Sexual equality works in mysterious ways. Not only must we have equal pay and education, but it seems there must be equality in mental disorders as well. Or so I concluded about 15 years ago, when I started hearing about the large number of autistic females — previously undiagnosed — whose presentation differed markedly from the largely male stereotype, but who somehow had autism too.
This seemed to me quite strange. A condition with no biomarker, diagnosed mainly by the presence of certain distinctive behaviors — significant deficits in communication, rigid patterns of thought, repetitive activities, obsessive interests, and so on — now attributed to a new population on the basis of very different behaviors. The solution to my incomprehension, I was told, was the concept of “masking”. Women and girls were better at hiding their antisocial tendencies, a fact which made them profoundly anxious. Languishing neglected behind deceptively sociable masks, a much larger group could now be members of the club too.
This all sounded suspiciously convenient, tying in with modern fairytales of personal authenticity and the supposed tragedy of hiding “who you really are”. We are all masking things about ourselves; Jung would call it having a persona. And many introverts find social engagements confusing and exhausting. More to the point: if someone is mentally agile enough, both to notice her own social deficits and then seamlessly compensate for them, why are we treating this as autism at all?