Apparently, the day I am writing this on is “officially” designated as “Autism Pride Day”. According to Wikipedia, this day is “designated to celebrating autistic people and recognising the importance of pride for autistic people and its role in bringing about positive changes in the broader society”.

I have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and I do not want an autism pride day - at all.

Now, this day (probably intentionally) is placed in the purview of Pride Month, which is collectively designated to “celebrating” lots of different arbitrary groups in society. Everything which I say about Autism Pride Day is also applicable to this celebration too, but I think it is more impactful if I talk about something which is close to home for me.

Autism Pride Day is the perfect encapsulation of everything that I despise about modern society. In our never ending quest to try and be as open-minded as possible to lots of different kinds of people (as liberalism, Christianity and general morality tells us to), we have fallen down a very difficult to escape hole: we have begun to value who a person is more over what they have done. I am a strong believer in the principle that a person should be valued based on things they have done and achievements in life (particularly when against all odds or in unlikely circumstances), and that simply being yourself is not an achievement - particularly in modern society. If we wish to truly have a situation where we are open to everybody, our default state should not be re-enforcing the idea that there are certain special classes of person whom are separate and who have a celebration apart from everybody else. The baseline of society should be that these people exist and that we simply have to deal with this. Yes, autism is a real thing. Yes, it sometimes makes life more difficult - but life is hard. Every single person in the world will go through suffering and trials at some point. It just turns out that autistic people have a handy name for the trials in their lives. We have to deal with this just as people have to deal with the losses of family members, those close to them and issues in their social life. It is just another arbitrary obstacle that life throws at people randomly. It happens.

We do not need celebration for who we are. There is no need for this, and it completely undermines the whole meaning of acceptance. If autistic people are simply accepted as existing in society, then why is there a special celebration for us apart from everybody else? This is not needed.

Back in the 1960s, Martin Luther King said that he wanted us to be judged by the “content of our character”, not the “color of our skin”. If you factor out “color of skin” and replace it with any other arbitrary characteristic, (in this case “presence of autism”) you have arrived at my conclusion on this whole matter. I do not wish to be reduced to one part of me which I have done nothing to achieve: I was born this way - move along please.

We do not celebrate people for being white, male, female, having brown hair or blue eyes - and we shouldn’t. In the same vein, we should not celebrate a person simply by virtue of having been born autistic.