The Wrongplanet Columns

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Autism and the Job Market 

It was the summer after sophomore year of college. I had moved into my first apartment, a small basement level spot only a couple blocks from the western blue line stop. I was splitting rent with a friend, but if I wanted to stay in the city for the summer, I needed a job. I had been checking Craigslist, walking into every establishment in the surrounding neighborhoods, but I kept coming up dry. One day, I came across a small bakery and coffee shop near the bustling hipster neck of the woods, Wicker Park. The place seemed friendly, close knit, possibly family-owned? Best of all, they were understaffed. I filled out the application, got a call later that day, and got up early for an interview the following A.M. 

It was seven in the morning as I walked the half mile to their shop, the weather was dreary, and the air was humid, but I felt well rested. I was confident, dressed appropriately, and had practiced in the mirror. I walked in with a smile, and over a cup of coffee I held my own in the interview. 

No, I don’t have experience as a barista, but I’m a quick learner. 

Yes, I had to handle plenty of unhappy customers at my on campus job. I’m well versed in how to deal with them.

The stars seemed to be aligning, I felt like the job was mine. As the owner shuffled through her stack of papers, she looked up at me and said, 

“You seem like you might have....”

She had paused, mid-thought. What was she going to say? Did she Google me before the interview? Does she know? I began to fill up with anxiety and dread. I had to say something. I let out a casual and dismissive laugh, 

“Yeah, I was diagnosed as autistic as a kid, but it doesn’t really affect me day-to-day, and it certainly won’t affect my performance on the job.”
    “Oh,” she said, “That’s not what I was going to say, but okay.”

It was horribly awkward, but I did my best to dismiss it.  They gave me a free brownie on the way out, and I walked home in confident bliss. But, after a few weeks, it had become clear I wasn’t going to hear from them again. I’ll never know why they didn’t hire me, the store is gone now, along with the identity of the woman who I interviewed with. I do know how it felt afterward. I felt insecure. I obsessed over that one moment, the one goof that I believed lost me the job. She didn’t need to know that about me, she probably wasn’t even suspicious. I usually keep my autistic identity close to my chest, but all the evidence of my advocacy work as a teenager is only a Google search away. How could I have been so rash? I could rail against the system, how stereotypes of autism both harmed her perception of me, as well as my own self image, which caused my slip of social conventions. I could mope about how much my diagnosis actually does affect me, and has made parts of my life more challenging. But the reality is, I had committed a faux-pas for someone with autism and someone perfectly neurotypical; I showed my true self.

People have to hide who they are in a job interview, no matter who they are. Introverts pretend to be people persons. We list moderate Photoshop skills as “proficient” on our resume. Dress conservative! Talk white! Act normal! It’s all the same thing. Advertise yourself. Not the best version of yourself, their concept of the best version of yourself. It’s an unspoken rule that the real you and the job interview you have only a passing resemblance. While we dance around saying this out loud, you can see a sort of collective acknowledgement of these kinds of truths in meme culture. But what if the quirks you have to bury are simultaneously central to your identity, your personhood even, and also generally frowned upon in the workplace, much less the job interview?

The unemployment rate for young adults with autism is absurdly high, even when compared to other mental disorders. There’s a marked 25 to almost 40 point difference. Only 58 percent of  ASD-identifying twenty somethings are holding down jobs, according to a 2015 NPR article. 

    Certainly, there are career fields that being on the spectrum puts you at an advantage. Nobody needs to be reminded the prevalence of our kind of thinkers in the world of engineering and programming. Whenever I meet someone with a diagnosed family member, said family member usually is an engineer. It taps into the oft-voiced but rarely heard truth, that there are positive differences between people with autism and neurotypicals. Outside of skills suited for complex mathematics and problem solving abilities, skills ripe for engineering, we have a notable tendency for tunnel vision, and we are usually quick, tactile learners. But not everyone wants to be an engineer, or a programmer, or a scientist. 

