masking has many facets. lower caps are good things. here’s some proposed definitions.

– masking: passing as allistic, either as a means to an end, or out of necessity.
– camouflaging: taking on a role to fit in, sometimes to great detail
– passing: presenting as neurotypical. passing as in the closet, but autistically, not necessarily in terms of gender or sexuality.
– compensating: a strategic social exchange with neurotypical people and society. sort of like scripting, but improvisatory as well. See https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5.
– mimicry: taking on a new persona to fit in. see https://womanwithaspergers.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/who-are-we-women-autism-and-social-mimicry-part-ii/.

it’s been interesting to watch the “take the mask off” hashtag campaign on twitter evolve over the past several weeks. at first it was a mix of important narratives about how masking and camouflaging can be a health risk, personal accounts and “i’m wearing a spinner ring in public! *selfie*” things. all of which is fine, but it also was very white at some points, in terms of presenting masking as something to aspire to (which i agree with) while not talking about the risks in doing so for autistics of color. that got addressed quickly, thankfully.

i think unmasking (or never being masked, and points in-between), when safely possible, can be a form of liberation. there’s a ton of important lessons to be taken from demasking, both as a form of reclaiming, and as a form of personal direct action. horizontalist vanguards (including explicitly crip liberation-focused ones) ebb and flow all the time under late capitalism, including in individual acts of resistance, both intentionally and not, and this is a very good example of one, with useful emergent theories/strategies/tactics for everybody on the left, not just those of us who are autistic as well. this includes discussions around how masking is seriously (and violently) gatekept for neurodivergent people of color, and at times, white and light-skinned passing autistics as well. for those of us who can create openings in public space for the rest of us to unmask safely, we should be doing so. i also think we need to support people who can’t in their needs, both so they can and simply because supporting those most in need in a given community is a good thing to do.

also, getting my needs met either on my own or in-community helped me to mask less often, or at least, to mask in a softer way than i do with strangers, white cishet neurotypical strangers in particular. including in spaces where i wasn’t out about being neurodivergent, or even “weird” (as much as being “non-weird” is possible for me, which isn’t that much, to say the least). even if people didn’t understand what meltdowns were, or actively disliked the way I came off, or who knows how many arguments i got into — there was an understanding of there being a [sometimes annoying] human being behind my “unacceptable” behavior. having the times where i went mute for days, or paced angrily and ranted about (or at) roommates, or got in a screaming match? that was understood to be our business. the time i was echolalic and speaking in nothing but nth level metaphors, and couldn’t find my way back to “normal words”? “addressed” quietly by a friend until i found my way back to linear sentences. comfy nouns that reference cozy verbs. left foot, right foot, left. i do think much of that was ableist, though. it just wasn’t ableist in a way that inherently denied my humanity to the level that ABA and most of the non-autistic “takes” about us do. it’s not unlike how being mixed can “present”, including in communities of color spaces, as being both inside and outside of community. it’s another kind of borderlands.

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