High-masking = high suppression of the neurotype / We don't actually control what our behaviour conveys to others.
High-functioning or high-masking doesn't exist. It's high suppression of the neurotype. It's not an ability that some have and some don't. Some can't cope at all and suffer more discrimination and exclusion and are vulnerable and unsafe. That doesn't make it an "ability to function" for those who can cope until they are burnt out. Coping is not ability or skill.
Is masking a privilege? If you believe that camouflaging your neurotype means more than (sometimes) keeping you safe / (occasionally have some chances of) not being bullied / some very basic every-day short-term kind of inclusion and access (that everybody should be able to have regardless of neurotype), and you think that it's a choice and an ability you have that helps you have access and succeed by appearing to be allistic, as if it is an acting skill, then yes, maybe you have privilege. And you have misconceptions about what acting is and what it means to act.
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Temple Grandin had access to Harvard. As far as I can understand she's been advocating how we should be normal and find jobs (as if we don't want to). Was it really "masking" that helped her succeed by neurotypical standards?
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Masking is not a skill, or an art.
I would also like to add that successful Autistics usually are not those who mask.
If you notice, you'll see they are not the ones who suppress their neurotype, and that's why they are mostly white male and/or super-privileged people.
Masking is the demand of society and systems to suppress our neurotype. Not a way to succeed.
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I don't know if "masking" is a privilege, but those who think that masking as an ability contributed to their access or success could actually be privileged.
I question "masking" as an ability, and believe some perceptions we have on this may not be true. First of all we don't really convey what we think we do when we supposedly "mask", and that's why it doesn't work. We don't actually control what our behaviour conveys to others. Behaviour is not separate from us, it's like accepting "autism" is separate from us.
Society and systems demand from us to camouflage our neurotype, we may do it for our safety, which does mean that some people who can't cope may be more vulnerable and excluded, it's not an ability though, and it doesn't make you function as an allistic, it's not access in a significant enough way, we don't gain from it, we lose more.
That's my personal experience.
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