Is the concept of masking accurate or useful?

A person wishes to play the guitar, they do not have those skills innately, so learn techniques on how to play the guitar. An autistic person wants to communicate effectively with most of the people around them, they do not have those skills innately, so learn by observation, copying and perhaps by studying published analyses of how non-verbal communication functions. It seems like a fundamentally similar process.

No, the two things are not even close to being analogous.

By this reasoning a guitarist is less authentically him or herself after gaining skill at playing the instrument. Using acquired skills is just using acquired skills, it isn't the rejection of innate identity, it is adaptation to the environment.

Or it is the result of positive feedback when it is executed well? It took me a good deal of effort to research and master aspects of non-verbal communication. When I use my skills I am using them consciously and I can achieve things that were beyond my ability before. If I use acquired skills when playing chess am I less authentically me, than when I was learning the game and not good at it?

I feel your boredom McFrost and wondering about being intrusive and nosy, having been on the end of people who fire questions at me with th speed of machine gun fire, it's nto something I want to inflict on someone else, I just wish I could get the balance right between asking enough quetions to seem interested and not so many as to feel nosy.

I wonder what people would think if we really did all unmask and said what we really think and feel? I bet they'd be asking us to put our masks back on!

We are hiding our true selves and becoming inauthentic, using acquired skills in order to gain social and other goals.

Also, to be honest, there is something inauthentic about it, but allistics are equally capable of inauthenticity - it just doesn't seem to cost them anything to do it.

"I consider this just one more instance of autistic people being told how to behave."

That's interesting. I don't feel that I am being told to unmask. In fact I think most of society would be appalled if I completely unmasked, which is why I can't really do it and expect to continue as part of society. I'd lose my work pretty quickly if everyone I encounter at work knew how [removed by mod] tiresome I found them. I haven't come across the idea that unmasking is a panacea, it clearly isn't and I would quite happily ignore anyone who said it was. As we know that masking increases likelihood of burnout though, I think it is wise to consider masking less - mostly through decreasing situations in which you are forced to mask but also by allowing your true self to be on display a little bit more. I have done that in the last year and not faced too many consequences that I know or care about.

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We are doing it to preserve our nervous systems. Years of negative feedback conditions us to present in a way that keeps us safe (psychologically & otherwise)..

Most maskingvisnt conscious/deliberate though...its conditioned behaviour developed by extended time periods of negative feedback for acting authentically. 

Very many people use the terms masking and camouflaging, there are books on the subject. They are fairly reasonable as shorthand terms for what autistic people do in order to fit into society more seamlessly. However, there is a view that the person 'masking', i.e. using consciously learned social skills, is somehow inauthentic and betraying their core identity by doing so. This comes largely from parts of the autistic community, as does the idea that 'unmasking' is a panacea for all that ails autistic people. I consider this just one more instance of autistic people being told how to behave. Personally, I resent this. It is for this reason that I think that the term masking has become problematic as well as, debatably, inaccurate.

I would say that 'masking' itself is a misnomer. Are we hiding our true selves and becoming inauthentic, or are we using acquired skills in order to gain social and other goals? I think it is the latter. If I was teaching someone a scientific technique at work, using all my hard-earned social skills to help me be easily understood, and even being likeable. I think I am as much my authentic self as I am alone at home reading a book on Byzantine history while my knees jiggle as a stim. I am me using social skills, I am me not using social skills.

I see what you are saying but I still think of it as masking. Yes, everyone behaves differently with different people but as you say, for allistics that is a natural thing. I must have learnt very young, and quite painfully, that I needed to behave differently because I became extremely guarded and closed off as I grew up.

With social interactions, I regularly ask questions, the answers to which I have absolutely no interest in and then suffer through the boredom of listening to the answer (I am AuDHD and boredom is pain). I can't ask what I want to ask, if anything, because I fear being seen as nosey, or creepy, or intrusive. I have a strong sense that the way society works is not designed for people like me and I have to play a game I am bored of just to get along in the world. The urge to just abandon all pretence gets stronger and stronger as time goes on. I am not exactly consciously putting on my mask as I walk out the door but I feel forced to be someone I am not a lot of the time. Masking seems like quite a good term to describe that.

Mirroring/mimicking is masking. As is suppression of autistic ways we present that can be alarming to NTs. 

I get that room reading thing too and reading emotions in others, sometimes it's OK, but others not so much, some people have storm force auras and use them like a battering ram.

Mirroring the behavious of another is a good way to signal to them that you're in tune with what they're feeling, even to the point of picking up on the feelings themselves in your own body, good if you're trying to help someone, not so good if you're sat next to them on a train. You can deliberately choose a different body posture if you feel uncomfortable, to "close" yourself down, usually an arms across the body and legs crossed. 

You could also see if someone is mirroring you, this would mean they want to deepen a friendship or conversation with you.

 If the police do it then they're doing it on purpose to make you more comfortable and give more information, a good thing if yo're the victim of or witness to a crime, not so good if you're the one being accused.

I often think that many people who have a stereotypical view of autistic think that empathy is somewhat alien to us. I'm a very empathetic person and it almost pains me physically to see someone or an animal etc in distress. I'm one of those people that can read a room very quickly and it can be quite uncomfortable if the "vibe" is off.

I think now that I'm aware of this semi-automatic mirroring response, I try to not give way to it if I can.

Do I want to understand myself better, yes obviously.

Do I want to remember all the stuff I've gone through to get to this point, not so much!

Mirroring the behaviour of the person/people your with is seen as showing empathy in many walks of life.

So is it somehow wrong when we do?

What does it say about our ability to show empathy?

It's the same as being comfortable in your own company and liking alone time, in some circles it's called self actualising, others call it self isolating, one is seen as a very positive thing the other negative.

It's no wonder we get confused, the peole who come up with this stuff seem pretty confused too.

I am late diagnosed person (53) and I really wasn't aware that I was doing it until I was speaking to a psychologist.

I tend to mirror rather than adopting a fix alter .  I suppose how do you know what you are doing, isn't the same as everyone else?

I'm currently trying to figure out my "core" self, the bit that everything else is built upon.

I think I'm pretty good at reading people, it's probably part of a defence mechanism that I've developed over the years.

I do not consider that I have 'masked', as I challenge the idea of masking. I believe that I have used an intellectual grasp on how to communicate, based on observation and conscious emulation, it is much more difficult than the subconscious way that allistics do the same things. The result is much the same, except the autistic way is much more tiring.

I don't think I've ever fully masked as such. As I've grown older I've gotten better at controlling some of the outward manifestations of my autism, but that's about it. And the unfortunate side-effect of that is that I've internalised a lot of self-doubt, as well as spinning into negative thoughts about future events both real and imagined. 

I now realise, after doing a fair bit of reading about them, that I'm also introverted and highly sensitive, which would explain a lot of the issues I've faced over the years. The irony is that it's only in the last 100+ years that extroversion became the ideal & preferred, thanks to Dale Carnegie and others. Before that time, in the 19th and early 20th century, introversion was seen as a good thing.