| Paper | Authors |
|---|---|
| Conceptualising Autistic Masking, Camouflaging, and Neurotypical Privilege: Towards a Minority Group Model of Neurodiversity | Elizabeth M. Radulski |
When I had a little piece of what I could call my Indian community here (very fleeting), it never ceased to amuse me how talking in that space felt like something was unwinding inside of me. The affected control of intonation to not let its natural sway and lilt belie my outsider-ness, the vigilant monitoring of the permissible expressions which often only served to render me mute. Like a mask coming off. Drawing parallels between cultural (and by extension, linguistic) masking and neurodivergent masking seemed effortless to me and that is the turn our discussion ended up taking. I talk about three parallels here: 1. Need for external validation to know for self whether the mask is working; 2. Masking as social currency; and, 3. Needing momentum to learn to unmask. As always, these ideas are constantly in the making and how much they make sense to me on a given day depends on which side of the bed I wake up on.
Before I go on to elaborate on this, I would like to make a few disclaimers: I am definitely not saying that non-autistic/neurotypical people mask to the same extent as neurodivergent people; or for the same reasons. I also do not claim that the negative impacts of these different forms of masking are comparable (see the paper on top for detailed discussion of this). The desire to understand the conceptualization of masking (and therefore choosing this paper) was rooted in my personal experience of knowing I mask in various contexts and that there is something underlyingly common about the motivation to mask all of these intersectional identities. Even if the specifications of how the masking manifests vary from context to context, what remains somewhat shared is the motivation to hide, protect, assimilate. My brain can not begin to understand the mechanisms of masking my neurodivergence without seeking for a unifying theory that accounts for masking my other identities. Thus this reflection â
External Validation
I was scrolling through my reddit posts the other day and came across this one post I made a couple of years ago in a subreddit called r/ratemyaccent. It is exactly what it sounds like, a place to post snippets of your speech and have ânativeâ speakers judge it. I donât think it is limited to English but that makes the bulk of posts there. I had someone tell me I sounded quite clear and well educated. Another person told me I sounded anxious and that they can âhelpâ me with that. I was complimented on not sounding like a âtypical Indianâ. I canât recall the nuance of what I felt reading those comments but there was definitely a sense of relief. I had met the standards of these anonymous people on the internet who were comfortable being the gatekeepers of what was acceptable accent and what was not and, benevolently granting me entry. And what is worse, I had chosen to acknowledge their authority and seek their approval. This was not an isolated experience. Accent masking and feeling pride for not showing stereotypical features associated with the region I am from (India when I am abroad, Uttar Pradesh when I am in India) has always been part of my experience of being an English user.
For my ND mask too, I need external checks to know if it is fooling anyone. For I donât have a reliable internal metric of how much is enough but not too much of all the required socio-communicative behaviors. However, maybe because I picked up linguistic masking at much younger age relative to neurotype related masking which for me came later during teen years, I find that I am more aware when the ND mask comes on. Also I am more cautious of how good I can allow myself to feel for the validation I get because I was grown enough to reflect on the implications of it when I started doing it. Who is the validation coming from? What makes them âqualifiedâ to judge? Why does the validation make me feel more accepted momentarily? It seems that I am unintentionally implying that starting early and doing it long enough can make masking feel effortless (with linguistic masking for me). That with enough time and practice, it becomes second nature and one can get somewhat desensitized to the harms. I hate the implication and find it hard to believe it would be true for neurotype masking, but what do I know.
