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~starbreaker

I'm not sure I'm getting what you're saying. I'm under the impression what you're calling "masking" or "Autistic Masking 101" is part of what I'd call "the charade of individuality", where there's a belief in an individual self, but it turns out that belief has side-effects that lead to mistreatment of self and others, and so we tend to play that game "with cards close to the vest" lest we give others leverage to mistreat us...? Something like that?

I don't regard individuality as a charade. I play my cards close to the vest because society wasn't made for autistic people, and pretending to be neurotypical well enough to fool people who actually are neurotypical lets me more easily navigate the society they made for themselves without thinking about people like me.

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~inquiry wrote:

>> I'm not sure I'm getting what you're saying. I'm under
>> the impression what you're calling "masking" or "Autistic
>> Masking 101" is part of what I'd call "the charade of
>> individuality", where there's a belief in an individual
>> self, but it turns out that belief has side-effects that
>> lead to mistreatment of self and others, and so we tend to
>> play that game "with cards close to the vest" lest we give
>> others leverage to mistreat us...? Something like that?
>
> I don't regard individuality as a charade. I play my cards
> close to the vest because society wasn't made for autistic
> people, and pretending to be neurotypical well enough to
> fool people who actually are neurotypical lets me more
> easily navigate the society they made for themselves
> without thinking about people like me.

Got it. Thank you.

And I've rather appreciated our interaction. Pushing posts to a blog and reading others' stokes ennui in me pretty quickly. There's something special about the effort to come to terms, especially when the participants can respond with more than a pseudo sentence. I soured on the whole online thing long ago because too much of it seems like either text messaging or slightly glorified text messaging. And then, of course, there's in most the fiendish need to be "right" at all costs - including all manner of denigration.

I occasionally wonder if I'm not as what-you-call neurotypical as I've assumed my entire life.