Medium, awareness is not enough.

A heart made into the symbol of trans in red, with blue infinity symbol in the middle on a black background. On the top, in rainbow of colors is a writing: “Pride, Love, Acceptance”. Doodle made by me.

Today I received an email from Medium about Autism Awareness Month. You can read it in the end of the post if you’d like too.

I, as you have already guessed, was not very pleased because not even one word in the email addresses Actually Autistic people. So I sent them an email, telling them a bit about why awareness alone is harmful. It is not original, and you can probably read tones of posts like this, but still, I hope they will read it.

Here is my letter:

Hello,
I am autistic blogger and part of the Autistic community.
April is celebrated in the Autistic community as Autism Acceptance month, because the awareness is not helping autistic people. People see autism and autistic people as a burden, disease, tsunami that have to be stopped and prevented.
Actually, autistic people are people, and when others are just aware that we are autistic, we are discriminated against, bullied and harassed.
Autistic people are treated as less human, as robots, thought to lack empathy or ability to understand. Our behavior is seen as something that should be eliminated, like stereotypical behaviour (stimming) and not as a way to express ourselves and deal with the world.
So, dear Medium, please remember the autistics, some of them bloggers on your platform (like myself). We don't need only awareness, we need acceptance.

Thank you,
P .HalfTree

I hope they will answer it. I don’t expect much, but maybe they will see this mail.

Thanks for reading.

Here is the original Medium’s email:

Hi there,

I'm the Head of Community at Medium and am reaching out to see if you would be interest in participating in an efforts to start conversations about autism. Saturday, April 2 is Autism Awareness Day - and in fact, the whole month of April is dedicated to Autism Awareness. Medium’s excited to take part and invite a wide swath of voices to talk about their experiences with autism.

If you are interested in writing, here are some prompts to help get you started (don’t feel constrained by these, by any means - they are here only to help you if you need it). Do you have any personal experience with autism? Would you like to discuss a theory of autism with the community? Or maybe you'd like to discuss parenting children with autism? Or maybe you just want to ask the community a question? We're looking for all kinds of perspectives, voices, opinions, and experiences, so please, if you'd like to share your story, let us know and we'll do our best to make your voice heard.

When publishing your story, use the tag "Autism" and send a link to tips@medium.com. We'll be curating various homepage verticals with the best stories on this topic and we'd love to consider yours.

Later this month, we're planning a larger conversation around identity and specifically how autism is different in boys and girls. If you're interested in participating, let me know.

Thanks, and let us know if you have any questions.

Elizabeth Tobey