Aspies For Freedom

Okay, so an infinity symbol with rainbow colors is a symbol for autistic pride.  How did this come about?  What does it mean?  I'm curious.

Spectrum - autistic spectrum
Infinity - forever

Autistic forever

Where did the symbol come from?  i.e. when did it come into use, who came up with the idea? etc

I came up with the idea in 2004, as a logo for AFF. Myself and Gareth had just met and decided to form an anti cure group, we then had a meeting online with Wolfy and our old moderator Shadow.
We came up with the name Aspies for freedom for the group, and I thought of the infinity sign for the logo, but we thought of the shape being made by an asp snake curled around.
We had a competition for a design, and Crucibelle's was the best, as seen above. :smile:

We have used it ever since as a better symbol for autism than the dreaded jigsaw puzzle.

Okay, thanks.  Has the symbol caught on widely? What's wrong with the jig saw puzzle? (I loved those things!)  I've seen allusions to this but don't know the history.

Generally the argument against the jigsaw puzzle is that its something incomplete, something used to campaign for a cure in many cases, something used negatively by curebies, something that is saying we are a 'puzzle'.

Other people may feel diferently.

As far as I'm concerned, most people are a puzzle.  So okay.  Let's avoid the curebies.

Most people are not represented by a jigsaw piece though, so its singles us out.

I am not sure what the second two sentences of your post mean.

Oh, sorry, Amy, I meant that I'm fine with avoiding use of a symbol that is used by people seeking a cure and that have singled out autistics as being puzzling. Since I'd never heard of the rainbow infinity symbol prior to this forum, and am contemplating making a collage of one, I was curious about the origin.  Thanks for explaining.

The unplaced jigsaw piece might mean that we are proud to be unique, and don't need to fit in nice and squarely with all the other pieces. It all depends on your interpretation.

Have a look at google images for autism and it can be seen that its used in a certain way.
Its like the swastika is really a positive symbol originally and the nazi usage has distorted it. Obviously the jigsaw piece is less extreme than that though.

Interesting--I just did the search Amy suggests, and didn't see a puzzle piece until the bottom of p. 4., where there are ribbons with different color puzzle pieces.  Oops, okay, I see one on p. 2  --so small I missed it the first time through. A rainbow circle (but not infinity) also appears on p. 2.

I meant it as a quick way to see where the images are used by doing a search for autism related to the puzzle piece, rather than checking sites to find it.

Oh, all I did was go to google images and type autism into the search window. Thought that this is what you had meant.  But now I just did the image search on autism puzzle and get tons of what I think you'd meant.  Some of them are kind of pretty.

I also wonder if the jigsaw puzzle piece analogy means that we will never fit in. The rest of the jigsaw isn't there so I don't see if the piece is meant to fit into the space or not.