Fierce Autie

Aviva Seigler is the executive director at Autistic Inclusive Meets USA and a website editor for Autistic Inclusive Meets. She is a writer, an activist, and an advocate. She is an LGBTQ+ autistic from South Florida, is married to a very supportive husband, and has seven children. She has been fighting the CD protocol and other quack treatments since 2014. She is a veterinary technologist (LPN for pets). She has her associates and bachelors degree in Veterinary Technology from St. Petersburg College. She is very involved with scouting with her six children. Three of the children are autistic but all are Neurodivergent. Her hope is to bridge the gap between allies and autistics while fighting the pseudoscience that threatens all people, not just autistics. Before this Blog I had been silently advocating by reporting parents to authorities who are abusing their children with quack treatments for years. Emma, Melissa and I have been working together in reporting these parents. Emma has been public about it for years and has been in the media numerous times. Only last year did Melissa and I come forward but it was not without Emma’s help. An NBC reporter asked Emma and she told her about the two of us. The Start of Something New After being contacted by the reporter, I decided to start blogging. I mean really blogging. I had blogged before but it was not anything serious. I started with what MMS was. After that I wanted to use my science minded skills and include other forms of quackery. With the help of Emma and other members of the autistic community, I have a decent amount of people reading it. Looking back to when Bug was diagnosed, my own mother told me to listen to Jenny McCarthy. This was way before I thought I was autistic. It scares me to think of what I would have tried if I did not have better judgement. I do not think I would have discovered my own neurology if that was the case. Why Fierce Autie? I wanted a name that stands out. When I was moderating a group for daughters of abused parents, another moderator saw a photo of me shooting my bow and arrow at a scouting event. She told me I looked fierce. She called me the fierce advocate. I have been an archer since I was a brownie and it seemed fitting. Thats why arrows are part of my logo. Archery is a large part of my life. Gaining Momentum Anyway, I have been researching pseudoscience and backing up with science why they do not work, the side effects, etc. I created a list of all I wanted to debunk. I then separated my site into sections. With doing this, I asked around if a good and bad list of people/companies to interact with would be helpful. That’s how my recommended and boycott list came to be. I list things as an accommodation to myself so making lists for the community was no big deal. After the article on NBC came out, the blog gained a ton of followers. Almost 1000 overnight. I could not believe it. I was helping people and that could not have made me happier. The Trolling Soon Started I do have a lot of trolls commenting. I have had a lot of trouble keeping up with all the troll comments so I turned on comment moderation. After all, I work 12 hours on top of my blog so I do need time to catch up with them and this allows me to get to them at my own pace. The trolling does get to me sometimes but most of time they can be downright ridiculous. Why I do it I maintain this blog as a source of information. I break down the science so other people can understand it. Every so often I hear of parents coming to me that I have helped them in some way. One major quackery that was debunked was Simple Spectrum Supplement. The other day I received this comment: “Wow, Thank you for taking the time to research and write this! I was just about to purchase this for my son’s! I can’t Thank you enough.” This was at the end of a hard day with work and other personal things and this made my day. There are days with me doing this wondering if I actually make a difference. Reading this made me feel great. Her children were saved because of what I wrote. I will never stop writing about quackery as different quacks and methods surface. When doing something hard or anything worth doing, positive feedback is often the one thing that keeps that person going. I normally get trolls commenting but when I get comments like this, it keeps me going. It makes me want to do this forever. When you are doing something, you want to know if it is making the impact that you are striving for. Thank you for taking the time to read this. This should answer any questions about my blog and about me anyone may have.