    I grew up convinced I’d be working in physics or paleontology, or some other equally lofty or adventurous scientific field. But in high school, I fell in love with art. Creative endeavors like writing and fine art have proven a purposeful path for me to take, but the field isn’t befitting for my identity, even as a particularly passing Aspie. The art world, as with many career fields, is one built on knowing the right people, being able to network, and rub elbows. The arts community is supposed to be one of the most progressive and accepting parts of society, but has many times proven otherwise in this respect. Even in the arts people react inappropriately when I open up about my disorder. They still say things like “you don’t seem autistic at all”, they still talk to you differently, and they still try and set you up with their friend’s sister who they think is on the spectrum. Being autistic in the art world means hoping people will find your quirkiness and strange personality endearing, or attribute it to me being one of those “artist types.” Without that hope, it’s easy to get ostracized by accidentally breaking social convention, making one curator or gallery director uncomfortable. I, along with many others in many fields, have chosen to hide this part of my identity. I’m lucky that my autistic traits are subtle enough for me to pass for neurotypical, but it doesn’t make the masquerade any easier. A friend whom I’ve told about my disorder once told me how strikingly similar these issues were to his as an in-the-closet teen back home. The main difference being he can’t be fired for being gay.

    When I graduate in a couple months, my Bachelors in Fine Art will essentially be a degree in barista-ship. Most people in my field work hard on their writing or paintings or sculptural work, but make ends meet employing those networking skills behind the counter of the local coffee shop or as a waiter. Jobs that are high pressure, multitask oriented, and heavily social aren’t always the most healthy environments for people on the spectrum. Worse yet, there are no accommodations required or expected from employers for this issue. The Americans with Disabilities Act mostly covers on-the-spectrum customers and patrons to public and private spaces, but when it comes to holding down jobs, it defends the employer. If someone black or gay is working for a restaurant in a particularly conservative part of America, and the customers don’t like said employee, the business can’t do anything about it.  But if that same employee is autistic, or deaf, or burdened with any disability really, the business only needs one complaint to fire them, on the grounds that their presence is hurting the bottom dollar.

    Working for smaller businesses that have closer, less corporate, relationships with their employees is one way I’ve found circumvents this issue. It makes it easier to develop an understanding relationship between you and your employer. There are people out there on our side, that want us to succeed. Getting a job isn’t impossible, and those parts of you that you have to hide to get that job will help you in the workplace. But know what you are up against, the only way to overcome this issue is by pushing autism advocacy and getting your voice heard until the legislation is changed. This isn’t a call to arms, it’s just something nobody seems to be talking about.

    I know that at my next job interview I won’t mention my autistic Identity. But if they do figure me out, and they bring it up, I’ll wear that badge proudly.

The “Cute” Syndrome: a survey of autism in popular culture

I don’t remember how we got there, except that it had come after several bonding sessions, nights drunk on each other’s companionship, telling truths that we kept close to our chest. Utterly remarkable, watching a friendship grow, but simultaneously banal; it was like any other day. All that matters for this story is that we had gotten to the point in the friendship where I felt it was time I told them, I’m autistic.

This sort of thing, while meaningful, is also par for the course. I know how people respond, I know what to expect, but this response surprised me. People generally weren’t candid about their previous expectations toward autism. 

“That’s so strange that you feel the need to hide that part of yourself,” they told me, “Autism is sort of the ‘it’ syndrome right now.”

They paused, searching for a better way to say it. I was trying to wrap my head around the idea.

“I don’t mean to say a disorder can be fashionable, but... it’s like, the cute syndrome.”

I wasn’t sure how to react to this. It still floats up in my mind and I still have mixed feelings. It bothers me that people can diminish the struggles of my disorder by considering it the “in” thing to have. I imagine people rushing off to their name brand psychologist to get their name brand diagnosis. But also, I like being told I’m cute. The simple fact is that I, as well as many others, struggle with how the public perceives this disorder and how it is portrayed in popular culture, because that deeply informs others’ reaction to me, whether they know about my identity or not. There’s me, and all my nuances and personal traits, and what I look like to my peers, and there’s the floating idea of what autism is, and what it looks like, and the two seem impossible to separate.

