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" "I noticed that there were clear patterns in which kinds of Autistic people succumbed to this kind of fate. Autistic women, transgender people, and people of color often had their traits ignored when they were young, or have symptoms of distress interpreted as "manipulative" or "aggressive." So did Autistic people who grew up in poverty, without access to mental health resources. Gay and gender nonconforming men often didn't fit the masculine image of Autism well enough to be diagnosed. Older Autistics never had the opportunity to be assessed, because knowledge about the disability was so limited during their childhoods. These systematic exclusions had forced an entire massive, diverse population of disabled people to live in obscurity. This gave rise to what I am now calling masked Autism-a camouflaged version of the disorder that's still widely neglected by researchers, mental health providers, and Autism organizations that aren't led by Autistic people, such as the much-reviled Autism Speaks.
Devon Price is an American social psychologist, blogger, and author focusing on autism. He is best known for his books, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity and Laziness Does Not Exist, as well as for publishing shorter pieces on Medium and Psychology Today.
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Laziness is usually a warning sign from our bodies and our minds that something is not working. The human body is so incredible at signaling when it needs something. But we have all learned to ignore those signals as much as possible because they're a threat to our productivity and our focus at work.
Quite frequently, the traits that inconvenience or weird out neurotypical people are the very same ones that define who we are and help keep us safe. When we stop taking an outsider's perspective of our own disability and instead center our own perspectives and needs, this becomes clear. It's not actually a bad thing that we are spirited, loud, intense, principled, or strange. These traits are merely inconvenient to systems designed by abled people that don't take our unique way of being into account. But the more we work to normalize our neurotype, and the more we loudly, proudly take ownership of our Autistic identities, the more institutions will be forced to change to accommodate us and others who have been repeatedly shut out.