from you it frames autism as a disease that is almost like a parasite that attaches itself to your child it's not part of who they are it's something that is destroying them from the inside out the stream is I am autism and I am infecting your computer screens everywhere you have to be careful because I will drain your wallet I will destroy your family and your friendships and everything that you love in the world I am autism sim you gotta make some jokes about god damn stupid it is compares autism to cancer and pediatric aids specifically in a way that makes it sound like it is worse than both of those combined as well as diabetes and that's just super fucking disrespectful but also to cancer survivors and people who die of cancer as well as pediatric aids what the hell the thing is they just use clips of autistic kids and others just chilling like there is nothing particularly demonic about what they are doing some of them are stimming, some of them are playing on slide some of them are like building sand castles like what's going on here your neighbors are happier to pretend that I don't exist of course chilling by the trees I am autism I have no interest in right or wrong ok, as it continues once again we are focusing on how autism affects everyone except for autistic people instead of showing that autistic people are real life humans who can think and feel it decides to instead make it out like they are a burden on their entire families who only exist to be a burden you may also notice that they are only showing clips of children similar to the last video they focus entirely on autistic children and never on autism this video also seems like kind of a failed attempt at a smear campaign like they were trying to fear monger and make it seem like autism is the worst thing in the world but the clips that are under this horror movie music and this horrifying narration are just clips of kids who are like playing and standing around doing anything wrong exactly it's not even that they are like it's not even that they are like hitting people or like having aggressive meltdowns and like throwing stuff around they are just chilling with this horror movers like music and you know old recorded camera footage kind of thing and the demonic booming voice like they wanted this to be like super scary and make everyone so scared of autism but the autistic kids are doing great they're just chilling there anyway if you want to watch the rest of the ad I'm sure that they'll focus on actually disabled people and not just parents and caregivers in the second half ha ha nope they repeat the fact that this is entirely about parents siblings grandparents teachers scientists Russia this is about everyone except for autistic people and they repeat that line like four times like I said autism speaks remove the I am autism video and apologize we're going to get into that I think it's a great way to transition to all of the ways that they've changed throughout the years before we can get into that though we need to talk about the biggest reason that people hate autism speaks and I've alluded to it multiple times by now but let's talk about why we don't want to cure for autism firstly unlike what autism speaks wants you to believe autism is not an inherently painful and miserable condition it's not a disease at all actually it's just a neurotype and a lot of people who have that neurotype a lot of autistic people are suffering and struggling a lot for a lot of different reasons mostly because of other people and the resulting conditions that come from the difficult experiences with other people like mental illness very very common for autistic people so it's all types of a use pretty much across the board you will find disproportionate levels of pretty much all of the negative things that autistic people experience I would also like to say that not every single autistic person does see it as not a negative thing I know a lot of people who do see it as a negative thing I think overall the message of the autistic community is like that I don't think every single person would share that opinion not saying that it's not a valid opinion it's something that I hold I don't think it's inherently a negative thing it can be for some people although in a lot of circumstances I would argue that that person just didn't have the adjustments or the supports in order to you know thrive, do well, avoid difficulties but many of those could be solved by just accommodating autistic people not getting rid of autistic people some people are non-vocal and have no way to express themselves and another thing look at some of the top visionaries, creative people business owners in the world have a look at them just really see what they're about watch some interviews with them kind of a little bit of hints of autism coming in there even actual autism diagnosis even looking back in history reading upon people's characterisations of these individuals who have made a marked impact on society I will look at them if we got rid of autism we would have got rid of those people we need those people these people are good for us and it's not necessary saying that we need to extract all the value out of an autistic person because that's not the intention but when we're talking about it in terms of like is this an inherently good thing a lot of people they jump to are they good for progressing humanity I reckon to that I would say yes and there's probably a lot more untapped potential than you would think with people within the autistic community with their amazing skills hyper fixations traits a lot of untapped potential that really needs to be utilised that could actually make a really big difference in a lot of areas of society not just maths and technology and science a lot of different areas alternative communication or allowing them to write or type or use an iPad or speak in other ways however a lot of parents of autistic children will refuse to give their kids any other form of communication in hopes that that will make them more likely to speak out loud I've also