Welcome back to Autistic Advice, a semi-regular advice column where I respond to reader questions about neurodiversity, accessibility, disability justice, and self-advocacy from my perspective as an Autistic psychologist. You can submit questions or suggest future entries in the series via my Tumblr ask box, linked here.
Today’s question comes from Tumblr user localpussyboy, who is concerned by the research showing that non-Autistic people have a reflexive dislike of Autistics, even (or especially) when we are trying to mask our Autistic traits:
Localpussyboy (what a joy to get to write that in a column), I so relate to the concerns you are describing. I have often been preoccupied with worries that the people I meet won’t appreciate the real me, they’ll only see the ways in which my Autistic traits and mannerisms mark me as the “other” — and that no matter how hard I strive to speak the language of the neuro-conforming, I’ll have lost people’s interest before I even try.