So I found this graphic on a “friend”‘s Fudgebook page…

Now, people out there know full well that I have no kind words to say about the online fad called Fudgebook. But in order to get my voice heard and fight the good fight against normalist tyranny, I must unfortunately make some use of it. One of the persons whom I have in my “friends” list has posted an image that I could not help asking about.

I will change the order in which the events go in order to make the story a little easier to follow. A moron called Jason Bross posted this image on his Fudgebook page. When I asked about this friend’s satire of same image, they gave me that link. I also told them, in a nutshell, that someone who can write on Bross’ page should inform him that “a Powell type has just seen your hateful image… if you are not scared, you are an idiot”. Powell types, for those who have forgotten, were well-represented in the Ridley Scott masterpiece Blade Runner, beating several shades of shit out of one another, punching holes in the sides of garbage trucks, and other lovely acts that announce a rage level that was once only known in battles with the armies of Scotland. But anyway, getting back to the main gist of the story, through proxy of this person in my friends list, I was able to contact the author of a parody image, one Transica Hester. In case you want to see the original Fudgebook location of the image in question, it is here. But so that one does not need to go through the bum-stab-with-a-broomhandle pain of looking at Fudgebook again, I have also included the parody with this writing, at a slightly reduced size compared to the original that I downloaded.

I am going to share a little secret about myself so that my point can be better understood. I have diabetes. Note how I phrase these things, for a start. I am autistic, and I have diabetes. Diabetes is something separate to me that I was not born with, and would give just about anything, including my life, to rid the entire world of. Autism is not separate to me, it is a term that describes the manner in which the brain I was born with is structured, and I will kill any individual who threatens to remove it from my person. Quite a dramatic contrast there, do you not think?

The first year after a nine year old boy is diagnosed with diabetes is one of fear, horror, and terror. For that whole year, you end up listening to medical specialists who really need to brush up on their skills in the realm of communicating with a child (autistic or otherwise) telling you do this don’t do this don’t do this this way or that way or your eyes will melt, your feet will rot off, and on and on it goes. It is like being at a boot camp designed to make a child terrified to even walk in a different rhythm. Bad enough for any child, but if that child happens to be autistic, it can fukk up their entire will to see anything in the world. So when I tell you that I would happily trade my life in order to never have another child (or adult for that matter) told that they have diabetes, I want my full meaning to be understood here. About the only thing that I have ever been told I have that has made me feel as dead inside as diabetes would be cancer, and given that the type of cancer I speak of can be removed without too many permanent side effects, I am still unsure as to which I hated hearing more.

Oh, and during some occasions when I heard others speak about their experiences of peoples’ ignorance regarding diabetes, I thought I had seen the absolute limit of how stupid and ignorant Human beings can be. I was wrong. Autism is like diabetes in one way only: it does not “spread”. You can no more infect a person with autism or any autistic spectrum “disorder” than you can infect a person with diabetes. Given the level of ignorance that morons like Jason show, were this not the case (ie if both were contagious), his home would become a very popular place for certain types of people to visit. Not kidding.

I also offer this as evidence of the truth in one of my favourite sayings: ignorance is only bliss for the ignorant.

Whilst I was searching for an image to represent diabetes in this article, I came across some really interesting ones showing one of the complications that I used to wake screaming from nightmares of: loss of circulation in the feet. But then I found this simple image from Team Cure Diabetes that I thought I would rather include because it symbolises something that all people would do well to get through their heads. I am an autistic adult, not a puzzle piece. But diabetes is a puzzle, both to me and to medical researchers whom I would credit with being smarter than I am. Finding the best way to fit treating it into the lifestyle of an autistic adult who is dealing with severe emotional disturbance is a puzzle. Finding the best medication to limit its worst effects, but in the short and long terms, is a puzzle. Finding an actual cure that will negate the progression of its worst long-term effects is a puzzle. To portray being autistic, or being in the company of someone who is autistic, as a puzzle is therefore extremely offensive to me.

And just so there is no room for mistaking me, I will point out this little difference once again. Come to my door with an actual cure for diabetes, and I will worship the ground that you walk on for the rest of one of our lives. Come to my door offering to cure what makes me me, and they will need a microscope to count the pieces I shall cut you into.

Also worth thinking about is the fact that the revised “one in 88” claim has such a stench of bullshit about it that it brings to mind another comparison to diabetes. In the past thirty-two years, the estimated size of the Earth’s population has nearly doubled. Yet if diabetes charities or physicians went around saying that the rate of type one diabetes was now one in five hundred (one in a thousand is the usual stated rate), they would be required to either offer peer-reviewed proof, or go to the corner for putting out false information. But when people who have no business even speaking about autism change their “rate” from one in a hundred and fifty to one in eighty-eight, not a word of protest is uttered.

And let us be quite frank here, Jason Bross. If the rate of autistic adults in the population increasing to one in two meant that we no longer had to deal with the like of you, I would consider that a vast improvement. Frankly, we already have it difficult enough without your input. Being as ignorant as you have demonstrated yourself to be should be illegal.