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On paper, these efforts sound wonderful. If there had been more widespread awareness of what autism really is and who can be on the spectrum when I was growing up in the '80s and '90s, I probably would not have spent 27 years trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me before finally receiving my diagnosis. I might even have been able to receive the kind of support and accommodations that could have helped me develop healthier coping mechanisms for managing my social, sensory, and processing concerns than the ones I came up with on my own when I was flailing in the dark for all of those years.

Not all of the awareness that comes with this month's campaigns genuinely helps autistic people, though. Well-meaning but hurtful "awareness"-raising stunts, mostly staged by people who aren't autistic, rarely bring much attention to the actual concerns and needs of our community. Fundraising and publicity for organizations that are usually run by people who aren't autistic and like to portray us as tragic, family-ruining burdens dehumanize us and perpetuate the idea that autism is something that must be eradicated, not something that should be supported and accepted.

This is why many autistic people have come to dread April -- and why we'd like to see an Autism Acceptance Month instead. That said, true acceptance still requires a degree of awareness about who autistic people truly are and what we want from non-autistic -- or, as we call you, "allistic" -- society. So, in that spirit, here's a few of the things that we'd really like you to be aware of this month -- and every month going forward.

We're not all white men

Some autism awareness campaigns want you to "Light It Up Blue" because they say that autism disproportionately affects boys, but the fact that white heterosexual cisgender boys are more likely to be diagnosed with autism doesn't mean that they're more likely to be autistic. There are autistic people of every color, creed, and class. Recent studies suggest that we might be more likely to be transgender than the allistic population.

The stereotype that autism is primarily a white male thing negatively affects everything from the way the rest of us are treated in society to what kind of care we receive to the age at which we're diagnosed -- and whether we are able to receive a proper diagnosis at all. Which, in turn, perpetuates the idea that autism is for white boys.

We don't need to be cured

Being autistic in a world that isn't built for people like us comes with all sorts of pain and challenges, but why do so many people automatically assume that it's the autism that needs fixing? Many of us on the spectrum believe that the money and energy that's funneled into searching for a cure would be better spent on acceptance, supports, and services to help autistic people with everything from personal care to employment issues.

Surviving and thriving as our autistic selves is far more appealing -- not to mention more practical -- than chasing a magic pill that would fundamentally change who we are, forcing us into harmful treatments geared toward making us look more "normal," or pursuing prenatal testing that could prevent the next generation of people like us from being born at all.

Calling someone "high functioning" isn't helpful

Every autistic person has a unique combination of skills and needs and if you're new to autism, you might think that it's beneficial to describe those differences in terms of how well we do or don't "function."

When I first started writing about autism, I thought that I had to describe myself in terms of function, because I had to acknowledge that I faced fewer challenges than people with more severe issues. But a helpful fellow autistic called me out on my language and pointed out that I was both unfairly dismissing and hurting other people on the spectrum and ignoring my own fluctuating needs with that terminology.

As noted autistic neurodiversity advocate Laura Tisoncik put it: "The difference between high functioning autism and low functioning is that high functioning means your deficits are ignored, and low functioning means your assets are ignored."

"Terms such as 'high-' or 'low-functioning' and 'mental age' may be convenient clinically, but they interfere with accurate perceptions of abilities and disabilities," Shannon Des Roches Rosa, who has an autistic son, wrote last year. "I would prefer that scientists choose terms that focus on meeting the needs of autistic people, such as 'low-' and 'high-support,' instead of those more judgmental words."

We don't lack empathy

There's no scientific evidence that proves this hurtful stereotype. In fact, research suggests just the opposite. One theory even suggests that some of us are dealing with an overabundance of empathy -- feeling too much.

Autistic people can struggle to process and express empathy, but so do allistic people. That's very different from not being able to feel anything for our fellow human beings. The real empathy issue when it comes to autism is that other people don't always have a lot of it for us.

Not all of us can talk, but we all have something to say

Depending on your source, perhaps 20-30% of autistic people are estimated to be nonverbal. But talking is only one way to communicate. Some of us type. Some of us use sign language and/or AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication). Even behavior is a form of communication. So the problem isn't that autism can't "speak," it's that the rest of you need to learn how to listen to us.

