Autism is not your enemy

It isn’t misinformation that troubles autistic people most. It’s the subtext that the world would be better without us.

- DANIEL L. REINHOLZ GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

hearing people talk about autistic lives without including us. It’s the subtext that the world would be better off without autistic people in it. It's a conversation that wants to erase disabled people like me.

History warns us about walking down this path. The eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries branded disabled people, immigrants and queer folks as a “menace to the future,” and claimed that progress and prosperity demanded the elimination of these so-called burdens to society. The result was forced sterilizations, institutionalization and physical abuse. This was a playbook that was used across the world, including in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Japan and throughout Nazi Germany.

We should be horrified by this chain of logic, and we should never repeat these mistakes of the past.