heard of many issues where ABA therapists will take away communication devices as a punishment to teach kids that they shouldn't be doing a behaviour so the problem of non vocal people not being able to express themselves is solved by making a cure so that they can talk it can be solved by just allowing them to communicate in different ways that's interesting the non-verbal, non-vocal thing that they brought up it's not something that I've ever come across as a thing let's have a look I'll pull up an article and see if we can find an article on it because I have not heard anyone make that distinction before or want to stay up to date with all the vernaculars non-verbal communication includes vocal elements which is referred to as parallel language includes pitch, volume, rate non-vocal elements which is usually referred to as body language and includes gestures, facial expressions eye contact and many other things non-verbal means without words yeah, I mean I would say that a lot of non-speaking individuals, as they said you know, they do have words they can't necessarily hold a conversation that makes more sense it's definitely something to have a look in look into a bit more non-speaking means a person a non-vocal means a person doesn't communicate using spoken words interesting clearly, many autistic people are extremely lonely and are bullied or excluded from a lot of groups and activities we don't need to cure autism in order to solve this problem we could just be nice to autistic people many of us can't work regular jobs and because of that many of us will endure poverty and homelessness even if we're on disability but the solution to that isn't getting rid of autism it's things like employment rates for autistic people about 20, 23% I think maybe in just in the UK of any type of employment I'm not just talking about full time full time is a lot lower any type of employment by 23% is are standingly bad making housing a human right giving people basic necessities regardless of if they have any income improving disability services or starting employment opportunities specifically for disabled people autism doesn't need to be cured to do any of that and there are plenty of other problems like this that could be solved by making the world a better place for autistic people to live instead of making the world a place where no autistic people live by curing autism and that's the next point they'll talk about how important it is to find a cure for so many autistic people but they refuse to acknowledge that by doing that we could very well eradicate autistic people from existence and a lot of people will defend this by saying that the cure would be optional which it might be but who would get to make that decision because autism speaks in similar organizations focus as much of their resources as they can on early detection of autism finding the diagnosis I tell you what if that kind of thing happened I would definitely be doing some kind of action I would be fighting against that so much 100% is I understand the fear of it I do think that there has been some research that has been shut down which I was kind of a bit more on board with just because I think we do need to kind of research and understand autism and understand like how the co-occurring conditions come across and whether it's an environmental thing just an inherent biological thing understanding those things would be really important not because if it's like a biological thing but if it's an environmental thing that means that there is more evidence to show that it's caused by the environment a lot of our disability is caused by the environment that we're in like of accommodations I think a lot of autism people are very scared of any type of research and I think if they tried to push for something like that there would be absolute madness going on there would be a lot of people being very very vocal about this and it would definitely like I really hope that it wouldn't be something that would be passed through as like an option for parents because that would be doomsday scenario honestly as young as possible so what we're doing that is to identify the autism but then wait allow the children to grow up understand what's going on with them understand their place in the world and what neurodiversity is and then allow autistic people themselves to weigh the pros and cons and make a decision when they're old enough to consent no this would be parents who just watch something like autism every day and think autism is a terrible disease there was a cure which is probably impossible it would not be up to autistic people whether or not we take it not to mention that the assumption that this would just be optional is kind of not based in evidence there are many countries with universal healthcare that don't allow autistic people to immigrate to their country do not allow them to have work visas there and the UK went as far as putting us on non-consensual do not resuscitate because they would rather literally let their citizens die rather than being a burden on the economy so if the government could save some money by making autistic people get cured it's the same with the same with Down syndrome as well that was something that happened particularly during COVID it's disgusting and getting rid of us I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that they would do it so keep all of that in mind as we talk about how autism speaks has changed and supposedly is no longer looking for a cure for autism in the Q&A section of autism speaks they have a question called why did we remove i am autism the response quote i am autism was a mistake and the video was removed from our channels shortly after it was posted in 2009 we apologize for the video and any harm it may have caused firstly you may notice that they are apologizing as little as possible they aren't saying like what they did wrong they say any harm the video may have caused rather than saying any harm they have caused and they say that it may have caused harm they don't know for a fact that it did so