Hate Speech Every Day

Before I start ranting about the literally murderous attitude expressed in that godawful video from Autism Speaks (and no, I'm not providing a link, as I wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone feeling compelled to wash their brain out with soap), I'm going to make a true confession here: I wasn't always the easiest kid to take care of, either. I wandered off, played in traffic, and had no sense of danger. I climbed trees, large rocks, the furniture, and anything else that was climbable. I thought it was great fun to sneak into a highway bridge construction site and walk across a steel girder high above a river. I also didn't see anything wrong with floating out to the middle of said river on two boards—in February, when the water was ice cold—and, after being rescued by worried neighbors, cheerfully telling another neighbor that the person he thought he had seen walking on the water was Jesus Christ on a raft. Then I got quite indignant when my mom disagreed with my opinion that I hadn't done anything wrong and grounded me for a month.

But you know what? I did manage to grow up and become a reasonably well-adjusted adult. Naturally. Without benefit of psychiatric drugs, behavioral programs, or quacky alternative medicine bullshit therapies to cleanse my body of its toxins. Kids grow up. Duh.

Parenting is hard work every day, no matter what sort of neurology a kid has. In olden times, people understood this simple fact. That's where the expression "it takes a village to raise a child" came from. Others in the community were always available to help parents with an autistic child who wandered into dangerous places, or an excessively social child who ditched school to hang out with friends, or a child with any kind of problem. (And by the way, there is no such thing as a perfect child who never has any problems.)

Nowadays, most parents don't have a village to rely on when they need help with their kids. Instead of having a large extended family close by, parents often live in cities or new suburban developments, far from anyone they know. They have to contend with judgmental neighbors, inadequate schools, financial pressures, an environment that is often stressful and dangerous to children, and the what's-in-it-for-me attitude of the modern world. Rather than understanding that these are structural problems in our society, parents often blame themselves or their kids because life always seems so hard. They get burned out, frustrated, angry, and depressed.

At that point, they become easy targets for the propaganda of hate groups such as Autism Speaks, which exhorts them to blame their child's autism for everything that is wrong with their lives. They get the message that, if only they donate enough to research (and the fact that it is actually eugenics research is never mentioned), the yellow brick road will lead them to the Promised Land and all their troubles will magically melt away.

And if that doesn't work, well, as the video suggests, there's always murder.

This is what I have to say to the Wrights, Alison Wack-Job Singer, and their viciously manipulative collaborators: If a mother drives off a bridge with her child after watching that video, their blood will be on your hands.