Today Gretchen Leary is hosting a flash blog with the theme #Autismisnotacrime in response to the recent (and not so recent too) stigmatizing media portrayals of autism and autistic people.

I’m low on words but after reading some of the ongoing coverage of the UCSB shootings, I made a couple of graphics:

 Image description: Green text on white background that reads “Autism is:” followed by four choices that read “Not having friends, Being withdrawn, A lack of empathy and A neurological difference.” The first three phrases are struck out and the last phrase has a check mark next to it. Below the choices is the text “#autismisnotacrime”. 

 Image description: Green text on white background that reads “Aspergers is:” followed by four choices that read “Not having friends, Being withdrawn, A lack of empathy and A neurological difference.” The first three phrases are struck out and the last phrase has a check mark next to it. Below the choices is the text “#autismisnotacrime”. 

**Because the news articles of the past two days are using the Aspergers label almost exclusively, I made graphics that use both Aspergers and autism. Feel free to share/use either or both.