Every April is Autism Acceptance month, and although it’s over, it’s always a good time to remind people not to support organizations that are harmful and discriminatory towards people with autism, namely Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is the world’s most well-known autism advocacy organization as well as one of the largest, but it is certainly not the most helpful. In fact, it has sparked several controversies among the autistic community over the years.

Autism Speaks was founded in 2005 by Bob and Suzanne Wright after their son was diagnosed with autism. Its mission is to seek treatments and cures for autism spectrum disorders, and it spends lots of money on researching the causes of autism. On April 2, President Donald Trump made a statement supporting the organization and commemorating their annual event, Light It Up Blue, which is meant to spread autism awareness.

The logo for Autism Speaks.

The clear problem with this is that Autism Speaks spreads stigma and prejudice against autistic people. They see autism as a disease and have even compared it to AIDS and cancer. In reality, autism is simply a mental condition that makes certain people go through life differently than those who are considered “normal” by society. Autism Speaks also has no autistic members on its Board of Directors, so a group of people with flawed perceptions about autistic people are making huge decisions about their entire community without their consent or input. It caters more towards parents of children with autism, hoping to alleviate the so-called “struggles” of raising a child with a developmental disability. Very few of their funds actually go to helping autistic people, with most of their money spent on research and marketing. Most of their advertising spreads harmful stereotypes about autistic people. Furthermore, Autism Speaks has been working to advance prenatal testing so that if a fetus is autistic, its mother can choose to get it aborted. This is similar to the prenatal test for Down syndrome and, in a worst-case scenario, could end up eliminating autistic people for good.

While autism can definitely be hard to deal with, Autism Speaks’ motive is certainly not the solution. Most people with autism would prefer not to be cured, because although autism does not define them, it plays a large role in who they are as people. In addition, autistic people don’t want “awareness.” They want acceptance. Plenty of people know what autism is, but not as many go so far as to understand and help people with autism. We need people to be more understanding and supportive, especially since Autism Speaks sees autistic people as less than human.
If you’re looking for alternatives to Autism Speaks that actually support autistic people themselves, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) is a great choice. Many of its members are autistic and their goal is to find ways to spread autism acceptance and to provide autistic people with better ways to cope in our discriminatory society. You can also donate to the Autism Women’s Network (AWN) and Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE), and be sure to educate yourself and others about autism so that you know what’s most helpful to the autistic community.

High school is hard enough as it for most students: Homework, stress, SAT, more stress, making friends, did I mention stress? And these examples are only a portion of the troubles students face. Now, take that student and add an expert level of procrastination, very believable excuses, a severe case of forgetfulness, little to no sleep, poor hand-eye coordination, overcompensation, the occasional mental breakdown, word vomit, a coffee addiction, a wardrobe that consists of 90% sweatpants/pajama pants, and a messy bun or hat to cover up the fact that they woke up 5 minutes before the bus.

If you are reading this and can relate to at least 4 of the 10 things listed, congratulations, you’re a hot mess. Now don’t freak out, while it may not be curable, it isn’t a death sentence. You can live your life and to make things easier for you, I’m going to give you a few pointers on how to survive high school as a hot mess.

Tip #1: Picking out your outfit.

• Yes I know, the majority of your wardrobe is sweatpants, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t stressful to pick an outfit. You may be a mess and really lazy, but you aren’t a slob, so at least have an outfit that matches. That leads us to my first piece of advice: always wear a black shirt. Black matches with almost everything and it’s easy to throw on while you’re simultaneously brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, eating breakfast and running to catch your bus.

Tip #2: Sleeping Habits and Coffee Addictions.

• If you’re like me, you spend more time on Netflix and YouTube than you spend sleeping. (Who needs sleep when you can binge watch Grey’s Anatomy?) Sleeping at night is for the weak. After all, that’s why we have coffee. Coffee is what gives a hot mess life; it makes it so we can function slightly more like a human instead of a zombie. If you’re reading this and coffee isn’t your best friend, I suggest you make a few adjustments to that friend group. On the other hand, if you’re reading this and you have a Starbucks gold card, I can bet you that I’ve spent more money there in the last month than you did in the last year.

Tip #3: Procrastination and Excuses.

• *Disclaimer: I would’ve spent more time writing this tip, but I completely forgot. I had a really important thing (Netflix) to do last night, and I was running around all morning (woke up five minutes ago), and didn’t have time to do it. 😉 

Tip #4: Forgetfulness.

