The first of April is a deeply annoying day to me, as an autistic person. There are two reasons – one is the aggravating fact of April Fools’ Day pranks. My life is full of the potential for misunderstandings and I have to concentrate very hard to avoid making a fool of myself. The pleasant frisson of wondering which news stories and social media posts are real and which are jokes (that you’ll feel silly if you fall for) is one day a year of fun for the neurotypical. And some April Fools’ jokes have been extremely funny. But the novelty for most of potentially being caught out, is the day to day reality of trying not to seem foolish to me. I could do without extra things trying to catch me out.
But the second reason for aggravation is about the well-intentioned, but sometimes harmful, use of April as “World Autism Awareness Month”. I haven’t suffered too much myself but I know of many autistic people who just disappear from social media in April because seeing all the kindly-meant but patronising incomprehension about autism is just too painful. A piece of “awareness raising” for us but not with us, that has the effect of making our lives harder, is not a good thing.