Women 'better than men at disguising autism symptoms'

Post Reply New Topic

Usually, quite a bit, actually.....probably too much at times.

I never noticed it with my parents .

My mother still tries all the “social” crap.

She won’t introduce me to her friends because she’s afraid I’ll make a social faux pas.

The first and only dinner party I attended , that was hosted by my parents, I made the mega social faux pas of blurting out that I'd got drunk at my public school .

My parents took me to one of their bosses house parties and they were playing charades , on my go I had a song "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" , I was about 12 and decided to do it all in one action ( pelvic thrusts on the floor )

The rooms reaction was a mixture of laughter ( some men ) and horror ( my mum and most of the women ) , I'm sure it mentally scarred me in some way

The fact they call it "symptoms" as if autism was a disease makes me automatically hate this article. I also hate that it implies disguising our autistic traits is a good thing.

It's not, because it's like we're actors, except we have to do it 24/7, we don't get any vacation time or sick days, and we don't get paid. And the times we have to work the hardest at our unpaid imaginary acting career is during times when we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves, like during the holidays and at parties. And that's why we feel exhausted when everyone else is saying "That was awesome, we should do it again soon!"

Of course, everyone has a "social mask", including NTs, but autistic women have it up to 11, and it does more harm than good.

You'd think people would hire us to be be real paid actors, since we're doing it all the time anyway.

Its only since the last few years where my masking abilities have been torn to shreads where the odd person has noticed, and even then hardly anyone knows why I may seem different. The thing is, I may just be totally different and not on the spectrum at all. Who knows. But I do know that I mask.

I must be an odd one out on this forum ; as if I consciously mask it's to a very minimal extent . Perhaps it's because I have very little face to face interaction with others apart from my stepdaughter and granddaughters . It could be that that means there is less need to mask.

I was in my own little world. I was always in my own little world! Haha. But in school teachers didn't like it. I don't think I was always good at discuising it. I tried discuising it. I was able to use one part of my brain to follow the teacher so I could make my eyes follow the teacher across the room, while I could isolate this part of my brain to continue doing this, so I could use my deep inner brain to delve into the world of daydreaming.
But every now and then I would be found out, as I would be shocked out of the daydream when asked a question by the teacher. Most of the time I knew the answer anyway, even though the teacher had to aske me the question again. However, this was not always the case.
I tried sitting at the front. Too obvious. I tried the back... Uhmmm. Teachers would concentrate on asking the back ones questions.
I tried right in the middle of the class, which seemed to work at the time... But it didn't really. How did the teacher know when I was still looking towards the front? I checked. I could feel my face. I felt normal. I was looking forward towards the teacher.... How did they know I was daydreaming? My favourite place was by the window at the middle right hand edge of the class, but no! I wasn't allowed to sit there! Somehow the teachers soo learn't not to sit me by the window... Oh I loved to look out the window! I was listening, honest! Somehow the teacher would not ask me questions and just move me. But, when I was next to the window, I wasn't daydreaming, and I could watch the outside world and listen to lessons the same time. It was why I liked being next to the window. But no. The teachers did not want me by a window, so most of the time I was put on the other middle edge of the class near the wall. I didn't like it here so it caused me to daydream even more! And I would be in my own little world of trains, or anything else placed on my mind at the time.
For me, if my gaze is directly at the teacher or to the blackboard, my mind is not on the lessons. But if my head is turned sideways a little and my gaze is elsewhere, I am really concentrating. I don't know why but teachers did not like this or understand this, because when I did this and they tried to ask me questions about the lessons they were teaching I could answer and get them right, which seemed to annoy the teachers more then if I had got the questions wrong!
There were lessons I did terribly in when secondary school came in. Half way through secondary school the government banned the cain and slipper. Lessons that had been nice and quiet, within two years had become noisy. I never seemed to do that well in a noisy enviroment. If two or more people talked at a time it was murder for me!
I absolutely hated rainy days as we were put in the gym and I would spend most of my time with my fingers in my ears just trying to cope. In secondary school where there were places to hide, I would find a hiding place and stand in the rain and get soaked through rather then be in the gym in all that noise. How can children like playing in there? I hated it. I HATED noisy classrooms or gym etc. Sometimes the class would become noisy when a teacher left the room. When the teacher came back and all went quiet, I would sometimes be in tears as I was so relieved that it had all gone quiet again. Teachers and other pupils would ask what's wrong and I would say I had a headache as I didn't know what to tell them. I would sometimes cry through the noise in the gym as I could not drown it out.
It wasn't so much the volume... It was the noises coming from many different places at the same time all echoeing around the room. It was horrible! And I could never really concentrate if the lesson was like that. For a start, to pick out a single voice in the din of voices was really difficult, and then to try to work out what was said! Uhmmm. It just wasn't happening the way other children could do it. They must have many brains inside their heads to do that!