I have been sorta off the grid for a couple days and there's a few reasons for that. Mostly it's because I'm depressed, tired and just haven't had the energy to put my thoughts together. Another is that I've been hit with a couple hate mobs and even a death threat on Twitter.
Most Autistic adults are amazing people and I'm blessed to have many as friends. My wife is Autistic and so are all my kids.
There's a very small, but incredibly vocal subset of Autistic adults who are very aggressive, rude, hateful, intolerant and simply mean people. They say some truly vile things and seem to think it's okay to threaten people who don't agree with them. I was lucky enough to the target of these hate mobs, threats of violence and even a threat on my life this week.
This was because an old poll got reshared. The title was *Has being an Autism parent had an impact on your physical and emotional health?** *The second post that created unnecessary drama was *Fixing what's broken in the Autism community.*
The fact that I wrote these, both actually positive posts, meant I was a monster, terrible parents and my kids would be better off if I were dead. The first post was about raising awareness for selfcare and was simply a poll meant to get parents thinking about selfcare. The other was about uniting the different groups within the Autism community, so we accomplish more and do better for our loved ones with Autism.
My words were grossly misrepresented and few people bothered to read the posts for themselves. They just attacked and attacked. There was absolutely no reasoning with them. I was accused of promoting the genocide of Autistic people and wishing that my own kids were dead. It was, and frankly, still is unbelievable. It's still going on but I'm walking away from it.
I will say that while some people were simply assholes, I also met some really amazing Autistic adults and Autism parents at the same time. I'm truly grateful for that and they have my respect. ☺
While I don't like admitting these people got to me, I didn't sleep last night because I couldn't stop thinking about the things that were said. It's very frustrating when people purposefully misrepresent my words and make libelous statements, simply meant to defame me.
Anyway, I just needed to shutdown for a minute and collect my thoughts.
I should be very clear that this vocal minority of unpleasant people, *do not* represent the whole of the Autistic community. I choose to look at each person as an individual and I won't let a few bad apples impact my desire to connect with Autistic adults because they're incredibly insightful, wonderful people who have been hugely influential in my life.
There was no reasoning with the people attacking both myself and other parents, so I finally decided to block the most vile tweeters. It was only a few and it cleared up the thread a bit and allowed more productive conversation with people willing to listen to each other.
While things were pretty bad for a couple of days, the outpouring of support from parents and Autistic adults alike was uplifting. I truly appreciate kind, reasonable people, even if we don't agree on things.
Thank you to everyone who encouraged positivity and civility. I look forward to conversing and learning from each other as we go forward. I also want to thank Twitter for stepping in and shutting the account down of the person who threatened my life. They literally responded within 5 minutes of the threat being made and reported.
My hope is that we can continue to move forward, learn from our mistakes and do better. ☺
