Words are Words

To Autism Speaks,

I've noticed you've made some words changes on your mission statement lately. You've replaced "cure" with "solutions" and included "acceptance".  Some people are calling this a big shift for your organization, myself and many other autistic people don't think so.

While I have no doubt that you aim to stop the autistic people boycotting you and your sponsors, this is not the only change that needs to happen. For us to accept that you truly are changing, there needs to be more than just words.  There needs to be actions as well.

There needs to be systematic changes to how your organization is structured, how it is run, in the decisions it makes, in how it spends its money.

In short, these are just words; what do your actions say?

How I can believe that you're making changes, when you still support ABA as a treatment? When you support research looking into autism and immune systems? When your organization still doesn't have autistic people in decision making positions? When you've pretty much not made any other changes?  When you haven't apologized for the way you've demonized us, treat us as tragedies, cite inaccurate statistics about us? When I still see first-person language used, I can still see medicalization in your information about us, despite so many of us demanding that you do otherwise? When you otherwise ignore autistic people and fail in so many ways to support us?

You want to change? Show us you can actually change.  Until then, we're not falling for your superficial gloss over, your charade.  You're not actually supporting us, you're not actually listening to us, and until there is fundamental changes, you never will.