Masking Is Unsustainable and Imposes Unfair Standards on oth

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Imposes Unfair Standards on Other Autists. Sorry, the title ran out

I view masking as a tool to get things. It needs to be thought of in that way.

The problems occur when you do it so much that you lose sight that you are using a tool and start believing the mask is who you are.

I don’t have the superpower that makes any masking I do negatively affect my neurokin.

I think one of the problems with masking as an openly autistic person is that it makes allistic people think autistic people can "improve" and get less autistic if they just put in the effort. They don't realize that it's acting, takes a lot of hard work and is not a natural behaviour. That said, I mask a lot myself to avoid getting into trouble and not annoy people.

I agree. I also think the expectation that we behave in a certain way is ugly.
However there are a lot of uneducated people in the world, and
many of those people cannot eat easily, let alone learn to be tolerant.
So there are always going to be environments where masking will save you
a lot of trouble, so It must be a useful skill.

If you think about it like learning a language it can be ok, just not
the be-all end-all of your identity.

Further, there are some aspects of NT thinking and communication that are actually real advantages,
for example modelling other people's minds. So it's good for the Autist to be humble
and understand that this can be a weakness and where possible take it into account.
So it's not just a matter of demanding people respect you and communicate in a certain way,
different styles for different situations. Eg maybe NT is better for sales or doing a negotiation, but
autist is better at experimental physics.

I do not believe in the concept of "masking" because from where I sit so far, it appears to be lying.
I certainly could be wrong, 100 percent wrong, but my policy is to just be real, be honest and be open to the world as much as is practical.

I do realize that the official definition is the conscious or unconscious actions of an autistic person trying to modify their behavior to appear more "neurotypical" but in the end it's almost never anything like that in practice, which is why I cannot buy into acceptance of it as a valid concept.
It's more wishful thinking and bad acting from what I can gather.

Masking is the interface between the autistic and NT world.

Without it life would be harder for us.

Not that it’s not stressful