I really appreciate this article. Not only is it great to see an academic paper on autism by autistic authors, I really identify with the way they discuss masking as something that isn’t always a conscious thing.
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https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/aut.2020.0043#.YB6ys9MPMBc.twitter

Masking is mostly unconscious for me. I didn’t think of myself as actively pretending to be someone else, or suppressing my autistic traits. Even when I read about it when researching autism, the concept of putting on and taking off a mask intentionally didn’t click with me. 2/

What clicked was “oh, maybe this explains why I don’t seem autistic and don’t act in stereotypically autistic ways, because I’ve learned to mask. I do tend to act differently in different contexts and feel like I’m looking to other people to figure out what to do socially” 3/

Before I learned about autism I had a general idea that I was weird when I was alone. I talked to myself, made funny expressions, was more physically expressive when I was alone. But I didn’t fully realize that was part of masking until months after realizing I was autistic 4/

It was only through gradual thought and processing who I am and what my autistic traits are that I realized that I act very differently alone from how I am around others. And it feels completely unconscious. I am having to actively work at allowing myself to be more autistic. 5/

I don’t remember flapping as a kid, but I’ve started doing it when I’m alone. I vocal stim more now. I actually bought myself chewelry and enjoy it sometimes, even though I’ve never chewed on stuff before because it felt weird. 6/

It can feel like I’m faking because some things I only started doing recently. But I’m not forcing myself to do it, it feels natural now to flap when I’m excited. I just still limit it to when I’m alone because I’m not publiclly autistic right now. 7/

Also I’m still self-conscious and it will take a lot of active unmasking for me to ever be ok doing it in front of other people. And that’s ok. It’s a process, I’m still learning what it means to be autistic. I’ve spent 20 years pretending to be neurotypical, even to myself. 8/

But sometimes even other autistics can frame masking as a conscious thing that they realized they do, and that makes me feel out of place. I still have a lot of doubts about my self-dx because I feel like I don’t struggle enough or there are certain traits I don’t strongly fit.9/

This paper validated that by specifically mentioning that masking can be unconscious and autistics may not notice that they are doing it. This is definitely important for the reasons the paper stated, since NT researchers are using it as blame for why many weren’t diagnosed. 10/

But it’s also important for the autistic community as well. For people like me who didn’t fully identify with what I saw as the main definition of masking as a conscious act. 11/

Because I’m new here I could be wrong and most of the autistic community knew that masking could be unconscious already. But at least for me I hadn’t seen unconscious masking mentioned that often, so this paper was very helpful. 12/