The thing that really upset me was when he said being autistic is “an eerily similar experience” to being a closeted gay person. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. They explain everything beautifully and with a tenderness that reveals deep respect and something resembling a literary warm hug. It was my attempt at a neurotypical persona that failed me—the real me was a beautiful person who deserved so much more.

Taking Off the Mask: Practical Exercises to Help Understand

I feel similarly about other more radical ideas, like abolition — it was mentioned, but I wish more time had been afforded to it, and I think this book could’ve been a good venue to get more people interested in DJ and abolition, and I wish they’d taken advantage of that!

I’m all for supporting and uplifting minorities, but I think when you’re trying to find ~autistic~ community, it should be the ~autistic~ voices centered? I was surprised to learn that most people's brains filter out many/most details, details that Autistic people can't help but notice and that accounts for our easily getting overstimulated. It is clear that the book focuses on a narrow subset of autistic people: mildly autistic, educated, middle-class, especially those who are also transgender or non-binary.

Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden

They are also more likely to be marginalized in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other factors, which contributes to their suffering and invisibility. If you care about scientific objectivity and/ or are not Autistic yourself and/ or are *not* a racist misandrist. It contains various self-help-style elements like tables and worksheets, but the exercises are, as another reviewer said, the type of thing you could easily find on pinterest. I’d rather hear about anti-work strategies from people organizing from “the bottom” of the class hierarchy than some funded phd pipelined professor. Autistic people are often afraid of saying the wrong thing because of past experiences, and become hypervigilant about how they express themselves.Those people aren’t important, all we care about here is making sure the pedophiles who prey on autistic people at much higher rates don’t get arrested! For example, autism in women and girls often does not fit the stereotypical description of autism that was based on men and boys.

Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden

Dr Camilla Pang, author of Explaining Humans'Unmasking Autism is at once a most deeply personal and scholarly account of the damage caused by autistic (and all) people leading masked lives, and how unmasking is essential to creating a self-determined, authentic life.

I'm a psychotherapist in Chicago and I have already recommended this book to many clients looking to unlearn the ways in which a neurotypical way of being has been forced upon them. In a book that urges the reader to rethink how society alienates autistic people, the author openly alienates autistic people. Unmasking Autism looks at the ways in which autistic folks, especially those who are women, TGNC, or people of color, have been forced to adapt shallow masks to move through a neurotypical world, often at the cost of their mental health. I would’ve been fine with that if this was a book on those things, but it really felt like autism was shoved to the back so we could focus fully on other matters.