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As autistic advocate Julia Bascom @juststimming.bsky.social reminds us, “There are no voiceless people. There are plenty of people who are spoken over, ignored, or not given an accessible way to communicate.” autisticadvocacy.org/2021/01/tran... 15/

Note that autism grievance parents are often pro-vax but some—for instance the NCSA’s Jill Escher—happily take smiling photos with dangerous anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Grievance parents can be more concerned with furthering their anti-autism agenda than protecting public health, it seems. 16/

Autism grievance parents head autism organizations often wrongly perceived by autism advocacy outsiders as useful, including Escher’s National Council on Severe Autism (NCSA), Alison Singer’s Autism Science Foundation (ASF), and The Profound Autism Alliance. 17/

Instead of partnering with autistic and disability orgs, autism grievance parent efforts tend to be obstructive—including hyperbolic negativity about autism issues, and asking RFK Jr. to declare the “autism epidemic” (there is no autism epidemic) a public health emergency. 18/

Autism grievance parents are MAGA-like in aggressive hypocrisy & spin. Typically wealthy, connected parents who sit on multiple boards & head foundations, they claim to be bullied by #neurodiversity & autism advocates (i.e., by systematically marginalized & largely impoverished disabled people). 19/

Autism grievance parents are thumb-on-the-scale influencers in autism policy and research—yet take advantage of entrenched negative attitudes about disability and their status as parents of high-support autistic children to appear like typical Davids, and avoid being outed as elite Goliaths. 20/

Consider how grievance parents hijacked a Lancet commission on strategies for improving autistic lives to promote a “profound autism” label. “Profound autism” then became the focus of the commission’s media coverage, even though many spoke out about the functional inappropriateness of the term. 21/

Critics noted that “Profound autism” oversimplifies support needs, dismisses abilities, reinforces segregation, & is superfluous (the DSM already has level 1, 2 & 3 autism support needs). In response, grievance parents relaunched their campaign—this time with opinion pieces bemoaning censorship. 22/

Another MAGA-like autism grievance parent strategy is to solicit pity (for themselves, not their autistic children) by constantly violating their disabled children’s privacy in the name of “honesty.” (I will not compound their missteps by linking to an example.) 23/

Yet when disability researchers and policy makers suggest perhaps talking about autistic people with respect, and about disabilities with neutrality, autism grievance parents campaigned at the highest policy levels for their “right” to use demeaning language about their own disabled children. 24/

When autistic people describe autism as meaning strengths as well as disabilities, autism grievance parents claim that they are being ridiculed for not talking about autism as a “gift.” autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/ 25/

Autism grievance parents also ape MAGA’s strategy of claiming to represent a wider underserved (autism) community, while in actuality working against the interests of autistic people and families who lack grievance parents’ class advantages, or who have trouble accessing public benefits. 26/

This disconnected entitlement is—possibly—why, while autistics themselves beg for increased quality of life & policy, autism grievance parents endorse cure-based or self-funded autism causation research, & advocate for institutionalizations & against best-practices community housing policy. 27/

Why are autism grievance parent behaviors tolerated by parents of autistic kids savvy enough to roll their eyes at Fox News propaganda? I suspect a contemporary political and social climate rife with strategic disinformation campaigns. 28/

Social media algorithms that harness negativity to increase views allow autism grievance parents to create echo chambers of indignation, with followers who don’t bother to fact check before sharing. 29/

In autism grievance parent forums, parents encounter absurdities like framing the autistic-led @autisticadvocacy.org as a social media troll factory—when the briefest scan of ASAN’s site shows constant high level, actively accessible policy & outreach in support of marginalized autistic people. 29/

Like MAGA disinformationalists, autism grievance parents manipulate their followers’ emotions, keeping them too angry to think critically. 30/

For example, parents are near-universally advised to put their autistic kids in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)—but if they encounter autistic advocates who say ABA will traumatize their child, autism grievance parents take advantage of that uncertainty to create a wedge in their agenda’s favor. 31/

Who are newer parents more likely to believe: The veteran parents offering to mentor you through an overwhelming and confusing time, the ABA therapists who are often the only supports you can access—or the autistic people autism grievance parents insist are nothing like your autistic child? 32/

By being so relentlessly focused on “severe” or “profound autism,” and autism “robbing” them and their children of ‘normal’ lives,” grievance parents also condition their followers to deny possible autism traits or abilities in their own family. 33/

What if some of autism grievance parents’ other kids are autistic, but are misdiagnosed or able to mask well; or have been so conditioned to hate self-diagnosing autism “fakers,” that they don’t pursue a diagnosis, or don’t believe they deserve accommodations? 35/

What if the autism grievance parents themselves, or their partners, have unaddressed traits and are suffering due to lack of self-understanding and accommodations? All people with disabilities deserve support, even the misguided ones. 36/

So when autism grievance parents complain that autistic people and their families don’t have enough supports? They’re right. But their solutions are wrong, because as outsiders to the autistic community they are trying to fix problems they don’t understand. 37/