Does “Masking” Exist? – Highlights and Quotes

🇬🇷 Ελληνικά

The prevailing perception is that camouflage provides some kind of magical access. This is the point that needs to be disconnected. Camouflage or masking is not linked to any kind of access or success, as if on a scale of gain and cost. The performance of allistic functioning is a prerequisite for anything, without any gain, to which we are forced. And while, by suppressing our natural functioning, it reduces or even entirely cancels out our performance and the development of our potential.

Does our oppression truly come from “camouflage” itself? Or is it the way we try to respond to the demands of social and systemic environments that obstruct our natural development and functioning? We call “masking” or “camouflage” every experience of oppression we live through our overall interaction with allistic environments and systems.

When we focus on “masking,” we deal with how our mechanism tries to respond, rather than the condition causing the problem. We deal with how the individual copes with issues such as systemic inaccessibility, exclusion, and being forced into this performance. With the performance itself rather than the coercion into it.

For us, it can function as an “analogy” (mask), but for allistics, it refers to a different experience, which is not truly shared among us. They do not fully understand it. The masks they are asked to wear and the roles they are asked to perform in their lives concern different experiences and do not have the same consequences. They do not involve a real suppression of their potential or lack of access. That is why they only see a “psychological” dimension. They may feel discomfort to some extent, but they are not obstructed. Up to the point of discomfort, some—not even all—understand. Nothing more. We are talking about a different performance that they do not know and cannot comprehend based on their own experience. The analogies we offer them do not work.

We accepted the framework of “autistic traits.” But these are not “traits” that we hide; we can understand the convention we accepted and the fundamental misunderstanding it contains. It approaches experiences that we can recognize, but it does not truly correspond to our own experience.

Does “Masking” Exist? – Topic Presentation

Μy most significant oppression did not come from within as “camouflage,” despite the immeasurable cost it had for me and for my environment. My most significant oppression remains the external conditions that block the development of my potential and my social existence—access, and every hostile social and systemic environment. These things do not magically change with “camouflage.” It is not a balance of cost and gain. We gain nothing.

The psychologist literally equates “masking” with allistic functioning. She equates camouflage with functioning or ability. And she is not saying something as outrageous as it sounds. Despite the progress that has been made in our visibility, these notions of a linear spectrum lie at the basis of the medical model and of diagnosis, and that is why this is a wake-up call. These dominant perceptions are still there—perceptions that we too have indirectly accepted (masking as ability/functioning, denial of difference in functioning).

We adopt perceptions and interpretations that are “approximate,” but not accurate, and this is a point of divergence and misunderstanding with allistics, because one does not understand what the other is saying. In a rough way we subsume under “masking” an overall lived experience of oppression that exists in every interaction with the allistic environment. For them, however, it is a general category, and they are not even interested in the experience itself. What interests them is this meaning: “we hide our personality.” Full stop. In this way they think we gain access and success (the balance I mentioned above). 

They do not understand what all this means. They do not understand the suppression of our potential, our being ignored, our social and systemic exclusion, or that “camouflage” in reality has no effect on these things. They are not connected. It refers to a more immediate situation; it does not confer any magical property, and it is not sustainable over time.

It does not work, first of all because we do not control what our “behavior” conveys. Not even a professional actor can do that.

Finally, this classification, as a system of perception and communication, contains the fundamental primary misunderstanding of “autism” as an entity—here a behavioral one. “Autistic behavior” is separated out; it can be shaped or eliminated, while we can perform another “behavior.” And it is considered a social skill that we can learn.

In their perception above, this translates as: “we put on an act and everything is fine.”

“We hide our personality,” “we wear a mask,” in exchange for some magical benefit of access and success. That is how they understand it, according to their own experience, and they project such elements onto us, while it has nothing to do with the way we are oppressed and with the demands we are expected to meet. What do we expect them to understand when it is framed this way?

Even we ourselves sometimes say “everyone masks,” which is not the “masking” we mean. We perceive only superficially the part concerning “personality,” or treat it as if the issue were one of etiquette. 

Does “Masking” exist? A Wake-Up Call

With “masking,” some of us may indeed recognize that experience as well, but its dimensions and the impact it has on our lives are reduced. It sends the message that, okay, we’re just putting on an act and everything is fine. These are very serious issues to be minimized like this. And then some psychologist comes along and says that we don’t exist and that everything is fine, judging by the fact that we got a degree somewhere or that we managed to survive socially. Yes, we survived — we barely survived. She has no idea how far we were pushed or how we survived, and she doesn’t care. Just as she doesn’t know how our potential has been suppressed, and what that means for us beyond a degree or some other isolated achievement. What the psychologist said therefore shows a profound disrespect toward human experience.

Could what happened with the psychologist be a wake-up call for “masking” (at least)?

How can we expect something different when we ourselves equated the experience of oppression with ability and functionality? When we ourselves gave this experience magical properties of access? When we ourselves perceived it as a matter of personality or etiquette?

Perhaps we accepted it in order to recognize our experience of oppression.

In order to speak about what this oppression means and where it leads from our own perspective — an experience of oppression that can take infinite forms because it is not a specific act and concerns every interaction — to place it within our own framework. Not in order to accept the concept of “masking” or “camouflage” as functionality or magical access, nor as the hiding of negative or unfavorable elements of our personality for some benefit.

Doesn’t that sound a bit predatory and sneaky, by the way? Or opportunistic, as if we were social climbers trying to advance in an unethical way. We don’t do this, or it is not related to this experience—and such elements are projected onto us, morally-characterologically-psychologically-behaviorally, it is part of the misunderstanding.

There may also be a personality dimension, but it is only one dimension, and not the most important according to my experience. We have given this dimension more significance than it has. Or it is behavioralization, psychologization, and moralization of functioning.

“Masking”: an error on our side, and that is why it can change.

And what the psychologist said — outdated and fully consistent with the framework of the medical model and dominant perceptions — serves to reinforce a narrative that promotes invisibility rather than support.

At the same time, the contradictions and shortcomings of the diagnosis become evident, which do indeed exist. Within the same framework, these contradictions are not resolved; on the contrary, they are cynically revealed in their true dimension. The contradictions exist within a framework that denies a simple fact — the difference in functioning — and instead constructs “autism” as an entity. Anything that does not begin by acknowledging this difference cannot resolve them.

ABA, RFK Jr, Dr. Uta, Trump: The whole truth here.

Her views are aligned with the dominant perception of a linear spectrum of functioning and follow naturally from it.

If, from the outset, there is the perception of a linear spectrum of functioning and a denial of difference in functioning, what new or unusual did she actually say within the framework of the medical model? It would be only natural for anyone to think this.

A question to Dr. Uta and those like her.