Autism and popular culture have had a complicated relationship for a long time. In 1988 the film Rain Man introduced the disorder to the general public. After its release diagnoses in the United States skyrocketed, and so did the presence of autistic characters in pop culture. In the 1980’s there were only two films starring autistic characters. In the next decade there were thirteen. The older the movie or book or show, the less autistic the characters often seem, some of them carry the label ‘autistic’ but with very few symptoms. Instead, the characters are inflicted with some generic mental disability, which when labeled as autism sells more tickets.

Rain Man, however, was nuanced. I’ve always appreciated the story, not just on a personal level, but also as a writer. It told a story set in a time when the common way to deal with a diagnosis was to send it away, to a mental institution. The filmmakers show the institution as a welcoming, safe, comfortable place for the character Ray, but in reality, these places were often run terribly, and kept up worse. A real life Ray would have found his handicap intensified by such a plac. Many autistic children born in this era grew up to have severe mental deficiencies because so little of their nature was understood. Dustin Hoffman showed immense respect in his performance, painting a multifaceted character that felt human, but because of his place on the spectrum he is often a nuisance to the story, or worse, a vehicle solely there to move the plot forward. I don’t mean to bash Rain Man, which I consider a great first step, but it’s just that; the first step.

Today autistic characters are everywhere. Many works of fiction feature characters, central and less so, on the spectrum. Their presence on television, in film, on stage, and in literature keep the disorder in the public eye, and relevant to the lives of those unaffected. I should preface this by saying I mainly focus on television characters for this column, because the hours of narrative give an opportunity to paint the most complex images of these people, and because we are a society that has a television in every home. In many ways, when we watch these shows, we welcome them into our living rooms; we live with these characters.

Some of these characters are notable. In Parenthood, young Max Braverman is diagnosed in the first episode. The show isn’t necessarily about Max, even when it tells one of Max’s stories, but it is as honest and fair a treatment of the character as it can be. Max feels real, like a person even. When the show first began to air I was still in high school, and Max’s story mirrored my own experiences with diagnosis so much that it was sometimes painful to watch, and so I had to stop. I’ve since gone back through much of it. The show’s creator, Jason Katims, wrote from his own life, his son being diagnosed with Asperger’s, and the show’s perspective of the parent observing autism from afar is clear. After all the show was called Parenthood. Katims put a lot of work into making a realistic autistic character. He brought in a behavioral psychologist to help. Because of this, almost all of Max’s stories center around his autism, and his struggles to connect with peers. When he finally makes friends they too struggle with their own disabilities. As real as he feels, It’s still impossible to color Max as a completely real person, his identity is so engulfed with the diagnosis. Nothing seems to happen to him wherein Asperger’s isn’t at the center. While I want to criticize the show for taking a somewhat medical approach to Max Braverman’s autism, opposed to an experiential or personal angle, I can’t completely. Watching Max’s father struggling to connect with his brash son during an adventure to a theme park, I couldn’t help but think about my own relationship with my parents, how much work I was growing up. Max feels real and heartfelt, and in an era where everyone is still figuring out how to handle these issues, that is enough. 

The other commendable bit of storytelling I have to mention is the character of Abed on Community. I’ve been a big fan of Dan Harmon, the showrunner, for a while. My interest peaked when he unofficially diagnosed himself with the disorder. Harmon talks about autism extensively in a podcast episode he recorded with the author of Neurotribes, and you can see his complex understanding of  Asperger’s in how they discuss it. I highly recommend looking it up. Harmon’s character of Abed struggles with social conventions but he is also, as another character puts it, a Shaman. His high intelligence isn’t portrayed as if he were a savant, simply a smart guy. He’s self aware, aware of the camera, aware the way the show’s world works, in a way none of the other characters are. Most importantly to me, he has a strong, close knit, supportive group of friends. The most adversity Abed faces comes from the way the world reacts to his oddities. In a pivotal episode, his peers find out a girl likes him, and jump at the opportunity, acting like it’s rare or special for a girl to be interested in someone like him. They try to force him out of his comfort zone to talk to this girl, while saying comments that, unknowingly, could be hurtful to someone on the spectrum, usually along the lines of “You might never get another opportunity [for a normal life] like this!” They try to train him, to fix him. All the while Abed goes along with his pals, without a protest, or an expression of discomfort. The narrative concludes with the realization that Abed knows what he’s doing. He’s aware of the subtle charm of his goofiness, and that really, he just prefers the girls come to him. I haven’t seen an autistic character portrayed with such competence and humanity since Abed, and other creatives should take a page from Dan Harmon’s book.

