Autistic people being increasingly open and vocal isn’t because ableism has disappeared, it’s because masking is so bad for our mental health that even constant hurt and stigma is less damaging

If there is one phrase I would most like removed from popular discourse, it’s ‘Autistic women are better at masking’. Let’s be clear. Masking is overriding your actual feelings until you can’t even access them anymore. We shouldn’t want anyone to be ‘good’ at that

Let’s also bin ‘high-functioning’. The hierarchy it implies is: 1. non-autistics, 2. ‘high-functioning’ autistics, 3. ‘low-functioning’ autistics. Even if we could objectively measure people’s ‘functioning’, that is not a value system I want anything to do with

‘I’d never call someone low-functioning’. You do every time you call someone else high-functioning. If there’s a high there’s a low, and it’s just as hurtful as if you’d said low to begin with.