30 Days of Autism Acceptance: 10
April 10th: How important is representation to you? Is the representation that is out there generally good or bad? What is your favorite piece of representation? What you like to see more of in autism representation? What would you like to see less of?
I would like to see the stereotypes and stigmas removed from autism in the same way that I would like to see them removed from all disabilities. I don’t think that wanting to treat all people as human beings is that “woke”; I think it says something sad about the status quo of our culture that this is seen as a radical, leftist stance.
I think that autistic characters should be played by autistic actors, but if allistic actors can play those characters, I don’t see why autistic actors can’t play allistic characters. I definitely think autistic stories need to include autistic voices.
I think it’s interesting how important the concept of the voice is to autistic culture. We have a huge interest in speaking and being heard. For many of us, speaking in any way at all is an act of courage, and so the concept of voice takes on tremendous value. I think that people who feel that we are overly sensitive to these issues should think about how important our voices are to us.