Simultaneously, we have narratives from shows like The Big Bang Theory, which I recognize is a beloved show filled with beloved characters. Every time I visit my parents their DVR is loaded with episodes. But I can’t get on board with it. When I was a kid, my parents would lovingly compare me to the most on-the-spectrum character, Sheldon. I would cringe at this, and it took me a long time to understand why. It’s not that the portrayal of Sheldon is unfair to autism--it’s a parody, he’s an amped up version of a real person, played for laughs. And I strongly believe that it’s okay to laugh at autism! The problem is his peers. In a show where the nerds are usually the butt of the joke (seriously, try watching it without a laugh track, it feels mean.) Sheldon is at the bottom of the totem pole. His friends can’t stand him, they barely put up with him. You can hear a palpable distaste for his antics in their voice, which they keep subtle so as not to perk his untrained ears. It brings back memories of bad interactions with less than understanding neurotypical people, who don’t mind laughing at a real person’s symptoms. Previously, I’ve dismissed it as just a television show, but the problem is these prominent bits of media define culture, they define people’s expectations of each other, and they define how we should and shouldn’t react. According to The Big Bang Theory, autistic people are obnoxious and unbearable, and should be treated with subtle hostility and contempt. At least it’s funny.

There’s lots of examples of bad autistic characters out there, many I don’t feel the need to list. They suggest false and unrealistic images of autism. They suggest autistic people are defined by their disability, not the other way around. They suggest autistic people can only connect with other autistic people, and can only find love with other “odd” people, because they are too weird for anyone else to be interested. Characters yell and fight with each other when someone suggests their loved one has autism, as if it is some horrid accusation. The problem with most media portrayals of autism isn’t that it’s unfairly stereotyped, it’s that it’s usually too sympathetic, opposed to empathetic, and through that it fuels society’s problematic tropes and anxieties about autism. The autistic character is trying, look how hard they are trying. The autistic character wants to fit in, but they can’t and they never will because autism. Don’t you feel sad? Don’t you feel sorry for them? You know there is more to you than that. From this angle, pop culture is caring and compassionate, but it lessens us, it makes us look weak and in need of charity. 

We are not at the mercy of our label, this is not how the world has to look at autism. The label is defined by those who live under it, not the other way around. All characters, not just those with autism, need to be portrayed with empathy, not sympathy. A good friend once told me you have to love every character you write, because that’s the only way you’ll get them right. Autistic characters need to be shown outside the light of their disorder, in just as complicated and nuanced a way as neurotypical characters are written. We shouldn’t be consulting doctors and studied experts on the disorder to get these people right, we should be consulting the real life people who live with the diagnosis themselves. This is how you love a character. That is how you make them a real person.

If you want to see this change, get involved in the creative world. If you write, write autistic characters as you’d like them to be portrayed. If you act, fill autistic roles, the same way Hollywood should cast Pakistani roles to Pakistani actors, and trans roles to trans actors. Simply put, represent your people. We already have great examples of this. Though in my own experience, these have been minority cases, they exist. We have writers like Dan Harmon out there, making good work. The founder of Wrong Planet, our very own Alex Plank, consulted for a show with an autistic character, FX’s The Bridge. I’m no regular viewer, but I can say honestly that he seems to be doing right by the label.

 Everybody Is Identical

Trigger Warning: This article discusses depression and suicide at length. Do not read it if you are easily triggered by such subjects. Do not let your children read this if they are too young.

A friend of mine jumped off her roof last week. Her name was Zara. She was a painter. She wasn’t autistic, but she struggled with isolation, and finding friends wasn’t easy for her. That was one of the things we connected over. 

