My whole life, I have used my cognitive abilities to compensate for having a different orientation to the world, and for lacking an intuitive understanding of what is or is not socially acceptable. This “masking” requires a thorough vetting of every decision I make from as many perspectives as I can imagine. I turn to the internet to help me get a sense of what those perspectives might be. I have spent hours on the internet every day since I was twelve years old. At my worst and most isolated, my screen time soared to 10+ hours a day for a year. A majority of this time was spent on social media but it wasn’t recreation, it was research into socially acceptable ways of being.
What kind of temperaments are people attracted to? How are you supposed to pose in selfies? When is it warranted to express passion and anger, and when is that over-the-top and scary? How can you compliment someone without being creepy? How do people respond to outside-the-box ideas? When critiquing society, how can you toe the line between being praised as a revolutionary or bullied for being a crybaby? Are you supposed to make fun of your friends? How much?
I’ve always been chronically anxious, but for most of my life it wasn’t obvious to me that what I feared was social rejection. Until I realized I was autistic, I was just obsessively afraid that I was a “bad person.” I chalked this anxiety up to being raised Catholic and having OCD, but it was also reaffirmed to me several times throughout my life that I might indeed be a bad person. Like the many times my family members accused me of intentionally hurting them, or when I was seventeen and my two best friends sat me down and read me a list of all my most bothersome traits.
It’s common knowledge that autistic people experience social rejection because they lack an intuitive understanding of social norms. But when I say that, you likely imagine autistic people being infantilized, taunted, or excluded from group activities because they’re too “weird.” This is certainly a part of it. And this is the primary narrative that was presented to me when I arrived at the mecca of Autism Tiktok. Everyone shouted,“Unmask! Free yourself! Who cares if people think you’re weird, just find community with other autistic people!”
I bought into this at the time, and I’m not necessarily trying to devalue it as an approach. For many of us, it is important to be reminded that it’s okay to be weird. It’s also depressing and damaging to one’s self-esteem to be socially excluded for any reason, even if you know the people excluding you are being overtly ableist. So I believe this approach to unmasking is useful, but it does not encompass the whole picture.
When autistic people let our guard down, we are also prone to being maligned as villains. Particularly when it is not “obvious” to others that we are autistic. Think about how pervasive an inability to intuitively understand social cues really is. This inability can manifest as you repeatedly crossing someone’s boundaries and not picking up their cues to stop. You might imitate the cadence or personality of a popular tv show character, only to find out it’s inappropriate for the social setting you’re in and you’re being mean. You might ardently defend yourself against a perceived slight, only to find out the other party was joking and you’re the odd one for reacting. People can take your flakiness or bluntness as evidence that you don’t care about them or their feelings. People can view you as lazy, spoiled or entitled because you can’t maintain a job and thus have to rely on others financially. This all results in a different type of social exclusion. Instead of being told, “You can’t hang out with us, you’re weird,” you might get told, “You can’t hang out with us, you’re a bad person.” “You can’t be a part of this community, you’ve done too much harm.” Or, “I don’t want to be your friend or partner, you’re lazy/untrustworthy/inconsiderate/narcissistic.”
There are many furcating consequences to this type of social exclusion. For one, the idea of, “Just find an autistic community!” falls flat, because we autists are not always able to discern when this type of discrimination is happening to one of our own, or protect them accordingly. We are collectively known for having “a strong sense of justice.” Thus, we often hold ourselves and our friends to high moral standards. Many of us also experience rigid, black and white thinking, which contributes to a belief that in any given conflict there is simply one victim, one perpetrator (who acted with intention), and one clear cut path to justice. But this is not always the case.
In my time on the internet, I’ve seen many autistic people deplatformed because of this phenomenon, which I’ll call autistic villainization. I’ve seen their comments and stitches spammed with people, autistic or not, regurgitating one mutually decided-upon narrative that elucidates why the person in question is “harmful,” and why no one should engage with their content anymore. This spells disaster for autists who are limited in the sorts of jobs they can work and rely on social media or artistry to make a living and experience community.
Situations like these also have traumatic emotional consequences. Consider the fact that many autistic people are actually hyper empathetic– meaning we are highly aware of and affected by the emotions of others. We feel devastated when we hurt people we care about. We quite literally feel their pain. Consider also the fact that, as I pointed out earlier, many autistic people have dedicated inordinate amounts of our lives to the pursuits of being a good person, making others feel comfortable, and learning how to signal kindness in a neurotypical language that is not our native tongue. Oftentimes, autistic people have committed far more time and effort to being virtuous than the next non autistic person, and yet we still are the ones who end up being maligned as malicious when we slip up. Consider the hopelessness that must elicit in a disabled person who just wants to be accepted, or at least left alone.
On top of all that, being maligned as a villain can cause autistic people to turn against ourselves. Especially those of us who are undiagnosed. When it is unclear that your social exclusion is the result of ableism, you might instead accept the narrative others are feeding you– that you, in your most natural state, are a bad person undeserving of community. You might lose trust in yourself. You might choose to self-isolate because it is easier than bearing the constant anxiety that you could lose the people you care about at any given moment, for reasons you don’t understand and can’t predict. You might throw your hands up and say, “If I’m going to be seen as a villain, I might as well act like one,” and start manipulating others and surrounding yourself with bad-faith actors. You might lose faith in your future and your reasons for being completely. You might stop fighting to experience joy because you don’t believe you deserve it.
I begrudgingly feel the need to add a caveat here, so as not to be misunderstood; I’m not advocating that autistic people shouldn’t repair harm they’ve caused where they can. I’m not arguing that our actions are completely out of our control, or that we shouldn’t be educated or held accountable when we accidentally hurt someone. But I am arguing for more nuance. More grace. I’m interested in interrogating what exactly we mean by “harm” and what exactly we mean by “accountable.” I think allistic people are rarely held accountable when they accidentally cause harm to autists. And I think one of the most effective ways that we as a society could help autistic people to survive and thrive would be by implementing more social grace, and divesting from punitive systems of justice.