Autism Awareness Month is Pointless Unless it Centres Autistic Voices and Lived Experience

How can autistic people get past the cringe and flip the narrative?

Like many other autistic people, I find Autism Awareness Month problematic. As we enter the month of April, I’m bracing for the cringe, frustration and indignation of being misrepresented. Mostly, I’m trying to avoid it.

I can do without the sinking feeling of being excluded from a discussion about autistic people that I don’t recognise myself in. It’s the same silent despair I feel all year round when I hear professional colleagues, psychologists, journalists and others who should know better speak about autistic people in a way that diminishes my experience.

I hate that the broader community is still not able to have a conversation about autism that comes anywhere near reflecting the reality of autistic lives and the diversity of people who live them.

The general community’s baseline of awareness about autism is still painfully low. I know because I was swimming in that sea before discovering my own neurodivergence in my 40s. Whenever I felt a hunch that I might have an autistic brain, a throwaway comment or misguided television program ( Love on the Spectrum — you owe me a good two years) made me push…