Just because something is good for the group, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good for the individual.

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

Among these traits: not enjoying talk about feelings and relationships, preferring to sit alone in one’s room and immerse oneself in one’s own interests, having a hard time grasping subtext, and not being able to sugar-coat one’s words.

It’s not possible to understand people’s unhappiness, exhaustion, and mental illness without analysing social developments and the reality they face in their everyday lives. There have always been autistic individuals, but the diagnosis only arises in the encounter with the world around them. The more streamlined society becomes, the more individua

A computer might be amazing at doing calculations, says Jonna Bornemark, but it has no judgement. Yet the capacity for judgement exists in every human being. It’s a hidden bank of knowledge that we have forgotten how to tap into. We have instead come to equate judgement with subjective opinion, which may vary from individual to individual.

Autists are bad politicians and impossible diplomats.

For me, cultural consumption was never an escape from reality. It was a way of getting closer to reality, of better understanding it, conquering it.

Girls with autism learn early to hide their social difficulties. But their alienation also runs deeper, as women more so than men are expected to be socially driven and take responsibility for the wellbeing of others. Many autistic traits aren’t compatible with women’s traditional roles.

In light of this development, it’s easy to see why people who are different need their diagnoses. It’s their only hope of being listened to. In a top-down system, that slip of paper turns into a tool for survival. With a diagnosis in black and white, adaptations might be made to meet your needs. Without it, you don’t stand a chance.