Most Autistic People Do Not Want Or Need A Cure

Originally posted to my Facebook page on April 4th, 2022

If I was to suddenly be “cured” of my autism, most if not all of the things that make me who I am would be gone. My personality, my interests, my sense of humour, my goals in life, where else can these come from but from the specific brain that I have. To “cure” me of my autism would be to essentially lobotomize me. I would not wish it on anyone anywhere to have the characteristics that make them who they are taken away.

The response to people like myself who are low support needs (this means we need less assistance than other autistic people might) often amounts to, “Sure, it’s fine for you, you’re high functioning, but what about people with severe autism?” Firstly, the terms “high functioning” and “severe autism” create very significant misconceptions about autistic people, I will address this issue in more detail later in the month, for now I’ll just say that if an autistic person needs a lot of support we call them “high support needs”. So do high support needs autistic people want a cure? Well, they are never asked. It is just assumed that they do. So the argument amounts to, we don’t need to ask low support needs autistic people what they want, because they “have it easy”, and, we don’t need to ask high support needs autistic people what they want, because, well, we just don’t need to ask them!

But high support needs autistic people were asked what they want. There was a survey conducted by the website Autistic Not Weird, run by Chris Bonello, which recieved 11,521 responses. Both autistic and non autistic (neurotypical) people were surveyed. And who was it that wanted a cure for autism? For the most part, not high support needs autistic people. For the most part, not low support needs autistic people (interestingly enough, the amount of high support needs people who didn’t want a cure was slightly greater than the low support needs people who didn’t want one.)

The people who wanted a cure for autism were mostly neurotypical people. There are still too many neurotypical people who don’t ask us what we want, they tell us what we want. If you think autism should be cured, I know your intentions might be good, but I would like you to imagine this, imagine if somebody wanted to alter your brain in such a way that your entire personality, everything that made you you, would be gone, and when you protested, your opinion on the matter was deemed completely irrelevant. I’m happy with the way I am, I have no interest in being given a completely new personality, to essentially be replaced by an entirely new person that I don’t recognise.

Here is a link to the Autistic Not Weird Survey: