WHY I AM ANGERED BY TALK OF CURING AUTISM.

Conventional wisdom was that if you fell off a horse you should get straight back on it and keep riding. The motivation for this was that you’d lose your confidence if you delayed.

There have been times when a woman has been raped and other women take to the streets stating that they will not be silenced or cowed by predators.

I remember someone saying to me, “If you don’t go past your old high school, the bullies have won.”

So how does this relate to curing autism? Well, an obnoxious little so and so said to me, “Imagine if you had a bump on the head and you changed.” Autism is what makes a person who and what they are. Autism makes a person develop special interests in certain topics and find all sorts of information on those topics. Autism is what makes a person have a sensitive heart if they have one. I remember other kids at school who were quite cruel regarding animals (I remember one picked up a frill necked lizard and put it in his schoolbag, while it was still alive) and I wasn’t. I remember kids who liked body contact sports, like football, and others of us who hated them.

I would feel, if somebody cured me of my autism, as if the bullies at school had won and I had become the sort of person they wanted me to be rather than the person I was intended to be. I see not becoming like them as a strength, not a weakness. It takes courage to be who you really are. And if that means being a non-masking autistic, then so be it!