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MASKING MYTHS BUSTED: “Masking = Acting NT.”

FALSE.

Autistic masking does not necessarily mean “pretending to be allistic/neurotypical," although you’d definitely be forgiven for thinking it does.

Non-autistic researchers have been referring to it as “camouflaging” for years, framing it as an intentional choice to suppress autistic traits and replace them with allistic ones in order to “blend in.” Doing an internet search on the term will return several similar results.

But now, Autistic researchers are in the game, and their take is much more nuanced and comprehensive than that. (Funny how that happens, isn’t it?)

They’ve found that:

- It CAN be intentional but is often subconscious and involuntary 

- It is a protective response to trauma and feeling unsafe 

- It is often about suppressing more than just autistic traits 

- It is about identity management and being able to predict how people will treat you, not just “blending in”

Some people will lean into being “the bad kid” because they know that’s what people expect of them. Some people will even act “more autistic” because they know that’s what people expect of them. Others still will do things to attract attention in controllable, more “acceptable” ways to avoid attracting attention in unsafe, more stigmatizing ways. Not because they WANT to be that way, but because it lets them predict people’s responses better, which feels safer.

Also, there are Autistic people who can’t “pass” for non-autistic no matter how hard they try. That doesn’t mean they’re not masking. They may actually be working hard to suppress A LOT, they just can’t do everything to neuronormative standards.

None of these people will be accused of “blending in,” yet they are still masking their hearts out. When we assume they are not, we miss all the harm that masking is causing them. But they are suppressing themselves and suffering the consequences of that just as much as any Autistic person whose mask successfully says, “Hey, I’m just like you!”

(For more on this, please see the work of Dr. Amy Pearson and Kieran Rose.)

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My stupid Harkonen barber shaved my head and called it the Rautha Fade

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doing important research

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i love the phase "knock you into next week" because it implies that time travel can in fact be achieved with enough violence

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if it was about 15 years ago i’d already have seen 12 different AMVs of chimera falin set to three days grace animal i have become on my feed but that just doesn’t happen anymore. because of woke

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When people get a little too gung-ho about-

wait. cancel post. gung-ho cannot be English. where did that phrase come from? China?

ok, yes. gōnghé, which is…an abbreviation for “industrial cooperative”? Like it was just a term for a worker-run organization? A specific U.S. marine stationed in China interpreted it as a motivational slogan about teamwork, and as a commander he got his whole battalion using it, and other U.S. marines found those guys so exhausting that it migrated into English slang with the meaning “overly enthusiastic”.

That’s…wild. What was I talking about?

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You can take the apartheid out of South Africa but you can never take it out of a white South African

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literally so embarrassing to have someone go "i don't go here" or "what's this from?" on my art and it's a rarepair/crackship that is in no way representative of the source material... and i have to be like. well you see, the rest of the restaurant's menu is not like this. i'm doing my own thing eating black olives right out of the can in the back-of-house. whether or not you want me to throw you a can, you have to understand that's not what they serve out front

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thesis: calling things "biblically accurate" isnt funny anymore

antithesis: saying "none of these words are in the bible" isnt funny anymore either

synthesis: theres some level of biblical relevance that will make jokes funny but we havent found it yet

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Hey tumblr what's up?

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I was born to be the master of deadly puzzle island

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