3.26.2018

#SaidNoMother: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

“I will only dwell on what my #autistic child *can’t* do, #saidnomother 
[image: Leo, seen from behind, happily hiking on a verdant oak woodland trail.]
[Content warning for parents saying dehumanizing things to and about autistic people, including their own children. Also lots of autism pseudoscience.]

I haven't had to address the anti-vax Autism Mommy contingent for a long, satisfying while. After the 2015 Disneyland Measles outbreak, the world wised up to the fact that vaccine-preventable diseases were real and deadly, and that vaccines make them go away—and also that established science proves vaccines have nothing to do with autism. Which, no of course I didn't want diseases to resurge, but yes I am glad that I can focus on autism acceptance, education, and rights, instead of spending my time countering willfully, dangerously ignorant people who think having an autistic child like Leo is worse than having a child die from a preventable disease.

But there is still a small, angry, stewing knot of those awful autism-vaccine causation parents lurking on the social media fringes. And their latest effort is the loathsome #SaidNoMother campaign, bewailing all the ways in which the parents "suffer" by having "vaccine injured" kids. The pseudoscience bombs those parents lob about their children are dehumanizing, so dive in at your own risk; these people have no sense of their children as deserving, valuable human beings.

Because Twitter doesn't weight its hashtagged tweets, it may seem like this campaign is huge. But please know that, as an associate tipped me off, it only has one-seventh the impressions of a non-pseudoscience hashtag like #VaccinesWork. So, big hashtag/little pond. And many of those impressions are due to Autistic people and like-minded individuals taking on and infiltrating the hashtag, because even though #SaidNoMother is not trending that much, it's still really f***ing distressing and needs all the countering the Neurodiversity community can muster.

Since Twitter is so ephemeral and scattershot, it's hard to get a sense of how this scenario is playing out unless you experienced it in real time. Or, you know, unless you archive the tweets in a timeline. As I have below. Because so many of the people I countered blocked me, my responses might not make sense—but if they haven't blocked you, you can click through to their linked tweets for context.

If you care about autistic people like Leo and cannot stand to see autistic people used as collateral damage by pseudoscience-embracing martyr parents, please feel free to RT as many of the entries below as your clicker finger can stand. I included a LOT of links debunking just about any nonsense theory or concept they tried to throw at me, plus as many links to helpful resources as I could squeeze in. Because I hope that at least some of these parents, or the people who listen to these parents, will read what was shared, and consider what their children need from them, instead of waging a fruitless war against their own child's neurology.



















Blurring & anonymizing courtesy Jay Edidin
[image: Photo of a mom kissing her child, whose
face is blurred out. A superimposed white text box
reads, "I can't wait for my 8 year old's diapers to
be delivered, said no mother of a vaccine injured
child, ever. #SaidNoMother.]


















































[image: Screenshot of a tweet from @TannersDad, featuring
a man with a black eye looking at the camera. The tweet reads,
"Let's have a real discussion this April. #ABA Autism Beyond
April. New movement of Mothers Fathers Grandparents Siblings
Rising Up above the noise of Pharmaceutical Propaganda explore
the truth Revolution Breaking MSM Silence
#SaidNoMother #SaidNoFather.]
at
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown1:39 PM

    I'm sorry you had to deal with what must read like an attack on your son and children like him, but am grateful to you for speaking up to call it out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shannon Des Roches Rosa7:14 PM

      Thanks Dorit! I really appreciate the work you do too, and I know you get so much grief for than I ever have.

      Delete

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