The Controversy About The Puzzle Piece
- 22 hours ago
- 2 min read
People believe that the puzzle piece that symbolizes Autism doesn’t represent the condition at all because the puzzle piece makes it look like someone who is on the spectrum is “missing” a piece, makes them look like their “incomplete” or that their a “puzzle that needs to be solved.
There have been times in history that organizations have tried to “cure” autism by changing the way someone is behaving, by turning something “negative” into a “positive.” Instead of embracing someone with autism, they want to change them into something they’re not. They want them to fit into a world that doesn’t want people to be different.
The puzzle piece represents someone who has a piece missing and they need to be able to feel complete, but having autism doesn’t make someone incomplete, but unique since everyone on the spectrum is different.
To many, the symbol suggests that autistic people are incomplete, a mystery or a problem in need of fixing. This fits with the medical model of autism, which focuses on deficits and aims to make autistic people behave more like non-autistic people, rather than letting them live authentically.
Autism Speaks is an organization that gets mixed reviews. They are the ones that have the puzzle piece as their logo. People have said that they aren’t a “real” organization or they’re not taking autism seriously because they aren’t actually helping people who are on the spectrum.
Autism Speaks is a very controversial organization that is widely hated by the autistic community.
Autism Speaks, a major autism organization, has faced intense criticism from the autistic community for advocating a "cure," focusing on fear-based, anti-autism narratives, and historically neglecting the input of autistic individuals. Critics, particularly the
Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), argue that the organization's focus promotes stigma, funds questionable research, and fails to support autistic people's quality of life.
People have strong opinions about what goes on behind closed doors at organizations that promote helping those who need it and want to able to live a full life. People have their own experiences and personal stories that make them question if those organizations really do care about who they represent.
There’s been things done to people to “cure” them of autism. If you look back on history, there were hospitals and institutions where parents dropped their kids off and never saw them again. They accepts kids with anything and everything and they would “fix” them so they could be the perfect kid their parents want them to be.
Of course, we’ve come along way in the decades since, but there’s always going to something that someone’s not going to like and it’s going to cause controversy. People are going to for it or against it. We all have the right to our opinion about things, but how much is too much when people want to start something just because they want to be heard and have everyone agree with them.
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