No, I am not a teaching tool.

This graphic is my response to the idea that autistics can be used as teaching tools for non-autistics curious about autism. I've heard enough about how I should educate everyone I meet that I've gotten annoyed by now. I'm not an encyclopedia, not a how-to guide, and not a textbook. I'm not a translation guide either. (Image made with the free program DrawPlus.)


Click to enlarge. Clicking again in Firefox gives me the best result in terms of clarity.

(In case anyone can't see the image, it's a book called The Ultimate Guide to Autism and subtitled "Autism encyclopedia, dictionary, and how-to from the inside!" On the upper left-hand corner is text saying "With rave reviews!" There is a blue-and-white wave thingy below the subtitle, and then below the wave the bottom half of two legs with feet. The whole image is surrounded by a circle with an "x" across it.)

This is what I'm supposed to be? I don't mind educating, and think it best that actual autistics do the educating about autism, but that doesn't mean I want to be turned into a teaching tool and a teaching tool only.

I'm tempted to maybe modify this a bit sometime (it would need to be enlarged at least), and turn it into a t-shirt with text on the back that says something like, "I am not your autism textbook."