Does autism need a It Gets Better campaign?

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I voted "yes" as in "it NEEDS to".

However it's most likely a pipe dream for now. Plus it would be more realistic to make it about disabled people in general rather than just Autism.

Yes! For those that do suffer, those that wish they were normal and can't think of it any other way. They need hope and reassurance. BUT Some individuals are perfectly happy being "not normal" so maybe that should be addressed as well.

It would be nice. Would it be honest?

I am an eighteen-year-old college student with good grades, friends, two married parents, a boyfriend, an instrument, a church, and career ambitions. I am in good health. I can pass as neurotypical. My parents did everything the "experts" said. They drove me to the brink of insanity by training me that everything my senses told me was tainted with misinterpretation and inherently suspect. Until I got to middle school and met band directors who found me useful, most adults in my life were trying to obliterate and replace as much of my personality as they could.

I figured out that I was somehow different at three. They told me I was on the spectrum more than ten years later. Before, I had no word for what I was. I thought I was the only one. The sense of alienation has never left me. The rage and pain at what happened are a part of daily life. My parents say they made mistakes but offer no real apologies for trying to wipe the daughter they had off the face of the earth in favor of a normal kid. Now that I am grown and free of the IEP system, they tell me I should just get over it, from what they did to me to encounters with a lady who liked to lock me in a small, whitewashed room about the size of a closet, shine bright lights in my eyes, and threaten me because she was mad at my mother.

I should be a success story, but I never feel like one. Can we say it gets better? It would be nice. For at least some of us, it would also be a lie. I would rather die than be "cured," but rebellion is lonely. Being different is hard. Not everything gets better, even for those of us who come to value and respect who we are. Instead of telling people comforting falsehoods, maybe we could make a world in which that statement rings true.

We do need an It Gets Better Campiagn.

I assume that the "It gets better" campaign for gay teens is mainly the amount of teasing that these teens face if their out of the closet or if their in the closet its saying that they'll be accepted and supported if they come out. Autism is can draw some similar comparisons but its still different. I would guess most people on the spectrum, its fairly obvious to people that theirs something wrong with you unless you have HFA or aspergers. This whole "closeted" concept is often not the case for half or more of the people on the spectrum. WP seems to mostly represent aspies, remember were minority % of the overall autistic spectrum, it seems a lotta people dont realize this on here. WP also seems to draw a lotta so called undiagnosed aspies, which I personally theorize a lot arent actually aspies. It seems the functioning level of many members on here is not an accurate representation of the spectrum on the whole.

Next, the public perception of gays is highly controversial. Yet now a days a good percentage of the population is in support of gays while a huge percentage is against gays as well. It makes sense to have an "Its gets better" campaign. When u got so many people that support gays in a positive light. Autism is not viewed in a similar sense. Majority of the population is terrified of autism, the people who claim to love and support autistic people still wanna change us. Face it, autism is one of the more feared conditions that people do not want their kids becoming. Autism speaks has this whole, we can defeat autism thing going down. Autism speaks is very influential in the autism community. It seems that not enough people are convinced themselves that things will get better. The LGBT community is just battling for acceptance while autistic people are battling so much more.

A lot of LGBT teens are in the closet and still are detectable (and bullied) as such. I think especially gay males (and those perceived as gay males) suffer extremely harsh bullying whether they're in or out of the closet. Those who can "pass" as straight can probably escape it.

I don't know how it compares to the bullying autistic children receive, though. Just noting that it's not simply a question of being closeted or not.

I think we need an "It's Get Better", but as w/ LGBT rights we need to be go step by step (I'd say we are already on a post-Stonewall stage), we could make some kind of Day of Silence or Spirit Day for aspies/auties as well.
The perception of gays isn't 100% what I'd like it to be, but it's quite well if you compare it to the situation of 25,30,40 yrs ago, and on most of the world still today
If we had a support group more like GLAAD and not that shame of AutiSpeaks "representing" our interests, I'm frankly sure we would have a better public image. Also LGBTology has been around since the late 19th C while the science of autism didnt start until the 1940s. Also LGBT rights movement has a time advantage of quite some years (Stonewall=1969, while ASAN appeared in 1992)
Of course it'll take years to change the oppinion of most ppl 'bout ASDs

The problem is that people have trouble grasping a spectrum. They want every word to mean one thing. It would be easier if there was one face of autism.

The world would be a very different place. Statisticaly speaking, the two-parent, financially stable, nuclear family norm is increasingly more myth than fact.

It hasnt got better for me. I suspect for quite a few aspies it never does. They are probably quietly sobbing in a room somewhere or already dead at their own hand rather than posting on an internet forum.