We work hard to be a part of your world. And we're exhausted

From social interactions to managing sensory issues and everything in between, participating in an allistic world on allistic people's terms requires constant vigilance and effort on our parts. Autistic writer and pastor Lamar Hardwick compares this ongoing herculean task to starring in an elaborate theatrical production run by an unskilled crew:

"Every day I step onto the stage, the sound and lighting are so bad that it is borderline obnoxious and at times just painful to listen to and look at. The lights are often too bright or too dim. The spotlight is never in the right place, the house lighting is terrible and all of that impacts with my depth perception and facial recognition. Sometimes that's why I have trouble recognizing people I've already met. This means that I visually experience things quite differently than you do. It's actually a lot of work, and sometimes it's overwhelming, so I don't just look tired, I am tired."

If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism

Also, if you've read one article by an autistic person, you've read one article from one autistic perspective. For every person who agrees with this list, there are far more who will have their own points they'd prefer to make. The only thing that all autistic people have in common is that we're all human beings who deserve to be treated like human beings.

So if you're really interested in knowing more about us and what we want you to know, learn from as many of us as possible. Understand that while parents and experts might have valuable insights, their voices and expertise are no substitute for the lived experiences of autistic people. Check out the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag on Twitter. Support organizations run by actually autistic people like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Autism Women's Network. Seek out work and interviews by autistic people, especially autistic people of color, queer autistic people and more multiply marginalized autistic people and open your mind to the spectrum of experiences, beliefs, and issues that exist in the autism community.

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what people with autism want you to know - cnn

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What people with autism want you to know

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On paper, these efforts sound wonderful. If there had been more widespread awareness of what autism really is and who can be on the spectrum when I was growing up in the '80s and '90s, I probably would not have spent 27 years trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me before finally receiving my diagnosis.

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Some women with autism aren't diagnosed until adulthood - if ever. Here, seven women open up about their experiences.

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I am so looking forward to my trip with my son next week. First up is Cern, in Switzerland, where my son gets an hour on the Large Hadron Collider all to himself. On Tuesday, it's off to the National Portrait Gallery in London, where an exhibition of his crayon selfies is on show (royal attendance is rumoured). Wednesday he's being filmed for the BBC completing a Rubik's Cube with one hand.

Thursday, he's on at the National Theatre, where he'll recite the works of Shakespeare from memory. Friday, we're off to Vegas to win a fortune at blackjack. I've bought the matching suits and sunglasses and, get this, he gets to fly the plane home himself.

It is a whirlwind being the father of an autistic child - especially one as multitalented as mine. Some autistic children only have one special talent.

OK, so this isn't true. I am the father of an autistic child, and the first question I'm always asked when the subject of my son comes up is: "Does he have a special talent?" because everyone has read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and seen Rain Man, and assume all autistic children have special powers.

My son doesn't. He's 16, is non-verbal and his life skills are rudimentary. He's on one part of the autistic spectrum. Rain Man sits somewhere else on a bit made from celluloid.

I don't expect the whole population to trawl through reams of data, case studies and science papers on autism, but at least get to understand the basics. Let's start with a simple question. Are all neurotypical people - those without a diagnosis of autism - the same? If your answer is yes, proceed directly to the nearest Borg recruiting office. If your answer is no, pat yourself on the back (although it doesn't make you a genius).

This is what it does to me - I can't help it. I get facetious. When, for instance, we were calmly queueing to pay for some apples in Waitrose and my son decided to use them for baseball practice, pitching them wildly into the neighbouring McDonald's, did anyone smile and think, "Oh, bless him, he's autistic"? Or when we were wrestling on the floor as I tried to get him to stop attacking me, or when everyone's food in a restaurant is fair game - and I don't just mean on our table - there is no applause, no One Show researchers begging me to bring him on for a demonstration or recreation of his baseball glories. And I'm not sure his naked trampolining is going to earn him an Olympic medal anytime soon.

Given that it's simply bad form to tell a well-meaning stranger where to go, I have often resorted to being facetious. When my son was six, I took him to watch one of his older cousins paying football and two girls approached and began talking to him. Of course, they got properly cold-shouldered and inquired of me: "Why does he never say anything?"

To which I replied: "He does, but only to very pretty girls."

But it's not the way I've always dealt with it. As part of a dedicated team raising my son, explaining him to strangers has been exhausting.

