A kind reminder to anyone arguing the Sia situation:

It isn‘t about just hiring ANY autistic person to play the part of Music in Sias movie.

It‘s about hiring an APRAXIC NON-SPEAKING autistic person - that‘s the character Sia wrote.

And it‘s about the CONTENT of the movie.

This is about lack of representation of non-speaking people...more specifically apraxic non-speaking people.

This is about a sub-group within our autistic community that is so very marginalized, oppressed, and harmed on an every day basis that it is important to specify this.

This is about portraying, and yes USING, autistic people as pure, inspirational little girls to be consumed for entertainment while perpetuating misinformation, and speaking for and over us.

It‘s about invading and using a community Sia and Maddie don’t belong to as they please.

This is about showing the movie to a non-autistic autism org for approval - and then ignoring, actively mocking and silencing, insulting and speaking over actual autistic people who speak up against the harm it does.

This is about watching harmful, non-consensual meltdown videos of children, taken and uploaded by their parents to study us.

This is about the entitlement Sia (and so many other non-autistics) feel to our stories, our narratives, and in the wider picture, us and our lives.

I urgently need people to stop making this all about „Sia should have hired an autistic actor.“

It‘s not good enough.

It doesn‘t get to the real issue.

At least demand she hires a non-speaking apraxic actor.

But please, go deeper than that if you can.

I wish I could keep writing but I can‘t.

I can‘t cope with this still and so I‘m leaving again.

I just ask that anyone fighting for autistics in this situation please dig deeper than „Hire an autistic actor.“

Thanks.