In times like these, I think back to a quote by D.T. Max, the biographer of David Foster Wallace. Wallace was one of my favorite writers. Among other things, he wrote eloquently about his own sadness. David committed suicide in 2008. In his memorializing article, The Unfinished, Max writes “This was not an ending anyone would have wanted for him, but it was the ending he chose.” 

The other thing that has been stuck in my mind this past week is Stephen Reynolds’s article, published here last month, An Open Letter to the Depressed Aspergian. Reynolds covers a lot of important points, and addresses the very important topic of depression, its universality, its encompassing nature, its invisibility, with respect. He touches on depression and masculinity, and the article as a whole touches on depression in the autism community, saying encouragingly, “I implore all of you, any of you who know someone who suffers from depression -especially if they have autism- to sit them down and listen. Do not belittle them, do not doubt what thoughts could be swimming through their heads and treat them like adults.” The article gives many uplifting words, but there is a lot left to say on the topic of autism and depression. 

Depression is incredibly common in the autism community. Children with autism are 28 times as likely to attempt suicide as neurotypical children. In adults with Asperger’s, a study found a majority of individuals were depressed, and two thirds of participants were having thoughts of suicide. These numbers are unprecedented, and uncalled for. They speak to a larger issue on autism, how it is treated in society, and how we think of autistic individuals.

Much of the articles published on this subject are strictly medical, on (to be fair, well circulated) sites like Psychology Today and Science Daily. These horrifying numbers are buried in complicated jargon that discusses autistic people in terms of symptoms, numbers, observations. They talk about the inflated amygdala and exaggerated fight or flight responses, they use terminology for depression such as “overlapping symptoms” and phrases that minimize the emotional heft of the issue, like “mood disorders.” Whether or not it’s intentional, the medical language used dehumanizes autistic people, and talks about their traits in terminology better suited for computer glitches, or animals. 

Despite knowing the support autistic people need, most autistic support groups are for families of autistic children. That’s not to say families don’t need support too, 80 percent of married couples with autistic children get divorced. Still, support and aid for autistic adults and supportive communities for autistic people of any age, outside of this community, are incredibly rare. Finding physical communities for autistic folks is a huge challenge, and it shouldn’t be for a group of people often defined by their hunger for human connection. 

Why these support structures are so rare is lost on me. The nature of autism easily brings out depression. Saying that it is a merely symptom the disorder is tantamount to calling a symptom of cancer death. Human beings are social creatures. We need each other for emotional support, and having a connection with another person breathes meaning into one’s life. But the odd nature of the autistic personality can sometimes push people away. Isolation begins at a young age. Autistic children are bullied more often than neurotypical children, and become increasingly lonely the older they get. This sort of negative social feedback breeds the anxiety around social issues that many of us feel, and it creates a feedback loop. It doesn’t help that autistic people are more easily traumatized by negative feedback, due to the aforementioned inflated amygdala. This sort of solitude, the way it feels to struggle to find a true human connection, it can shake you to your core. It can make you feel worthless. Why else would nobody be interested in being around you? They must be right about you.

But it’s not autistic people’s fault the world is like this. If you look right below the surface, you can see the methods society uses to maintain the status quo on social rules. This sort of negative feedback is a method for creating a cohesive language, which is central to a functioning social organism, but not only does it weed out social diversity, it doesn’t accommodate those who don’t learn socially as easily as everyone else. 

In these medical papers, as well as in communities around America, we downplay the way depression impacts the lives of autistic people. It is often suggested bullying is less hurtful to those on the spectrum, because they would not care about being left out. It’s the same hurtful stereotype all over again; autistic people don’t want human relationships. The other suggestion is that the way we are made predisposes us to suicide. That it’s not society that pushed us out, we are instead “neurological time bombs.” 

