Not knowing that someone is autistic

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I met someone who I hadn't seen in years recently. She casually mentioned being autistic as if it were a given in a passing comment. I hadn't known her that well in the past, so I guess it makes sense that I never really picked up on that.

Yet, this has happened before. I've known friends that I've hung out with for a while and I haven't picked up on anything but they'll mention it as though it's common knowledge. Or if you question it, the response is uh yeah, did you not know?

No? Did everyone else know? Am I just oblivious?

I think that you probably didn’t notice before because you didn’t have the knowledge before. The amount of research I’ve done over the last two years has been quite substantial, and since doing it I’ve noticed lots of traits and signs of autism in people i hardly know. It’s like you never noticed how many red cars you see every day until someone says “Have you noticed how many red cars are on the roads?”. After that all you notice is red cars. I hope that analogy didn’t suck.

The autism spectrum is very broad. It wasn't that long ago when mostly only white male children were diagnosed, and that was when it was more obvious, like being non-verbal or constantly having meltdowns.

Years before I was diagnosed with Asperger's/ASD I would have thought you were a huge liar if you said I was autistic.

It's generally easy for me to tell if someone is autistic. I've assumed many many times among people I've met online and seem to be right in the vast majority of instances. Why do I find it easy? Because I have gained insight through inward comparison and via outside observation.

I'd say some of the main traits I notice in other autistic individuals I meet online is social awkwardness (and/or a lack of high social grace), high or low intelligence (By this I mean I see a higher variability in perceived intelligence like logic, reasoning and linguistic aptitude than in NTs), special interests, lack of interest in small talk, and gender abnormalities to name some.

Because I've recognized many of the patterns I often have a "hunch" that a person is autistic before they tell me, and I rarely ask someone if they are autistic unless I know they won't mind as unfortunately many of us are ashamed of it and our society certainly isn't all that supportive of us overall.

It's not always obvious unless you know what to look for. I was surprised when multiple people told me they already could tell I was autistic.

If the person is good at masking I think it's difficult to spot an autistic even if you are autistic yourself. I am officially diagnosed ASD but not open about it at my work. Some time ago me and my coworkers had a discussion about how we socialize in the employee breakroom. I said something along the line that I thought of the break room as somewhat of a haven, a place where you should be able to relax and be yourself without having to present as a polite, service minded face of the company. A openly autistic coworker, hired 6 months prior to this for a special project, really snapped at me and started to lecture me "If you get tired from being polite and adjust to the needs of the customers - how tiresome and exhausting do you think life is for an autistic that have to be masking all the time?! There's a reason I only work halftime and a lot of austic people don't have the ability towork at all!" Prior to this we had met on several occasions and had private discussions on several topics including autism.

I struggle to tell initially with accuracy if people are autistic if they mask a lot, that's not a judgement on them, that's just my social obliviousness. However if I intellectualise it, I can work it out a bit more accurately. But even then, I don't mask (I used to, back the days of pre-head injury on top of the congenital stuff, mask a bit in front of medical professionals in order to try and get by through the public healthcare system, but I always saw no need to mask in social situations as I didn't want friends I just wanted to be left alone, but now after the head injury I don't know how to mask) and I barely interact, so I have forgotten how masking autistics will present IRL. To be honest at this point in time I can't really identify anyone except "human being, I want to leave now" face to face. My social isolation form face to face contact is at a crazy level now but at least I'm finally much less insane.

My ability to perceive people is really intellectualised now and not at all intuitive, and glitchy as hell.