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Autism-Shaming: Is camouflaging an obligation or a choice?

☕Tassimo ☕

Many autistic people describe camouflaging as an obligation, rather than a choice.‘ Camouflaging’ is a term used to describe behaviours that hide or mask aspects of oneself from others, or to ‘pass’ as 'neurotypical' in everyday social interactions (Hull et al. 2017). It is particularly prominent in social situations, where it has come to be called ‘social camouflaging’. One recent study (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2019) revealed that 70% of autistic adults reported that they consistently camouflage.  Do things need to change?  Are we to blame? Or are neurotypicals to blame? Is there a solution, or are we doomed to our attempts to conform to neurotypical conventions? Have we no other choice other than to continue to apologise for being autistic? How many times have you apologised for your autistic behaviour? How often do you seek the approval of neurotypicals by camouflaging your autism so as to fit in with them? How many times have you been autism-shamed by neurotypicals, or worse by other neurodivergents?

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  • I have only come to understand the terms autistic camouflaging or masking this year.
    Before that, I would have said that it is my natural behavior to observe what would seem to be acceptable to who I am talking to and try to reflect that as much as possible- and I thought that was what everyone else did and called it 'fitting in'.

    However this puts one in a position of needing to formulate an authentic response when there are no cues or examples to mimic - and this is where the strategy really falls down. There are, of course the two very British responses of 'sorry' and 'thank you' to fall back on and I guess the number of times I have used them completely inappropriately would be comedic were it not for the anxiety they represented and also the post-hoc loss of self worth when I had the mental space to deconstruct the encounter.

    Unfortunately, the most compassionate response is sometimes hard to deal with. If someone comes back with "there's nothing to be sorry about" then I'm really lost for a reaction and the whole thing starts to become an emergency-exit-situation.

    Maybe one day I will be able to discriminate between masking and a fully direct/authentic interaction but as it stands, I mostly can't tell which one is which.

  • in reply to JJ

    Hi JJ. Lovely to hear from you again. Interesting insight. I must confess I'm confused by the whole concept. My camouflage is so old and established that it has become a second skin. So much so that oftentimes I don't recognise my own autistic self! I'm slowly beginning to identify and accept certain traits and strip away the protective camouflage that's covered them for so long.

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  • in reply to JJ

    Hi JJ. Lovely to hear from you again. Interesting insight. I must confess I'm confused by the whole concept. My camouflage is so old and established that it has become a second skin. So much so that oftentimes I don't recognise my own autistic self! I'm slowly beginning to identify and accept certain traits and strip away the protective camouflage that's covered them for so long.

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