I'm seeing a lot of posts and tweets about the new upcoming series on Fox called Touch . I haven't seen many critical reviews of what I see is a horrible representation of autism. People complain about Rainman being referenced to autism, but like this? I don't get it. Autism is not a shell. Autistic people are not paranormal changelings, indigo people, bridges to higher otherworldly knowledge, witches, magical, or any other mythical being. We are human. Nonverbal autistics are not mute angels sent here as prophets with otherworldy messages. If you don't know what damage this sort of TV program can do, please do a google search for autism and witches, or autism and paranormal, or autism and clairvoyant, or autism and psychic. Expect these results to be more common after this show airs. When I meet someone in the supermarket I do not want Touch to be what they think of when they see my nonverbal son. I thought we left that awful stereotyping back on the 90's with movies like Mercury Rising. I'm really concerned with the odd ideas this show is gonna put into people's minds about autism. I do understand that this is a fictional program that is depicting a fictional scenario, but is those without any idea as to what autism is going to fully grasp that? That's my concern.
Edited to add this link as an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9115795/Couple-murdered-teenage-brother-they-accused-of-witchcraft.html