terrible apology but at least they removed the video they also tell people to stop spreading it they say we know a lot of people are still spreading the video and we really wish you would stop doing that can you please just pretend this didn't happen so oopsie I spread the video just ignore the history of it you don't need to know about it you don't need to watch that you don't need to watch that you don't want to harm other people if I personally had a misunderstanding of autism as a whole and then made a video similar to the i am autism one I would not remove it maybe I would remove it as it is but then I would make a video including it and talk about how wrong the people who perceive autism are and how like uneducated I used to be but I guess ignoring the fact that it ever happened is also a good solution and that's something about autism speech you can say they've changed as much as you want to but they never actually say what they did wrong like ever as far as I've seen they've never actually apologized for anything specific they say we took down the i am autism video but they don't say that autism isn't a disease and they shouldn't have made it look like one they took the word cure out of their mission statement but they don't actually say sorry we shouldn't have said that there needed to be a cure there doesn't need to be a cure they don't actually apologize for anything specific or say that they aren't behaving that way anymore because they still are so autism speaks as a non-profit that people donate to they donate money to help autistic people so where does that money actually go once you give it to autism speech here we go breaking out the pie chart there 27% research awareness lobbying 1% family services this is 2018 it's quite it's quite recent 5 years ago fundraising 20% MISC damn 1% it also could be something related to the associations that people have with colors yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah in many publications that people have with colors if you didn't know there is psychology to the way that people design logos and choose their color palette and things like that blue tends to be perceived as being more honest and trustworthy that could be a reason why as well not necessarily do with the gender norm of boys liking blue and girls liking pink and stuff I think also it's probably a good decision on their part to cover it all in blue. You know, it's a very kind of neutral cool color hints of trustworthyness and openness and like also perhaps a little bit more like clinical as well. Maybe it gives gives me hints of that the cool blow a little bit more like factual maybe it's interesting if you know if you want to have something to google tonight go go check out like the meaning behind colors and like logo use and stuff it's it's interesting. Pirelli ignores this they also ignore the fact that we prefer to call it autism acceptance week instead of autism awareness week because the issue isn't that people are unaware of autism they know about it they bully us for it they threaten to drive us off bridges for it they kill us for it the issue is that they don't accept us and they want us to be gone but no i agree with what a lot of what foster is saying in this video however i do think that there is a part of awareness like people know that it's there but awareness is also was it a lot like how can you help that kind of thing you know perhaps education is probably about word for it better autism education rather than awareness people can be aware of traits they can be aware of difficulties be aware of positives perhaps there's a lot of things that they can be aware of which you know is the first step to anybody learning more about something is you got to be aware that it's there and have access to it it's just sadly that you know some organizations do have like the the internet on lockdown in terms of search engines and things like that but also a lot of people within the community entirely ignores all of those criticism they did in fact change their logo to make it partially red and partially blue but they didn't get rid of the puzzle piece which is the main thing that people had a problem with so no their attempts at raising awareness are not that great for us at that point you could say but doesn't the research help autistic people and uh that's a really interesting question i'm so glad you asked let's talk about the research that autism speaks does so since being founded autism speaks has merged with three other organizations all three of those organizations also started with the purpose of finding a cure and prevention for autism these organizations are the autism coalition for research and education the national alliance of autism research and cure autism now this third group cure autism now they created something called the autism genetic research exchange so the point of this is to gather genetic information from thousands of families and try to identify which genes are causing autism a g re is the largest open access repository for genetic information in the field of autism research and the organization that started it cure autism now they specified that the point of this was to find ways to prevent and cure autism it's in their old mission statement but and the interesting thing about this is that autism is not one gene you don't have the autism gene it's a cluster and it's it's multiple different genes that are involved in it but we still don't particularly know why it happens and there is also environmental factors not particularly like outside of the wind but inside the wind like stuff to do with um testosterone stuff to do with a lot a lot of different you know aspects of of how that that child develops but the main thing is that it's neurodevelopmental so if there were to find a cure for something prevention um it would be in the womb it would be very crazy just unthinkable uh with the level of science that we have at the moment to uh completely reconstruct someone's brain into not being autistic so it would definitely be that genetic thing it wouldn't be