"Awareness" does not equal INFORMATION

At this point, anyone who reads here who doesn't know about the NYU Ransom Notes campaign hasn't been to a computer in the past few weeks. Therefore, I am not going to further their traffic by linking back to them. They're just counting hits, not reading what the referrers say. Y'all also already know that ASAN is organizing all sorts of stuff against this horrid campaign.

You ALSO probably know that the people defending it-namely those in charge of the shock ya for ya dollah ads-are saying it is OK that it pisses off most of the people who both see it AND are acquainted with a clue because "it raises awareness".

Ah, awareness. Kind of like those Middle Ages indulgences, you can do whatever you want and get out of the consequences, so long as you invoke "awareness". A whole lot cheaper than building a cathedral, too.

Newsflash: "Awareness" isn't the same thing as "information". Every Condition Du Jour has had the "OMGZ IT EATS PEEPLEZ!" days. I remember that they were going on with autism WHEN I WAS IN *HIGH SCHOOL*. I graduated in 2001. That was a long time ago, yes?

To contrast with 2 other hysteria campaigns (only these turned into information, which appears to be anathema when related to autism)...please note that the only thing most of these conditions have in common with autism is that they had a hysteria campaign that I am old enough to remember:

-HIV/AIDS: I remember this campaign starting when I was about 7. People being afraid to catch AIDS from toilet seats/kisses/hugs/paper towels/the air. Seriously. Thus, it became impossible to blow one's nose in any public restroom. Several years later, I was in MAYBE 4th or 5th grade, there is a feature in American Girl Magazine about a little girl who is HIV+ and takes an antiretroviral cocktail and goes to school and you can't get AIDS from casual contact or the bathroom or anything but needles and certain body fluids. Yeah. Three year turnaround on a disease that is serious shit.

-Cancer: They're bound and determined to say autism is like cancer, here's yet another reason that it ISN'T. I knew that you needed a pap smear and a mammogram or you die when I was in 3rd grade. I knew what they were while still in grade school. The whole public knows signs and has pink ribbons, and has since I was in junior high. There are prostate exam commercials all over the airwaves, including signs that you need one, and in my lifetime they've come up with real facts beyond get a mammogram and a pap smear or you die. Like that viruses cause HPV which causes cervical cancer, and that mammogramming a 32A is a waste of everyone's time and you need an ultrasound instead. And there was that whole Live Strong thing too...

Do they need autism to be more hysterical because it DOESN'T kill people? Is that it? Do they not know how to present anything but negatives? I seriously do not know. Because these were both in the span of grade school (I am so too fried to even be writing this but it needs said now not later) and the autism hysteria has lasted LONGER than I've been in the autism game, which is about 8 years.

Between the "all autistics are children" rhetoric (where's my plane home?) and the "autistics are empty shells of nothing but devestating deficits" I am so disgusted with so called awareness.

I want to see information already.