Not only are both arguments ignorant, they breed the problem they are addressing. In my experience, autistic people aren’t that different from everyone else, but the exclusiveness that the world feeds us brings out the differences, and makes them harder to overcome. David Foster Wallace wrote many truisms in his book Infinite Jest. One of these is that “everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” This fear exists in autistic people too. Except, unlike the rest of the world, at some point a doctor told them they were right. They are different. Now that their fear has been confirmed, they seek out acceptance from their peers, and their difference often gets them shunned for being “odd” or “annoying.” It’s possible to overcome these issues, but in order to change yourself and your mannerisms so much in an environment without support, the mask you make must be composed of anxiety and self-doubt. The mantra of “different” stops coming from your peers, and starts coming from your heart.

The world doesn’t need to be like this. We don’t need to ostracize autistic people, force them to change through loneliness and anxiety, and let those who can’t kill themselves off. That’s not the humanity I want to be a part of. We need to create physical groups to support autistic people and welcome them into society through acceptance and positive reinforcement, not fear and doubt. We need to support autistic adults and children as much as we support their families. It should be obvious that when a society is inclusive, isolation is minimized. Help autistic people feel accepted and supported. Difference is honorable and brave, and does not deserve disdain.

This month we celebrated autism awareness day. In America, we need to move past this. Society is aware of us, yet we still feel ignored. It’s time for Autism Acceptance.

The Autistic Mask: On Social Discrimination

There’s a term I’ve used a few times in my columns, “The Mask.” It’s something central to the autistic identity, something understood in the LGBTQ movement, commonly known as ‘The Closet,’ and a part of black culture in America, often described as ‘Acting White,’ but not discussed enough in the world of autism. People need to understand autism as an Identity, inseparable from someone’s personhood, and understanding the mask is one of several keys to understanding autistic people, the autistic struggle, and the self advocacy movement. In short, the mask is what it means to be autistic. What is “The Autistic Mask,” how does it form, and why is it wrong?

On Archer street, off the Orange line, there is an artist’s loft that hosts events regularly. About a year ago, I went there to a showing of the cult classic, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain.” Before the show starts, I’m sitting around with other people, drinking crap beer and chatting about nothing. I’m sitting at a cheap table covered in sharpie drawings with two people I barely know. The one I know best, a friend of a friend, a painter named Zeke, says to the girl I’ve just met,“I can’t stand autistic kids. I don’t get why we give them a pass for being jerks. I get it with the low-functioning ones, you know, their lives are hard. But the high-functioning ones can be so mean, and they act weird, and sometimes they smell.”

I say nothing. 

The girl nods her head, “Yeah, I know what you mean, like you can’t just get away with stuff and say ‘it’s okay because I have Asperger’s’.”

I should note that Zeke is a friend of mine now, we’ve hung out, and he’s actually very sweet. I’ve forgiven him for saying these things about me, in front of me, without knowing he was talking about me. He’s right that autistic people can be rude sometimes without knowing it, and sometimes we know better but still act inappropriately. A diagnosis shouldn’t be used as an excuse for bad behavior. But often, these ‘jerks’ are simply making mistakes, and don’t know any better. Part of autism acceptance should be making it more okay to politely correct people for social faux pas, because that’s how people learn.

All of my childhood I felt excluded, not because I was mean and I didn’t care, but because I had a history of being weird. By the time I hit junior year of high school, I had gotten pretty good at acting like everyone else. I didn’t feel normal, but I knew when to smile and nod, when someone else needed eye contact as confirmation, when to be expressive. I know I had made a turning point, because one of the country bros in my gym class turned to me in the locker room, both of us naked, and said, in a southern drawl that had magically appeared around middle school, “Y’know Quinn, you used to be pretty weird, but these days, yer not that bad, yer alright.”

When Zeke, now a friend, said he couldn’t stand autistic people for being weird, he was discriminating, plain and simple, and when the girl nodded her head, she was telling him it was okay to dislike them for their difference. These moments are why I decided to try to keep my autism a secret from all but my closest friends when I left my little hometown. I didn’t want my childhood weirdness to follow me the rest of my life.

I’m at a dinner party. A lot of friends are there, a few of them I’ve told I’m autistic at some point. I don’t know about half of them. I’m with a girl I had been seeing for a few weeks, Sarah. This is her first time meeting my friends. 

