What the title says. Well intentioned, often other “neurodivergent” people look at your life, your autism, and say: “you should mask harder.”
For example, I accidentally said something that offended a friend. Won’t go into detail, but it was me unintentionally coming off as arrogant, not something bad like a slur or hate speech.
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, “you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic.”
But isn’t this just saying “mask harder and be more palatable for everyone else”?
Every piece of “autism advice” I see even in “neurodivergent friendly” communities is basically “how to be less autistic.”
I deliberately started masking less, and 6 months later my wife left me.
This should hopefully demonstrate that masking comes with serious costs, including misleading people who will come to think your mask is who you really are and possibly even come to love that fake person.
It turned out we could only live together when we were both masking and medicated.
When she went off her meds to get pregnant, it fell apart fast.
Still hurts, but it was the right decision.
I know you’re not asking, but since you bring it up, I’d like to mention that I’m opposed to human reproduction. I hope everyone here considering creating humans will give equal consideration to adopting them.