Need advice - autism fundraiser her, go or not go???

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Here’s a weird one. I’m posting it in two forums – General for advice and political for same…My fiancée wants me to go to an autism fundraiser concert. I don’t want to go at all. I have been to two autism fundraisers – one a dinner theater, the other a motorcycle bike night (and I am a bike junkie and rider, been riding since I was ten), and both experiences were horrible. At the dinner theater thing several people expressed doubts that I was “on the spectrum” ( I am considered to be high functioning to high Aspie by my neurologist) , one woman even going so far as to say that my fakery of a widespread problem for free food was tasteless which led to me losing it and embarrassing myself, and at the bike night the noise level, crowds and so on were amazingly huge and probably 99% of them NT. What made the evening horrible was that a Kanner’s autist man I know came with his wife (bikes are his hangup, too) and he had a meltdown because of the noise and people kept looking at him like he was diseased or something and I heard people saying stuff like “Hey shut the freak up” and “Jeez, what’s wrong with him?” At a bleeding AUTISM fund raiser. The irony and hopelessness of it made me so angry I swore never to go back to one of these things but now my fiancée is upset because he does not understand a) why I won’t go and b) why I won’t support the Cause. Any thoughts?

I think it's important to know where the money is going. What organization? It sounds like a nightmare either way.

buryuntime had my first question: what organization and where does the money go?

My second observation, as someone who raises a lot of money for my kid's schools, is that fundraisers are designed to get OTHER people's money. You know, the ones who don't have a vested interested in "the cause" and need to be bribed by entertainment in order to donate. If you want to be supportive, you can do much better offering to take on a volunteer job behind the scenes that allows you to mix in comfortably, avoid sensory issues, and provide much needed volunteer labor.

I am sure that the events are not designed with autistics in mind, as you have discovered. They are designed to attract enough people to make money. If an event wants to include autistics, which would be a great thing to do, it should have things set up in a way that will allow those participants to really enjoy themselves. Since it seems they have not set up accommodations, it seems they are not targeting you as part of the attending populace. So ... that is what you get to tell you boyfriend

Never been, but never had one to go to either.

Frankly, as said, these things are for NTs to show up and donate money. I'm not surprised at some of the stuff that went on. I'd be disinclined to attend unless I was expected to do something meaningful. Even then, do you want to be the token Autistic person being shown off for a charity?