Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

by Devon Price

Though I was a psychologist, all I knew about Autism was the broadest and most dehumanizing of stereotypes. Being Autistic would mean I was broken. Of course, I’d already felt broken for years.

Even within that relatively privileged class, it’s almost exclusively wealthy and upper-middle-class Autistic kids who get identified.[1] That group has always been the prototype for Autism when it’s described by clinicians or depicted in media. All the diagnostic criteria for Autism are based on how it presents in this group.

Women don’t have “milder” Autism because of their biology; people who are marginalized have their Autism ignored because of their peripheral status in society.

My social isolation was a way of rejecting other people before they could reject me.

I got into unhealthy, codependent relationships because I needed approval and didn’t know how to get it, so I just molded myself into whatever my partner at the time was looking for.

“Now I know I’m Autistic, but I kinda found out about it too late,” she says. “If I tell people, they don’t want to believe me. I have my life together too much for them to realize how hard it all is. Nobody wants to hear now about how hard it’s always been, always still is, frankly.”

Crystal suspects that had she been an Autistic boy, her shutdowns would have been viewed differently. Boys are supposed to have agency and confidence, and engage actively with the world. Being nonresponsive and depressed might have inspired early intervention, rather than morphing into an unspeakable family secret. Instead, Crystal’s parents told her to stop being “so weird” and to sit up and “look alive.” When confusion and frustration made her want to break down and cry, she was similarly told to tamp those urges down.

The idea that Autism is a “boy’s” disorder goes all the way back to when the condition was first described at the turn of the twentieth century. Hans Asperger and other early Autism researchers did study girls on the spectrum, but generally left them out of their published research reports.[55]

For decades, Autistic boys have outnumbered girls at a ratio of 4 to 1.[63] Girls like Crystal are still routinely passed over and denied assessments, because they are well-behaved and too pleasant to “really” be Autistic. Autistic trans people and people of color are similarly excluded.[64] When any of us do discover our identities and come out, we risk being told we “don’t look Autistic.” In media, nearly every Autistic character is a white man with a monotone voice, rude demeanor, and a penchant for science.

As of 2020, one in 54 children is diagnosed as Autistic, up from one in 68 just four years ago. In the 1990s only one in every 2,500 children was diagnosed.[66]

Adults speak to young girls using more emotion-related words than they do when speaking to boys,[6] which means Autistic girls often get a leg up in social and relational skills. Much of the play that girls stereotypically engage in (and are encouraged to engage in) involves mimicking adult social interactions, such as playing house or pretending to run a store.[7] As a result many Autistic girls learn how to fake their way through routine conversations at a younger age than boys do.

Does not initiate conversations but can appear outgoing and comfortable when approached.

We have to keep other people at arm’s length, because letting them see our hyperfixations, meltdowns, obsessions, and outbursts could mean losing their respect. But locking ourselves away means we can’t ever be fully loved.

Incidentally, Autism and ADHD co-occur at very high rates, and are diagnostically quite difficult to untangle.[69] Psychologists often call them “sister conditions” because both of them impact things like distractibility, sensory seeking, and being deeply pained by social rejection.

Therapy that is focused on battling “irrational beliefs,” such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), doesn’t work as well on Autistic people as it does on neurotypicals.[72]

And while some masked Autistics may generally be better at staying on task, maintaining a consistent schedule, and keeping organized compared to the average ADHD, many of us are so chronically exhausted and burnt out that we experience the same struggles with daily life that people with ADHD do.

In addition to overlapping with many mental disabilities and disorders, Autism also co-occurs frequently with physical disabilities like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS),[87] gastrointestinal disorders,[88] and epilepsy.[89]

Neurotypical people may not know we’re disabled, but they identify in us some key flaw that is associated with disability: we’re childish, or bitter, self-absorbed, or too “angry,” or maybe we’re just awkward and make people cringe.

The fear of seeming childish wounded me in a profound way, as it does many Autistic folks. One of the major ways abled society dehumanizes the disabled is by calling our maturity into question. “Adults” are supposed to be independent, though of course no person actually is.

Someone might verbally camouflage by forcing themselves not to speak too much about their special interests,[5] for example, and socially compensate by researching a friend’s Facebook posts before meeting up with them, so they’ll have a good idea of what to chat about.[6]

“It’s like going to the grocery store, but only being able to bring home what you can sneak into your pockets when nobody is looking. And everybody else gets to just go through the checkout and buy as much as they want, so they don’t understand why you find shopping stressful.”

Once you’ve proven yourself capable of suffering in silence, neurotypical people tend to expect you’ll be able to do it forever, no matter the cost.

For other Autistic people that I know, including myself, having to mask and socialize for an extended period increases the odds we’ll begin to dissociate or shut down. People don’t literally become “blurry” for me when I’m overwhelmed, but I do stop gazing at people’s faces and often fail to recognize people I know or hear their voices unless they get in my face and wave their hands.

Many masked Autistic adults struggle to balance full-time work with social lives or hobbies at all because maintaining a conciliatory mask for eight hours per day is just too labor intense to have energy for anything else.[55]

Many of us identify with the items we love, and even feel a degree of empathy for them, as if they were alive. Psychologists call this phenomenon object personification, and Autistics exhibit it at an elevated rate compared to the neurotypical population.[6]

“Reframe failure as data,” Marta writes, “and everything changes.”

Many neurodiverse people suffer from Autistic inertia.[24] The same heightened focus that makes us so good at studying our special interests for hours also makes it challenging for us to get off the couch and attend to the overflowing trash.

They yearn to be accepted yet doubt that they can be. When other people try to connect with us, we rebuff them without even realizing it.

A world that allows all Autistics to safely unmask is a world where anyone with strange interests, passionate emotions, environmental sensitivities, social quirks, or other differences is still seen as worthy and whole.