a choice it wouldn't be like a little pill that you can swallow and you're not autistic um it wouldn't be like even a surgery i think that that would it's just very very complex um and it just wouldn't happen it's an neurodevelopmental thing happens within develops within the womb but you become autistic before you're born and um that would that would be where the cure comes from getting rid of um potential lives because uh they don't have a favorable genetic profile that is that is literally eugenics like it is just eugenics it's um it's not good to put it lightly since autism speaks and cure autism now have merged autism speaks is now part of this agre thing according to autism speaks website agre this research database started for the express purpose of curing and preventing autism is quote now part of the autism speaks family and i guess that makes sense doesn't it because like i said they never stopped trying to cure autism they just stopped using the word cure one of those other organizations they merged with the national alliance for autism research they had a similar initiative to this called the autism genome project and the autism genome project was started by the national alliance for autism and the NIH the national institute for health and the NIH specifies the purpose of this on their website they say that the goal of this research was to understand what genes make it likely that a baby will be born with autism so that they can easily test newborns for autism and then give them early intervention they also say one of their other goals is to create a medication for autism that will help with the neurodevelopment of autistic children if you don't know autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder so helping with our neurodevelopment likely just means finding a way to make us neurotypical through medication but the main concern about this autism genome project is that it would make it possible to detect autism in the womb this means that someone who is pregnant could be told your baby has like an 80 chance of being autistic and the thing that you say after that is do you want an abortion this would give parents the opportunity to get abortions specifically because they don't want an autistic child this process already exists with conditions like down syndrome we can test for down syndrome in the womb and we can tell and the crazy thing about this this particular if you if you just understand it you know autism is very heavily genetic a lot of these parents who too are saying like autism is destroying their child like there's there's going to be one of the parents who are somewhere on the autism spectrum like it's just it's very highly likely or somewhere within their family and it's just the the complete lack of awareness that you know that that that's what makes them who they are and they're just seeing their child as like this demon or like seeing this this their child being like possessed by a demon and wanting to stop them being born because they're autistic it's it's it's bizarre thinking about it it's like oh my god honestly parents how likely it is that their child will have down syndrome in many places they also will extend the deadline for an abortion if they find out that the child has down syndrome and we support abortion abortion is a human right and it saves thousands of lives and improves even more lives so why are we talking about this like it's a bad thing firstly a lot of disabled people think that if you are aborting your child just because they are disabled that's gross it's this whole thing with like you get to chew it's not even it's not just gross as an understatement it's it's eugenics it's it's no like I can understand with like life-threatening illnesses you know like you there's a lot there's a lot of different ones like that that could come out and I think you could make a pretty good case for things like that but for something for something that's that's so for autism for down syndrome it's just like it's it just doesn't sit right I don't I'm not I'm not for that it was to have children or not to have children but trying to choose which type of children you have is very strange designer babies you signed up to have a child you signed up to have a disabled child you signed up to have a trans child you signed up to have a gay child and you aren't supposed to be like picking out all of the specific traits that you want that's kind of similar to some other people who did some really bad stuff when they found out they were able to do that also this idea that like you are a good parent to your non-disabled kids but you'd be a terrible parent to a disabled kid is probably probably not true if you would suck at parenting a disabled kid you would likely also suck at being a parent in general so maybe just don't have kids however I do believe that anyone who wants an abortion because their child is disabled should get one because I don't think any child deserves to be raised by a parent who thinks they shouldn't exist but that's not the only issue here because abortion is a personal choice um I understand the the logic in that wouldn't say that I agree I'd say that they need some really hard hard hitting education from actually autistic individuals about it and and really kind of challenge that I still don't think that's okay whether we agree with it or not but this would also open the door for the government to force you to have an abortion yeah and that might sound crazy but it's not as crazy as it sounds first of all like I mentioned a lot of countries with universal health care will do anything in their power to stop disabled people from existing in their country because it costs them more money for healthcare but also forced sterilization laws in the united states to stop the spread of mental deficiencies started as early as 1907 and didn't end until the 1960s not to mention wait where do you draw the line you know someone's going to be bought they found a gene for depression you can like they found a gene for anxiety they found a gene for whatever you know like