Coward of the Decade

In response to my last post, Camille mentioned that Bill Gates once thought about coming out of the closet as an autistic, but he was too afraid of being called "diseased." After reading that, I started to think about how different everything might have been if Gates had any guts.

Just suppose Bill Gates had come out five or six years ago, before the autism industry got its slimy tentacles all over the mass media. What if he had created a pro-neurodiversity foundation? With his money and influence, he could have changed the tone of the social discourse completely. Instead of chelation and eugenic abortion, people would be discussing the importance of neurological diversity to the human species, how to improve the education of autistic children, and civil rights laws to protect neurological minorities. Curebie groups such as Autism Speaks never would have existed. Gates could have saved an entire generation of autistic kids from the emotional (and sometimes physical) scars of being treated as damaged goods. But instead, he sprouted yellow feathers and flapped ignominiously away. Bawk, bawk.

His kids will go to the top prep schools and universities. They won't have to worry about being treated like dirt in segregated classrooms or sent to abusive institutions like the Judge Rotenberg Center. They won't have to struggle to "pass" in order to get and keep a job. They won't be taught to think of themselves as mentally diseased and genetically defective. I'll bet their daddy hasn't even told them about autism. Or if he has, I'm sure he described it as an unfortunate affliction of other people. Not us, nuh-uh.

Role model for autistic youth, my ass.

Bill Gates doesn't deserve to be Person of the Year. In my book, he's Coward of the Decade.