• Everyone forgets things every once in a while, hot messes are just more prone to catch a case of forgetfulness. Here is some stuff I do in the morning to remember what I need to do: 1) If you need to remember something put it on top of something you never leave the house without. That way, when you run around your house looking for it, you’ll also find your visual to- do list for the day. 2) Set as many alarms as possible. It’ll annoy you to the point that you want to throw your phone at the wall, but at least you’ll remember what you need. This may vary considering I still sleep through 10 of my 15 alarms in the morning but hey, it may work for you. 3) I forgot this step, but that means it probably wasn’t important.

Tip #5: Breakdowns.

• As much as we don’t want to experience breakdowns, it’s bound to inevitably happen to you more than you might want to admit. Some of the time you can’t help them and other times they are preventable or not necessary. So calm down, yes it’s okay to have them every so often but if you’re going to freak out over small things it’s going to help no one. Distract yourself from the problem: Talk to someone, read a book, binge Netflix, go for a run, and if all else fails go home and stuff your face with chocolate because chocolate fixes everything.

Tip #6: Be yourself!

• Last but not least, be yourself not what others want you to be! Don’t let labels define who you are, so what you’re a hot mess? In the end it’s just a word, you are who you want to be and should embrace it. If someone is going to judge you for the way you look and act, they don’t deserve your time or stress. Being a hot mess isn’t a bad thing, it’s just another thing that makes you who you are. So go ahead, rock those sweatpants, throw your hair up in that messy bun, binge on netflix, have that occasional meltdown, be voted most likely to have a child born addicted to starbuck in your yearbook (….okay that last one may only apply to me but still it’s possible for you too!), and most importantly be yourself!

If you follow these six tips, you’re all set to survive high school. Oh and one last thing, congratulations, you’re a hot mess!

I will not stand with a society that ridicules men for not being “manly”. I will not stand with you if you shut down others and degrade them for what they believe, what color their skin is, or for the country in which they live. A society that allows people to be discriminated against because of who they love, is something for which I will not stand.

We are the movement. We must change this society.

If a woman walks down the street and is constantly harassed and this is viewed as acceptable, will not stand with you. In a world filled with so much hate, I will not stand with those who add to it.

In a world where my ability to take a single test determines the rest of my life, where smart individuals are shunned for not testing well, I will not stand. We live in a world where a fish’s intelligence is judged by it’s ability to climb a tree, and for this I can not stand.

We live in a world where women are afraid to walk home alone at night and we don’t teach boys not to rape, but rather, teach girls not to wear certain clothes which might provoke attackers.

This society is so beyond the point of “I Will Not Stand” we have reached a point where people are leaving the country in order to escape the madness only to find out it is just as bad everywhere else. 

I will not stand with those who think it is ok to massacre people based on their beliefs, where a Muslim man is stopped and strip searched at an airport, or a Mexican man is stopped at a checkpoint and needs to prove his right to be in this country.

I will not stand with a society in which a woman gets paid less just because she is a woman, where a man is judged by who he brings to bed with him at night, where a woman’s skin can’t be exposed without being called a whore or a slut or a skank and is sent home from school if her shoulder is exposed, or where those who lie and cheat are rewarded with powerful political positions.

I will not stand with the top 80 people of the world retaining 90% of the world’s wealth, while men, women, and children starve in the streets.  Where the wealthiest among us live in mansions bigger than the White House and own cars worth more than a man’s life salary.  With that I CAN NOT STAND.

I cannot stand with a society where the freedom of expression no longer exists because a man who wears feminine clothes is called a sissy and freak and a woman who wears masculine clothing is seen the same way, where what God you believe in determines how you will be treated by others.

Where collecting a professional team’s gear, screaming at a TV every Sunday night, and painting your body for the game is seen as socially acceptable, but if someone wears an ESports team jersey, he is called a nerd.

In this world there is no right or wrong, however it is made to be.  We should be able to believe what we want, wear what we want, and be who we want. It is up to us to fix it: we must change how we think and accept people for who they are.  That is a society for which I can stand. 

3d printing brings up new issues with patent and copyright law.

3d printing has changed the manufacturing process of goods. There is a 3d printing revolution taking place as we speak. But how users will be able to copyright intellectual property such as 3d printed designs stored on a computer using maker software? Copywriting has always been a complicated issue and coming to a consensus will not be easy. Laws need to be put in place in order for the industry to advance in the right way.

Some 3D Printing creations are eligible for patents, others are eligible for copyrights. Functional items, such as hinges and handles are covered by patents. Other items are covered by copyright such as decorative items. But Copyrighting and Patenting is a grey area, in respect to how it will be enforced. People will be able to 3d print anything copyrighted, patented, or not. But this presents a problem: 3d scanners and printers functions are combined together, which will cause a black market to emerge because items can easily be replicated from the comfort of users’ own homes.

