The Autists: women on the spectrum

What others do automatically, the autist must do intellectually. This can make it harder to draw conclusions about other people’s intentions. But a person who interprets communication literally and fails to recognise hidden meanings also tends to be honest, with a strong sense of justice.

Without knowing it, I was studying social interaction through the books, TV shows, plays, and films that I devoured.

I have always known that I’m autistic. And yet I haven’t had a clue.

In her books, Weil describes the autist’s paradox: at the same time both longing for and shunning social life.

Autists are bad politicians and impossible diplomats.

School is an artificial environment in which society has decided that children should be able to function. It’s loud, crowded, and unpredictable, and students with a neuropsychiatric diagnosis are often bullied. Refusing to go doesn’t appear all that strange. Why would anyone want to be part of such a setting?

Autistic characters are rarely portrayed in their own right. Instead, they are used as a curiosity in order to teach the neurotypical main character valuable life lessons. The neurodivergent presence becomes a plot device — an obstacle that must be conquered and which facilitates the development of the other characters.

Over the years, I began to see a pattern: I asked too much of my friends morally and was terribly disappointed when I realised that they weren’t willing to sacrifice as much for me as I for them.

Yet the autistic woman is not masking with the intention of being deceitful. Her true self is invisible even to her own person. She is masking to fit in, and doing so unconsciously. Often, she doesn’t even understand that she has been camouflaging herself until she gets her diagnosis. Before that, she thinks her struggle is everyone else’s, too. At