Today is the “Autistic People Should” flash blog day. It’s being done because when you type “autistic people should” into autocomplete search engines, you get some pretty disgusting top searches (for details, check out the Autistic People Should blog, and some of the posts there – I’m not going to honor that search by typing any of those terms into this post). (Warning: Can be triggering.)

I had a hard time coming up with answers to that question. (Speaking of questions, I highly recommend reading Musings of an Aspie’s post on Autistic People Should in particular – it has some excellent details and suggestions.)

But I was thinking about it this morning, and I found myself coming up with some interesting (and hopefully much better) ways to complete that sentence.

Autistic people should be able to be themselves.

Autistic people should not have to be ashamed of / angry about / embarrassed about / humiliated by who they are.

Autistic people should not have to conform to the social mores of allistic / neurotypical society. (Please note that I’m not saying anything here about the “moral” mores. What I mean is that we should not be expected to want to go out a lot, make lots of friends, enjoy loud and bright places, etc. We should still be held to the standards of not hurting people and the like. We are perfectly capable of that.)

Autistic people should be able to live in the way that they prefer. (Independent, independent with support, etc.)

Autistic people should be accepted / respected for who and what they are.

Autistic people should not be looked down upon as “defective” or “damaged”.

Autistic people should be listened to about who they are and what they want.

In other words: Autistic people should be treated like human beings, because that is what they are.

[Edit: Feb. 23/13 @20:40] Unstrange Mind has also done an Autistic People Should post focused on the fact that we are all human beings.

Thank you.

😐 tagAught