So, laws need to be put in place and software developed to restrict users from easily obtaining things that they shouldn’t have by just pressing a few buttons.

The people of the United States have been led to believe that without reason, women are paid significantly lower salaries than men with the same jobs. This is simply not the case. In 2014, President Obama addressed the issue of the pay gap with a speech, and since then has made an effort to fix it. In his speech, he made the claim that, “the average full-time working woman earns just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.” He called the 77% figure “an embarrassment.”

The public misunderstands the pay gap.

President Obama would be correct; this would be embarrassing, if it were true. It isn’t. When I watched this speech, I thought about the things he said, and one statement stood out to me: “Women make up nearly half of the U.S. labor force.” If women are making 23% less money than men for working the same jobs, women should make up the overwhelming majority of the workforce. Why would any company hire an equal amount of men and women, if by hiring more women they would save 23% on every employee’s salary? They wouldn’t. The point of running a business is to make as much money as possible, and if women were making 23% less money than men for the same jobs, companies could maximize their profit by hiring women, and they would.

When it comes to the wage gap percentage, there’s no single, universally acknowledged number for the amount a woman makes compared to the amount a man makes for the same job. When I tried to find the exact pay gap, I discovered that the number fluctuated anywhere between 64% to 84% depending on where I looked, which doesn’t make any sense because actual statistics are exact, and they aren’t measured in windows. This is when I realized that something more serious was going on, and the real information either doesn’t want to be found or is being hidden. It was time to investigate.

In the official White House address on the issue by President Obama, the 77% number was highlighted. President Obama didn’t just choose a random number somewhere in the range of all the numbers used to describe the gap. Which assumptions were made to find this number? I found that the method the White House used in determining this 77% number was by comparing the annual salaries of all men to the annual salaries of all women. That’s like taking the annual salary of an employee at a Ralph Lauren flagship branch and the annual salary of Ralph Lauren himself, averaging those three and saying the average Ralph Lauren employee makes $875k a year. It’s basically comparing the salaries of a male surgeon and a female nurse and using that as the basis of comparison between male and female wages. The US Department of Labor found that when you take into account the salaries of men and women with the same variables like job type and several others, comparing like to like, the pay gap shrinks to about 93-95%. Even a study conducted by the American Association of University Women, using a control for all the same variables, resulted in the same number found by the US Department of Labor: 93%. In fact, in a 63- page report, the number was only mentioned once. The American Association of University Women then tried to obfuscate this number by saying, “just over one third of the pay gap cannot be explained.” This makes it sound like as if the gap is one third, but what they were referring to is a third of the misleading 23% number. That’s not the clearest way to say, “7%”.

So, if the wage gap is actually about 5-7%, then there’s still an unexplainable difference in pay, right? Well, not exactly. While the percentage difference is undeniable, it’s fully explainable. The explanation for the smaller, more accurate difference lies in job satisfaction and negotiation for contracts. In a study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology entitle, “Who goes to the bargaining table?: The influence of gender and framing on the initiation of negotiation”, four researchers did a thorough test on salary negotiations by gender. They found that when women are informed that they can “ask” for more rather than “negotiate” for more, not only does the negotiation gap disappear, but women are actually 4% more likely than men to negotiate for higher salaries with 73% of females versus 69% male doing so. This is significant, because without the “ask” control, men are 25% more likely to ask for more money: 83% male to 58% female. A study conducted by PayScale showed that the average woman who is very satisfied with her job makes about as much as the average man who is unsatisfied with his job. According to PayScale, a possible reason for this is that more women tend to work in professions that are altruistic in nature: helping others rather than themselves.  And in my opinion, another explanation could be that most women are misled by those who talk about this 77% figure and go into the workforce expecting lower paying jobs, which results in them being more satisfied with their jobs.

The simple truth is that the 77% wage gap is a misleading piece of information, and is a major part of the problem which makes women believe that they are purposely being held down for no reason. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. When society tells women that, in the end, they’re going to be paid less than their male coworkers, they might be less likely to expect expect equal wages, thus feeding the fire and furthering the cycle.

Ladies, you can negotiate for higher wages, and nobody is stopping you. If we tell the truth about the actual wage gap and encourage women to do something about it other than raising lawsuits against companies that aren’t at fault, the wage gap between men and women wouldn’t be lowered, it would be eliminated.