Social Currency
In the past, speaking the right register has many times been my primary crutch for being perceived as belonging to the âupper classâ, when class shame ran deep for me. Linguistic masking was just as much about wanting to be part of the respectable crowd as wanting to distance myself from showing traits associated with the less desirable groups. [A note here: I am aware of how this sounds and I am making the conscious choice to not sanitize this of the internalized class shame I held deeply when I was younger]. It doesnât help when you constantly receive approval (or just not active rejection) from the world around you for masking effectively. The following lines from one of my favorite poems come to mind (I can only do a few things well, translation is not one of them)â
I find the motivations for masking my ND traits to be somewhat similar. Throughout my teen years, I struggled a lot with effortful performances that would get me accepted as ânormalâ at school and seeing those efforts pay off in many ways, at least for a while, till the mask inadvertently started slipping, kept me going. But even while enjoying the purchasing power of this currency, I was often left with a sense that this was harming me in some way. It would always feel like a skin I put on and peel off, over and over again.Browsing through my old journal, I came across this entry I made (in 2011, twelve years ago!) about my last day of classes in tenth grade. I was going to leave the city soon so this was going to be my last day ever in this school. I write how I came prepared to socialize, had a script (take your camera, ask these people to take pictures with, say yes to group photos, participate in the main celebration event and so on). But when things started picking pace, I had to run and hide away in the library. Now I know that it was due to overstimulation but my 15 years old self didnât. The entry is ripe with guilt at not being able to stick to my plan to have a good day but then I end on a slightly hopeful note:
Over a decade later, I am still there. Scripting, failing, guilting, theorizing, rinse, repeat. Still wary of the harms buying acceptance with this currency brings my way.
Momentum
Another parallel I often think about is how unmasking in both realms relies on being able to build momentum. The first time I got to have an extended conversation with someone in Hindi at my current workplace, I couldnât get my mouth to work. I would start with a few Hindi words and helplessly switch to English. My brain refused to relax into it because it had categorized that space into the formal, the professional and my native tongue wasnât permitted there. I remember feverishly reading about language attrition on my way home that day and a feeling of something akin to anger bubbling inside me over the perceived injustice of this. No one told me to that it was unsafe/inappropriate to perform that identity in that space, but given what I have experienced all my life, the categories my brain had had to create to figure out which parts of me fit in which contexts; unless explicitly shown that it is safe, I will default to hiding, or trying to hide, for self preservation. And what would this explicit showing look like? Hearing people speak in their non-English languages in these spaces.
This is exactly how I feel about my neurotype masking. (A kind, well-meaning friend tells me I am shit at masking which on one hand makes me feel some pride for not hiding but also feels terrible because I am actually constantly putting in the effort. Apparently it doesnât take?). In any new space, I am my most masked self (cue iNTenSE eye contact). Here again what facilitates some unmasking is seeing others be able to do so. Unless people disclose their ND identities, there is no way to know for sure whether masking as a concept is relevant in their framework of self-understanding. However, I personally find any divergence from the accepted norms for social performance in a space without being overtly or covertly penalized for it as an affirmation that the space is safe for unmasking. These donât have to be dramatic divergences, in fact, more mundane stuff feels more impactful. An instructor stating that the deadlines are flexible and they will accommodate anyone who needs extension (divergence from compulsorily policing curricula), students being allowed to attend classes online even when the institution policy forbids it (divergence through co-conspiration), someone choosing to stay engaged in a conversation that gets too involved for a casual social setting (divergence from neuronormative ideas of whatâs acceptable, whatâs not in a social setting). All such little things help build the momentum to act in accordance with what comes to the bodymind with ease rather than the leached version that despite the effort that goes into it, is usually my instinctive performance in a markedly neuronormative space.
I have often, but not often enough, felt the ease one feels which many neurodivergent people talk of when in the company of other neurodivergent folks. Much less friction on the way to building unmasking momentum. Interestingly, I also find that such a lubricating effect is present when interacting across divides, usually with other otherwise othered individuals - e.g. someone from another non-dominant culture in a context, much older or younger people. In a conversation recently I was unpacking why my most effortless interactions have been with people much older than me or children and we landed on the possible explanation that it is because of the lack of similar scripts for our expected performance in the world. There is something enabling (in a good way) about the lack of shared social scripts that not only allows one to put on hold their expectations of how others should act but also frees oneself from that burden. You could be diverging from your respective scripts to your heartâs content and no one is the wiser! (Is this how this phrase is used??).
I hate wrapping up paragraphs. I donât have one.
Aside: This could have been just a journal entry, probably should have been. I am not sure it is worth anyoneâs while reading this. But it helped me put together some scattered ideas and has been a great distracting exercise to deal with holidays loneliness haha! Not to mention, everything I am learning about HTML/CSS coding along the way!