A couple days before over a game of truth or dare, I finally told her I’m autistic. It was hard. I could feel myself resisting the whole time. I made sure to make eye contact when I told her, I could immediately see her perception of me change in her eyes, and I looked back to the floor. “I’m sorry you feel stigmatized,” she said, and she put her hand on my knee. I felt she didn’t get what I meant by “stigmatized” or the weight behind the three words “I am autistic,” but I said nothing. I felt like she was sorry for more than the stigma.

At the party a charming tall blonde guy from my college puts on some fuzzy earmuffs that were lying around, and Sarah compliments them.

“Thanks, they help with my Asperger’s,” he says, the joking tone is thick. When I was younger I trained my ear to hear it, so I knew when people were making fun of me. He sticks out his tongue a bit and flaps his hands and some chuckles ripple through the room. My date and I make eye contact. We don’t laugh. We don’t say anything either.

That blonde boy at the party never said anything explicitly harmful about autism. But he made a joke of it. By putting on the earmuffs, and making that comment, he made my struggles into a joke. It wasn’t a clever observational joke, like we might see on a television show. When people laugh at those shows, it comes from a mutual understanding, and it normalizes issues. Those laughs mean “I understand, this is part of life.” When he did it, he made Asperger’s into something to be looked down upon. ‘Look at goofy me with my goofy disorder and my goofy lack of understanding on the basic aspects of human interaction.’ He made himself into a parody, and in doing so he made me into a jester. I’ve thought about this moment plenty, tried to normalize it, tried to make it feel okay, and there are two clear points that prove his actions are an example of autistic discrimination. 

1: If the joke had been about being gay, people would have been offended. 

2: If I had spoken up about my diagnosis, people would have felt bad for laughing. 

Afterward, I wished I had said something. It burned a hole in me long after. 

About a week after, Sarah introduces me to her best friend. He’s skinny with a sharp jawline and the girl he’s dating looks a lot like her. She thinks he and I look weirdly similar too. I don’t think my jaw is that sharp. We get dinner together and her friend and his date talk about all the cute things they do together, and I eat silently and try not to feel bad for not being as cute a couple. We smile and we laugh about the bad music we liked when we were younger. On the way back, her friend and I want to go out to some bars, but Sarah lost her ID, and his date forgot hers, so we buy some Straw-ber-ritas and play a drinking version of Settlers of Catan at her place. I’m horrible at it. I overlook the intricacies and realize them a little too late to make a correction. Emily and her best friend start talking about his band mates, and start railing on this one guy they are both annoyed with.

“What’s up with him?” I say.

“I don’t know, I’m sure you know the type, he’s just weird... Like, we say stuff and he just doesn’t get it,” He looks at my date, “You’re gonna hate me for saying this,” he says with a laugh, “but he’s just, he’s kinda autistic.”

She glares at him, I continue to live in silence. When he leaves the room, she apologizes for him.  Later that night, he drunkenly calls his girlfriend Sarah. Then, after they leave, Sarah breaks up with me. As I cry in her lap, I ask her why, I tell her I want to learn, to not make the same mistakes. She tells me I’m better off not knowing.

It’s not that he thought that this guy was autistic. It’s not that he called him weird, though that word carries it’s own flaws. It’s that as they sat around the board game, drinks in hand, they laughed about him. Neither of them accepted him for his flaws, they used my label to make it okay for them to not like him. By extension, does that mean they don’t like me?

In dark corners of the internet, people replace the term “retarded” with “autistic” and I still can’t speak up, I’ll either be mocked for standing proudly under my label, or for defending another person’s cause, some Social Justice Warrior (or, for short, SJW). But you can’t win on the internet.

Not everyone gets to build a mask, but I did. I decided I wanted a somewhat normal life, I figured out how to look normal, and it helps me, but I’m still autistic. I still get terribly lonely, I still struggle to read people, I still make things weird sometimes. I’m still faking it. The main difference is that since I’m more accepted, since people don’t know my label, they feel they can speak freely about it around me. This sort of stuff started happening sophomore year of college, and with the newfound acceptance and the freedom to wander the social landscape of my school, I couldn’t say anything. Still today, I often feel that I can’t, even though I came out to my peers. When neurotypical people judge autistic people, they do it silently in front of them, and then loudly when alone. Today, when I try to let down my guard, I can’t. I still do neurotypical things to make sure people like me more. Sometimes, I’m not sure what actions are my authentic self, and what are just me, hiding.