So, most often over the last 16 years, I've been a model of polite solicitude. Like a walking GP surgery pamphlet, I've divided my responses into easily digested chunks, subheadings: " What is the Autistic Spectrum?" and "About Diagnosis". At other times, I've countered pub banter with "No! Just because your boss is a rude, arrogant shit who won't look you in the eye, doesn't mean he's autistic." It sometimes feels like an endless battle.

Explaining him to strangers has been exhausting. It can feel like an endless battle

This gets me so irritated because good information is out there in plain sight. On Twitter, on Facebook are millions of genuine first-hand experiences and real, of-the-moment findings. It is thus a 21st-century species of ignorance, one that masquerades as inquisitiveness, to glean "knowledge" from media that is intended to entertain to form one's view of autism. It is from the "well-drawn" character who fills us with wonder - whether it be standing next to Tom Cruise as he counts cards, or making us laugh with their complete lack of social understanding that "misunderstandings" can arise.

Plot devices and stereotypes are not real. You cannot reduce autism to genre conventions, because every person with an autism diagnosis is different. My son is me with a particularly tough veneer of autism: he's a bit lazy, finds most things hilarious and is given to bouts of self-injurious behaviour. But he's not less than me - in any way. He's not less.

And if you took the trouble to know him, you'd realise that in most ways he is more. That's the kind of knowledge that everyone needs to have.

It hurts me to have to write this. I don't like having to speak on his behalf, but he isn't able to and I hate having to rely on supposition. It would be easier for me to state that he couldn't care less. But I can't say that because he can't tell me. It hurts less when I can provide him with a blithe, devil-may-care attitude to other people's opinions of him.

Am I overreacting and being chippy? My son's also Jewish. Would it be OK if a stranger asked in polite conversation whether he was fond of money? Or asked an equally ignorant question of a Muslim father with regard to one of his children? Of course it would not.

The question, "Does he have a special talent?" is not sinister in itself, but the ignorance behind it is, because it speaks of a world where just being human and getting by is insufficient to get noticed - a world where even the most vulnerable in our society have to aspire to Britain's Got Talent to be seen of value.
Shtum by Jem Lester is published by Orion Paperbacks (£8.99). To buy a copy for £7.64, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99. Topics

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Seen Rain Man? That doesn't mean you know my autistic son

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I am so looking forward to my trip with my son next week. First up is Cern, in Switzerland, where my son gets an hour on the Large Hadron Collider all to himself. On Tuesday, it's off to the National Portrait Gallery in London, where an exhibition of his crayon selfies is on show (royal attendance is rumoured).

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As World Autism Awareness week draws to a close, Daniel Gordon speaks to serving autistic police officers. How does autism affect their work?

Sergeant Adam O'Loughlin is troubled by what he sees as he drives along the well-kept streets of the genteel city of Bath.

"I don't particularly like driving down this road, because I notice everything," he says.

We're travelling along one of the main roads heading out of the centre, when in front of us, a vehicle comes to a stop on the edge of a yellow box junction.

It is the third minor traffic infringement he has spotted within the first mile or two of the journey.

A minute or so earlier, another car had failed to indicate correctly. Before that, one appeared to drive just over the speed limit.

Sergeant O'Loughlin is visibly frustrated.

"I'm wearing a uniform, I'm in a police car, why do these people think it's OK to break the law in front of me?" he exclaims.

He says his instinct is to see the law as "black and white" - and to make sure it is obeyed to the very letter.

But 17 years of police service have taught him to take a broader view.

"When I first started, I'd stop people for these kind of things all the time, and whoever was crewed with me would get grumpy," he laughs.

"Even now, colleagues joke about all this stuff around me affecting me when it doesn't need to. I get really exercised about it.

"Every single day, I have to tell myself to let stuff like that go. I just have to breathe and not think about it."

There is more to this story than a policeman who has mellowed over time, though.

Two years ago, at the age of 39, Sergeant O'Loughlin was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Now he knows to check for thoughts that might come from that part of his personality and to compensate for them.

The traffic slows and a motorcyclist pulls up alongside his patrol car. The man riding it reports seeing a lorry driver use their mobile phone while at the wheel.

Sergeant O'Loughlin gets out to investigate and finds himself in a dilemma.

The driver in question denies being on the phone, and without consulting his mobile provider, there is no proof. The man drives for a living, so the stakes are high.