the thing is you would be putting your faith in other human beings to decide and governments and people who don't particularly have the best interests of autistic people at heart who don't really understand what it is like to be autistic and what autistic people think it's a you know where does it stop a whistleblower report that came out about ice immigration control forcing sterilization on women in their facilities in 2020 so it's not that wild and wacky of an idea that they could just force us out of existence but if you ask autism and this research you know you could think about it and it confines with your own country but as foster is saying it doesn't necessarily it's not going to be necessarily confined to just just the UK just the US just Australia just New Zealand it can be a lot of other places if that information was out there and if those tests were out there and if that those cures were out there I get I can imagine that there's there's quite a few countries that would enforce that or at least make that available and speaks why they're doing this research they won't say that it's for abortions they won't say that it is for like breeding out the autistic people or forcing cures on them they will say that it's for early intervention so what are these treatments and interventions they have a section called interventions on their website and I checked so the first thing they recommend is ABA therapy also known as applied behavioral analysis this is a therapy that is extremely controversial and once again very dividing it's very similar to the topic of autism speaks as a whole so a lot of non-autistic parents and caregivers love it so much they will talk about how it saved their lives and it improved their child and it's the most evidence in research-based approach while a lot of people who are actually autistic who went through ABA therapy will say that it was abusive it traumatized them and it should be abolished I know people have seen this we've seen the results of this type of therapy not going to give my own particular thoughts on it I think you can probably imagine my suggestion to any parents who are watching this who are thinking oh okay right what do I go for um the best approach to it is not to go down this very pigeon-holed route of going for a therapy what you want to do is you want to learn about your child learn how to adjust for them there's the there's a whole page on it there's a personal Instagram that I had on the podcast about autism parenting if you want to go look them up it's in my podcast playlist you'll be able to find it and it's neuroinclusive parenting and it's it's not as it doesn't need to be as complicated or stringent as like having particular guidelines you know you can borrow some things from other therapies ways of teaching that could be applicable or work for a particular child but you're also not pigeon-holed and like stopped from branching out and finding different things that work that are not necessarily part of this very closed-off system and there's definitely a lot of things that are parts of you know that kind of practice that I don't agree with I'm sure I'm sure Foster might or maybe Foster might go into it so let me know if you want a video just about ABA therapy because I actually do think there are a lot of things that people aren't including when they talk about it both like positive things about ABA and negative not that I support ABA there are just certain things that people like don't mention that they probably should but if you want a video on that let me know for now let's talk about the most common criticisms of ABA first of all it focuses on ignoring the needs of children yes secondly it attempts to improve dangerous behaviors like children eating non-edible things or running out in the street like we talked about earlier but along with that it often also focuses on stopping non-harmful behaviors just to make children seem normal so for example they would also stop a kid from lining up toys and teach them that they have to play normally play correctly and finally ABA is that sounds fun the father of ABA actually also worked with the very groundwork the foundations of gay conversion therapy to stop people from being gay not to mention that ABA also focuses on training children like dogs and I'm gonna read you a quote from that same founder who worked with gay conversion therapy who created ABA about how he described working with autistic children quote you see you pretty much start from scratch when you work with an autistic child you have a person in the physical sense they have hair a nose and a mouth but they are not people in the psychological sense one way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person you have the raw materials but you have to build the person yet autism speaks first recommendation for intervention is ABA therapy they go on to list some other therapies some of which are way cooler but they are known for just funneling parents of newly diagnosed kids into ABA therapy so has autism speaks changed not really here are some other organizations you can donate to instead autistic self advocacy network autistic women and non-binary network self advocates becoming empowered autistic people of color fund and communication first i will have links to all of those and the videos we watched and the sources for all of my information in the description below you can also go to the description to find ways that you can support me and remember to take your medication and drink water and thank you so much I gotta have that in that was a closer look on autism a closer look at autism speaks by foster on the spectrum and this is our last video for tonight i very hope very much hope you've enjoyed this make sure to go over to foster on the spectrum give them a subscribe give them a like give them a comment you know i'm just watching commenting on the video there's been a lot of time after there's been put in to create this video and so definitely go over and show them some love if you can thank you very much foster on the spectrum