A Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking: Understanding the Narrative of Stigma and the Illusion of Choice

Why is this topic important?: Autistic masking is a complicated topic. We currently think that masking includes things such as making eye contact even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, or not talking about your interests too much for fear of being labeled "weird." There is a lot about masking that we do not know yet, but it is important to understand masking as we think that it might have a negative effect on autistic people.What was the purpose of this article?: The purpose of this article was to look at current explanations of masking, and try to figure out what is missing.What do the authors conclude?: We conclude that work on masking needs to think about autistic people in a different way. Autistic people grow up in a social world and experience a lot of negative views about autism and autistic people. We argue that we need to understand how this social world and the trauma that can come from being part of it contributes toward masking. We also argue against the idea that masking is a "female" thing that occurs as a result of there being a "female-specific" subtype of autism, because this might make it harder for some people to get a diagnosis (e.g., nonbinary people, and men and women who do not fit with any of the current criteria). Instead we argue that people need to recognize that autism does not look like one "type" of person, and try to separate ideas about masking from ideas about a person not fitting a stereotype.What do the authors recommend for future research on this topic?: Though masking is called a "social strategy," there has not been a lot of social theory applied to masking research. We recommend that researchers use theories about how people try to fit in, and theories about how people exclude and hurt people who are different. This can help us to understand why autistic people mask. We also stress the need to understand that masking is not necessarily a choice, and that there are many unconscious aspects. We argue that researchers should try to find out when masking starts to happen (e.g., in childhood) and what makes people feel like they need to keep up the mask. We also recommend lot more research into autistic identity, and how different parts of identity (including things such as gender, race, and co-occurring conditions) might mean that someone has to mask more (or less), or in different ways.How will this analysis help autistic adults now and in the future?: We hope that this analysis will help researchers to understand that some aspects of masking might be unique to autistic people, but some aspects might be like other kinds of "pretending to be normal" that other people who are socially excluded use to try and fit in. We hope that our suggestions can help to improve our understanding of masking, and lead to research that makes life better for autistic people.