"This is a perfect example of something that I find really difficult," says the Sergeant.

"My natural inclination was to give him a ticket. But I have to remind myself that it's not black and white. He could lose his job for that, and I haven't got any evidence.

"Do we all do things that might not be strictly legal at the time? Probably."

Getting diagnosed and going public about the fact he is on the autistic spectrum has been a revolution, Sergeant O'Loughlin says.

As well as now being able to factor autism into his reasoning, he also feels less pressure to pretend to be like everybody else to try to fit in.

"Telling people I have autism was the best thing I ever did," he says, as we call past Bath's central police station.

"Pretending to be like you guys is exhausting. You have to keep it up all the time or you're not going to get anywhere. Now I don't feel the need to pretend to be someone else."

He has also recently been promoted to a position where he spends more time at his desk and less out on the beat.

"I've found myself in a job that very much fits with what I'm good at, based on my own peculiarities," he says.

As a result, he feels more relaxed and able to focus on the things he excels at.

"I can concentrate for extended periods of time," he says. "And I can find intel on our computer system much quicker than anyone else can. My mind works in a way that helps me drag that information out. And we try to find where burglary hotspots are - I find that really easy as well."

He is also quite happy to deal with the bureaucracy that eats up ever more police time. Filling in forms drives others to distraction, he says, but not him.

Sergeant O'Loughlin's superiors have been perfectly willing to make adjustments to accommodate his needs.

But even without those, he says the job has plenty to offer.

"Law enforcement attracts people who are on the spectrum," he says. "They like the uniform - you get to wear the same thing every day. And you get to enforce the rules."

It is hard to gauge how many serving officers in the UK are on the autistic spectrum. The National Police Chiefs Council doesn't record such statistics.

If it is anything to go by, the National Police Autism Association - which Adam O'Loughlin belongs to - has just over 700 members.

Not all of them are autistic, though.

The organisation's vice chair, Claire Masterton - who is autistic - says the reason many staff join the organisation is because they have dependents who are on the spectrum.

Sergeant O'Loughlin is convinced that within his force at least, autistic people are well represented.

I wanted to be able to say to [my son], 'You're not alone
Nigel Colston, Senior officer, who is also autistic

"The police in Avon and Somerset have been trying to make sure we reflect the population in terms of visible minorities. In terms of things like ethnicity, we are struggling. But when it comes to autism, we're already there without even trying," he says.

Fifty-two-year-old Nigel Colston is a senior officer in the same force.

He is Chief Inspector of Neighbourhood Policing at Portishead, around an hour's drive from Bath, on the western edge of Avon and Somerset.

He'd served more than 20 years as a police officer before he, too, was formally diagnosed with autism eight years ago.

It happened at the time his teenage son was going through the same thing.

"A lot of the things that were said about his inability to socialise and to have social contact were very similar to me. So I said to my son's consultant, 'I think I might be autistic,'" he recalls.

He says he sought a formal diagnosis for his son's sake.

"I wanted to be able to say to James, 'You're not alone."

He had previously had trouble coping at work with issues that, with the benefit of hindsight, he recognises as stemming from his autism.

It was now understood that he has sensory processing disorder, which had been making things like the ticking clocks hanging on walls around the police station hard for him to cope with.

They were removed, and he was also given his own office to provide respite from the noise that disturbed him in what is otherwise an open-plan building.

Chief Inspector Colston is keen to explain what he brings to policing.

"I'm good at going into difficult situations where emotions are running high," he says. "I can go in and look at cold facts. And I have self-confidence - I always know the right thing to do."

Back on the streets of Bath, Sergeant O'Loughlin demonstrates his own professionalism.

He dislikes walking through the throngs of chattering tourists in the picturesque city centre - but it's nothing he can't handle.

"I live with a level of discomfort every day," he says.

As he prepares to head back to the police station at the end of the day, he's approached by a member of the public who can't find his girlfriend, and wants to report her as missing.

Sergeant O'Loughlin admits to feeling frustrated that his plans have to change as he's now been confronted with something unexpected.

"It's the nature of the job," he says.

"I've dealt with missing people before and I know that there's a series of things that have to be done which is almost like a list, so I just fall back to that," Sergeant O'Loughlin explains afterwards.

"Had it been a completely new situation, I probably would have flapped a bit."

He adds a note of self-criticism, though.

