Autistic Pride Day

Autistic Pride Day is a celebration of the neurodiversity of people on the autism spectrum on June 18 each year.cite news | title=What's in store: Autistic Licence | url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,589-1960650,00.html | publisher= Times Online |date=December 31, 2005|accessdate=2007-11-24] Autistic pride is pride in autism, about shifting views of autism from "disease" to "difference". Autistic pride emphasises the innate potential in all human phenotypic expressions and celebrates the diversity various neurological types express.

Autistic pride asserts that autistic people are not sick; rather, they have a unique set of characteristics that provide them many rewards and challenges, not unlike their non-autistic peers. cite news|author=Saner E|title='It is not a disease, it is a way of life'|work=The Guardian|date=2007-08-07|url=http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2143123,00.html|accessdate=2007-08-07] cite web|author=Shapiro, Joseph|url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5488463|title=Autism Movement Seeks Acceptance, Not Cures|publisher=NPR|date=June 26, 2006|accessdate=2007-11-23] Researchers and people with high-functioning autism have contributed to a shift in attitudes away from the notion that autism is a deviation from the norm that must be treated or cured, and towards the view that autism is a difference rather than a disability.cite journal |journal= Dev Psychopathol |year=2000 |volume=12 |issue=3 |pages=489–500 |title= Is Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism necessarily a disability? |author= Baron-Cohen S |pmid=11014749 |doi=10.1017/S0954579400003126] "New Scientist" magazine released an article entitled "Autistic and proud" on the first Autistic Pride Day that discussed the idea.cite news | last=Trivedi | first=Bijal | title=Autistic and proud of it | date= 18 June 2005 | publisher=New Scientist| url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18625041.500.html|accessdate=2007-11-24]

Autistic Pride day is an Aspies for Freedom initiative, an autism rights group that aims to educate the general public with initiatives to end ignorance of the issues involving the autistic community.

Themes

The main event of 2005 was in Brasília, capital of Brazil.The main events of 2006 were an Autistic Pride Summer Camp in Germany, and an event at the Scienceworks Museum in Melbourne, Australia.
* 2005 Acceptance not cure
* 2006 Celebrate Neurodiversity
* 2007 Autistics Speak. It's time to listen

ee also

* List of autism-related topics
* Sociological and cultural aspects of autism

Footnotes