Perception Matters

My colleague Kristina Chew at Autism Vox also encountered an ad campaign this week that she feels sets society backwards in the name of “awareness.” The NYU Child Center’s “Ransom Notes” public awareness campaign could do real and immediate harm to how autistic children are perceived and treated in America. Kristina writes:

How we talk about autism—how we talk about autistic persons—directly impacts on how the public, how people, think about autism, and how they perceive and act towards autistic persons. Implying that an autistic child is like a child who has been kidnapped—-is a child who has been kidnapped—recalls older stereotypes of autistic children as “caught” and “imprisoned” in an “autistic shell,” and their real (normal) self “trapped” inside.

Please visit Kristina’s post for a full explanation of the issue, several helpful links and sample letters to send to the NYU Child Study Center voicing your opposition to the campaign.

How is this relevant to Fertility Notes? Because as Kristina writes, perception matters. As long as autism is seen as something that “kidnaps” a child, autism will continue to be stigmatized rather than understood. As long as there are misperceptions around infertility as a social rather than a medical condition - just like cancer, just like heart disease - then men and women living with infertility will not receive the treatments or fair reimbursements for those treatments that are taken for granted with so many other medical conditions.