Katie McCarron is dead. Zain and Faryaal Akhter are dead. Ulysses Stable are dead. All were killed by their parents, for the same reason countless others have died. It was the same reason that a UN-recognized international organization released a video in which a mother is portrayed sympathetically while expressing a wish to murder her daughter. It is the same reason one Michael Alan has felt it necessary to write a book entitled: "I Wish My Kids Had Cancer". That reason is autism, or, much more accurately, the reason is the cure autism movement, and their hateful, destructive, and exclusionary rhetoric, which time and time again leaves little doubt: these people, whatever their stories and excuses, harbor behind their own self-pity and disappointment an unbridled and deadly hatred of the autistic.
Mr. Alan has written on the wall of his book's little fanclub,
"I want to apologize to any group members who are being harrassed by those who take issue with the title of my book.... All of us fighting Autism fight it in our way, and this book helps the fight... Those who have read book, and those chose to respect someone who opens his family's life and puts everything he has on the line to help raise awareness should not be condemed by those who choose not to receive the message, and choose to be angry at those trying to help."
Mr. Alan, with all due respect (in your case, none whatsoever), spare me your bullshit. Portraying autism as a disease worse than cancer, ignoring the voices of autistic people, marginalizing legitimate complaints against your asinine bigotry, and contributing to the attitude of stigma that surrounds the autism discussion does not help us. Continuing to push the discredited and intellectually bankrupt conspiracy theory that thimerosal causes autism is not helping us. Continuing the frame the entire discussion around autism in the perspective of parents and families, and not the perspective of autistic people themselves, continuing to deny us our rightful place in the discussion and shut us up, does not help us. Pursuing an agenda of treatment that seeks not to help us function as ourselves, seeking our own happiness, but pushes always to make us over into the semblance of normalcy that people like yourself can finally learn to respect, does not help us. These things only further marginalize and dehumanize us, while propagating a mindset that can never help us, because it does not respect us or understand us.
Do not pretend otherwise. Do not lie to yourself and think that you are aiding us, respecting us, or fighting for us. You are fighting for yourself. You are selfishly bemoaning your lack of a normal child, and instead of showing your autistic children the love they deserve, have chosen instead to to wish a hideous death upon them. You have decided to proclaim their genetic mental pattern to be such a terrible thing that your wish, which, if wished by any other parent upon any other child could be grounds enough for protective services from such an obviously disturbed man, is actually reasonable.
I cannot help but be reminded of the deaths of Katie McCarron, Zain and Faryaal Ahkter, Ullyses Stable, and the countless other martyred to the needs of parents who didn't want to deal with autistic kids. How many more of our autistic brothers and sisters will have to die because people like you cannot learn to cherish the children you have, instead of mourning the children you wanted? How many more of our brothers and sisters have to die because of the hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric that you and your vulturish ilk peddle? How many more need die because we are seen not as people, but as burdens, as objects, as problems? How many more need die because of your thinly disguised hate?
Mr. Alan, you may wish that your children had cancer. You may prefer the thought of a child who wastes away into nothingness as the cells in their body mutate and take over their tissue, turning their mortal vessel against them and ravaging their bodies into husks of their former selves. You may wish that I and all my fellow autistics, from Temple Grandin to Amanda Baggs, had cancer, and that our tongues would rot from our mouths and never speak a word against you again, never prove a burden to your society. But, we are kind. We don't wish you had cancer. We just wish you had autism.
Mr. Alan can be reached at michael_alan@comcast.net
P.S.- You make me sick.
Also:
Now get off this planet, you sick, disgusting sniveling pile of garbage masquerading as an excuse for a human being.
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