Why Do Autists Hate the Puzzle Piece Symbol?

You see it everywhere nowadays: magnetic ribbons on the back of someone’s car, tee shirts “I Love Someone with Autism,” puzzle pieces dance in an eye scalding pattern across someone’s Lularoe style leggings, key chains. It is an internationally recognized sign of autism. So why don’t autistic adults like it?

First of all, you need to understand that when the puzzle piece first made its appearance in London in 1963, it was created by the Society for Autistic Children (now known as the National Autistic Society). It symbolized how autism made autistic children difficult to understand, and that they suffered because of their condition. In 1999, the Autism Society of America changed the puzzle piece into a ribbon filled with brightly colored interlocking puzzle shapes. They said the ribbon symbolized the diversity of the people affected by autism and their hope that the condition can be treated with early interventions and supports. By 2005, Autism Speaks hit the center stage pushing its agenda of curing autism so no more families suffer the burden of caring for an autistic person.

You may be thinking, what’s wrong with acknowledging the suffering of autistic people? What’s wrong with wanting to offer early interventions and supports so that autistic kids can live a normal life? What’s wrong with wanting a cure? Let me address this point by point.

While the intentions of the Society for Autistic Children may have come from a good place, they failed to acknowledge the role of societal pressure to conform, and not validating the autistic child’s sensory and communication needs, in the suffering of the autistic children. We autists are not so difficult to understand, even as children, if you set aside your idea of how things “should be” and accept how things are. My middle daughter was almost completely nonverbal until she was three. She communicated her needs through gestures, crying, facial expression, and even sign language. My husband and I made an effort to meet her halfway instead of demanding she conform to the expectations of the developmental charts in the baby books. Not all communication is verbal. And instead of those accommodations making her lazy and unwilling to try to learn to speak, instead, she just suddenly began speaking on her own during her third year. And guess what, it would have been alright if she had remained nonverbal, because speaking aloud is not the only valid form of communication. She’s a happy, cheerful child because she knows she is loved and doesn’t carry guilt that she failed to meet parental expectations in communication. Because we made an effort to understand her, she grew up feeling happy and understood.

A lot of experts tout early intervention and supportive therapies as key in helping autistic kids catch up with their neurotypical peers. Applied Behavioral Analysis is pushed aggressively by developmental pediatricians as the only way your autistic child will ever become a semi-functional adult. But applied behavioral analysis is just a misleading, fancy term for autism conversion therapy. It was even created by the same man who created gay conversion therapy, Ivar Lovaas. It uses ostracism, denial of treasured items, bribery, and sometimes physical abuse like electric shocks to try to extinguish autistic self-regulating behaviors like stimming, and to force eye contact, verbal communication, and other “normal” behaviors on children. Many children are subjected to this psychological and physical torture in therapy 40 hours a week. And the ABA therapists instruct the parents to continue the negative consequences of noncompliance at home, so there is no respite from the suffering. Current research has linked C-PTSD in autistic adults to having been through ABA therapy as a child. So most autistic adults do not find that any symbol that embraces and endorses child abuse under the guise of therapy to be a viable symbol of support.

But what about a cure? Wouldn’t all this be an academic point if we had a cure for autism? Wouldn’t it be great if we were all neurotypical and happy? No. First of all, while the intention of promoting a cure may come from a desire to alleviate the unhappiness of autists and their families, what is actually being promoted is eugenics. Eugenics is promoting an agenda of removing undesirable people from the gene pool. It was promoted by the Nazis in the 1930’s and 1940’s as a way of getting rid of all disabled and racially "undesirable" people because they were a burden on society. It reduces a person’s humanity to a disease that must be eradicated. It doesn’t take ownership of society’s flawed way of handling and viewing disability, it doesn’t accept that the disabled have value as a human. It reduces us to the enemy of an ideology and a financial burden on those deemed desirable. Has anyone asked autistic people if we want a cure? Most of us wouldn’t accept a cure if it was possible. Our unique neurology is as intertwined in our personality and selfhood as that of a neurotypical person. If you tried to take away my autism, colors would be less bright, music less beautiful, and emotion less powerful. It’s true that I would function easier, in some ways, in a neurotypical world, but I feel I would be much less me. Without my hyperfocus, my encyclopedic knowledge of my special interests, my curiosity and drive to consume and know everything, my logic and hypervigilance, I wouldn’t recognizably be me. And make no mistake, those traits are absolutely a byproduct of my autistic mind.

Autistic people contribute so much through our unique perspectives, our obsessive focus on our passions, and our innate ability to think outside the box and be innovative. We are not puzzles seeking to be solved. We don’t identify as being diseases seeking a cure. We don’t need intervention, we need nurturance and acceptance. We are a full spectrum of knowledge and experiences.

Image from: https://intheloopaboutneurodiversity.wordpress.com/