Autism Awareness Day Special: Autistic Masking
Today is Autism Awareness Day and this is the first time in the three years since I've been doing this series that Autism Awareness Day coincides with an installment being posted. In honor of that, I decided to make today's installment a special.
Autism in boys presents differently than it does in girls. In fact, when I was a student at New Story (at the time it was called Haugland Learning Center or HLC), my first girlfriend, Caroline, was one of the only girls in my age group. The main reason for this is because when autism was first discovered, boys were the only ones who were studied.
A big difference between autistic boys and autistic girls is that girls are held to a standard of “masking” more. Masking (at least in terms of autism) basically means covering your autism up and pretending to be “neurotypical.” Think about it, girls are expected to be a lot more social, docile, and compliant in comparison to boys. In other words, boys are able to present the signs of autism more freely while girls are reprimanded for not acting “typical.”
What started happening was, undiagnosed autistic women would have autistic sons. When the sons would get diagnosed, the mothers would do autism research and just go, “This sounds a lot like me.” As a result, there has been a major spike in girls being diagnosed with autism because we're more aware of it now.
I have spent a good portion of my life around other people with autism and consequently, I have developed “an autism radar.” If you have autism, give me two minutes with you and I can usually tell. When I first started working at New Story as a teacher support, I met a couple named, Clo and Lucy. They are also teacher supports. From the moment I met Lucy, my autism radar was going off. I was conflicted for a couple months because I wasn't sure if she knew, and I didn’t know when it would be appropriate to drop that bombshell. Luckily we started hanging out and she confessed to me that she figured it out by working with the kids. I also discovered that Clo is “neurodivergent” as well.
Over the course of this last school year, Clo and Lucy have become good friends of mine and they have helped me with a lot of things (professional or otherwise). From time to time, I will go to Clo and Lucy's house after work. These after-work hangouts usually consist of stimming (hand flapping, squealing, running around, etc.), scripting (repeating words that have been heard from somewhere else… usually from movies or TV shows), and talking about our special interests.
As I depicted in “The Greattastic Adventures: Miracle Child” I jumped into a duck pond to get my brother Ryan’s toy, after his best friend Will, accidentally hyped me up too much. That same day there was an ice cream social at HLC, and I told a couple of students the pond story. They loved it, and I gained the self-confidence that I have today. My working theory has always been that Will and HLC sparked the development of my confidence and then my “sisters” came along and kept my ego in check. While that did happen something else that I missed happened too.
Even though I often forget it, my “sisters” are all neurotypical. What I'm saying is, even though I am completely comfortable with the girls, I don’t stim at 100%. I'm not saying I didn't stim at all, but I do mask a little bit. Since my goal this season is to figure out who I am, I have been asking myself one simple question: Why?
The girls don't care if I stim/script, my family doesn't, and my friends don’t. So why am I masking a little bit around them all? This is the question I ask myself. I'm not saying there's not an appropriate time to mask; at times it is necessary to protect ourselves. But I have decided to stop hiding these bits of myself and let myself be truly comfortable around the people who accept me as I am.
Have a Greattastic Day and be Safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri.
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