"You will have noted however that not once did I ask him if he was OK."

And while he might feel self-conscious about his people skills, Sergeant O'Loughlin is in no doubt about his ability to carry out his work.

"I can do this job as well as anyone else. I've been successful and that's because I have autism, not in spite of it. And if I've done it, other people can too."

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Policing: 'An attractive job for autistic people'

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As World Autism Awareness week draws to a close, Daniel Gordon speaks to serving autistic police officers. How does autism affect their work? Sergeant Adam O'Loughlin is troubled by what he sees as he drives along the well-kept streets of the genteel city of Bath.

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People with autism have a word for those who don't have it: neurotypical. You might think this reverse labelling unhelpful, but it is an effective way to shift perspective - to counter the sense of superiority that comes of thinking yourself normal, and to be obliged to own a term that seems reductive and exclusionary. While the label "neurotypical" doesn't begin to address the many and varied things that are wrong with me, it is still nice to have a diagnosis.

Are You Autistic? (Channel 4) sought to overturn preconceptions about the condition (not illness). Autism manifests itself across a spectrum, but that spectrum is not a straight line - there are any number of interconnected traits leading to varying degrees of difficulty with social interaction, organisation and sensory perception. Those with autism are not just a load of awkward people with a "superpower that they bring out at parties".

Ably and amiably presented by trainee human rights lawyer Georgia Harper and artist Sam Ahern, both of whom are autistic, and deploying Anna Richardson as a sort of neurotypical ambassador, the programme was underpinned by a new online study. The question in the title hinted at the programme's main proposition - backed up by the study - that autism is a vastly under-diagnosed condition. Until recently, it was thought the prevalence of autism was four times higher among men than women, but it now seems autistic women are just better at camouflaging it. And while the diagnosis of children has improved, it is likely that there is a "lost generation" of adults who don't know they are autistic.

The programme held out the possibility of a diagnosis for two people - JP and Jo, both in their 30s - who have long suspected they are somewhere on the spectrum. While this would not seem obvious to anyone meeting either of them for the first time, certain traits emerged in interviews and testing. JP is hypersensitive to noise - he and Jo outperformed neurotypicals in a ridiculously difficult hearing test - and they each struggled when presented with staged scenarios in which actors said things they didn't mean. Neither seemed to have much sense of the psychological gears grinding away in the heads of others. Then again, you could blame the acting.

Are You Autistic? constituted a fairly basic primer, but it was undoubtedly one the public sorely needs. Even if it sought to cater for an audience with zero knowledge or experience of autism - including people who might have it and don't know it - the programme probably told most viewers something they didn't already know.

Particularly fascinating was the extent to which "social masking" may be behind the under-diagnosis of women with autism. Because women are better trained to fake sociability - laughing at jokes they don't find funny, making an effort with eye contact, rehearsing social interaction ahead of time - the condition can be missed. In one, admittedly anecdotal, experiment a group of young autistic women went speed-dating with neurotypical men, none of whom noticed anything. Of course, this may have something to do with the average twentysomething neurotypical male's ability to talk about himself endlessly. More poignant, was the revelation of the struggle this social masking involves. Several of the women said they would probably later have a meltdown in a darkened room as a result of the stress brought about by the experiment.

Jo and JP were finally sent for diagnostic interviews with the autism expert Dr Simon Baron-Cohen - "as much as a neurotypical can be an expert on autism," said Harper. The "reveal" of the diagnosis was kept off camera. Only afterwards did we discover that JP was indeed autistic, and Jo was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Both seemed immensely relieved; it was especially important to JP, whose nine-year-old son is also autistic.

The programme's online questionnaire - the largest study of its kind - found 87,000 people out of 750,000 participants reached or passed the diagnostic cutoff for autism. If nothing else, this is well above the accepted statistic that autism affects 1% of the UK population.

Above all, Are You Autistic? was a plea for understanding. Actually, it was more than that: with its upfront, playful and sometimes spiky approach, it amounted to a persuasive insistence on understanding. Neurotypicals, wake up.
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Are You Autistic? review - a sorely needed primer

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People with autism have a word for those who don't have it: neurotypical. You might think this reverse labelling unhelpful, but it is an effective way to shift perspective - to counter the sense of superiority that comes of thinking yourself normal, and to be obliged to own a term that seems reductive and exclusionary.