Earlier this year I was hanging out with my pal Max. Lately, I’d been encountering a lot of this sort of discrimination I described earlier. It drives me mad. I tell Max I want to come out as autistic to everyone, to show them how wrong they are about people like me, but I’m afraid. I know there is no going back. I can’t shake the feeling Sarah broke up with me because she doesn’t want to bear the weight of my disorder. I’m mad but I can’t blame her. Max is great, he lets me rant about it while we walk around the neighborhood, running errands. I tell him all these stories, and more. I tell him what it was like in high school, having everyone know. About having my parents come by the classroom when I was in grade school to explain to my class why I am different. If I come out, and somehow I become a successful artist, or writer, then maybe I can make a difference. In the late 20th century, gay artists came out and made art about their identity, and because of this, artists in my generation can make art and be gay, but not be gay artists. If I’m successful, I can be the autistic artist that paves the way for artists that are also autistic. But I don’t want to be the autistic artist. I just want to be me. 

Max is one of those lovable goofs. Lots of people want to hang out with him. Because of this, he has an open door policy. He leaves his apartment unlocked, and people come by whenever. Once, because of this, his camera was stolen, and he was devastated, but he still does it.

When we get back, Zeke is there waiting for us with an unknown girl. 

“This is my sister. She’s visiting!” Zeke says.

We greet her warmly, Max and I sit down and start chowing down on the subs we got from Potbelly’s.

“So what are you guys talking about?” Zeke asks.

“Autistic rights!” Max tells him, his mouth full of sandwich.

His sister perks up, “I work with autistic children!” she says.

It feels serendipitous, I’m suddenly excited. On this day that I am particularly bothered, I found one person who might get it. We start to talk about it, and things become clear very quickly. She hasn’t heard of identity first language. She loves Autism Speaks. I correct her at one point, and tell her a lot of autistic kids are very smart, just misunderstood.

“Oh, yes, they are! This one kid I work with, he’s so smart, he knows if he is a good boy at the end of the day he gets his treat, a blow pop!”

My heart sinks. I pull out my phone, and under the table, I text Max, “She’s talking about them like they are dogs.”

Max texts back “That’s what you are here for, bro.”

That night, I still said nothing. I regret this one the most. A few weeks later, I came out as autistic on Facebook, and began to speak openly about it on campus. I still act neurotypical, but I try not to hate myself for the mistakes I make socially. I don’t know how to not fake it anymore. 

When we discuss autism, we rarely discuss the discrimination that exists toward the label. It doesn’t just take place in the workplace. It doesn’t just take place in medical papers. It doesn’t just take place in the media. It’s an everyday occurrence that rears its ugly face in the day to day life of one out of every 68 Americans. It’s why the unemployment rate for autistic people is so high. It’s why the depression rates among people on the spectrum are so high. It’s why the media portrayals and autistic characters often seem unfair, and it’s why so many autistic people feel ashamed of their diagnosis. Ashamed enough to hide it.

It doesn’t matter if a kid is high or low functioning, they are a person, a conscious person who simply operates on different rules than you. It’s not their fault you don’t get it. High-functioning people are sometimes lucky enough to learn how to hide it. That’s the mask. The fact that we have to hide, that we ever felt we wouldn’t be accepted for who we are, is a tragedy. Sometimes more than their disorder, this sort of treatment makes it hard for high-functioning people to lead normal lives, This sort of treatment makes it harder for autistic people to learn and grow. This sort of treatment is why I feel the need to hide, and why people feel okay saying such hurtful things in front of me. This mask I made in high school, which I can’t seem to take off, is made of self doubt and self loathing, issues I didn’t always have, but I’m working on. Sometimes, it’s our job to learn how the world works. Other times, it’s your job to learn how we work.