I started reading this book recently and haven’t taken part in the book club discussion until now. I picked it up because I have been doing volunteer work with kids, some of whom are neurodiverse, and I want to be a good volunteer for them. Hexbear has spoken highly of this book so I picked it up. I recognize and can relate to some autistic traits as described in the book so far, but as far as I know I’m just a weird but neurotypical middle aged person.

Anyway, one thing I’m struggling with in the book is that I recognize a lot of behavior described in the book in myself and other people I know, but to different degrees. The book spends a lot of time talking about masking and hiding autistic traits to fit in with neurotypical society. It isn’t always clear to me what the difference is between masking and things that I think loads of allistic people do. For example, I’m cishet male but I don’t share a lot of stereotypical masculine interests like meat, sports, fishing, cars. I’m not that fit, and I am more introverted/bookish. When I was a kid all that meant people called me gay, so I learned to feign interest or just prompt others to talk about their capital D dude shit. This is masking because I didn’t want to be made fun of for being effeminate. I’m sure other people do analogous things to fit in to groups they don’t naturally belong to. Similarly, I don’t speak to everyone the same way - I use different language when talking to my child, my partner, my parents, my colleagues, my online friends. I have a lot of education and I speak to other academics differently than strangers I meet. This is code switching. I also very regularly think about and view situations in the context of climate change and ecocide. I can’t help but see the foundation of skulls that our society is built on. That makes me sad, but I keep it to myself 99% of the time. Is that masking depression/anxiety or is it just being polite and not being a downer all the time? All of these examples are things that I’ve observed to be pretty common among loads of people, they don’t seem to be specifically autistic behaviors.

None of the above is particularly onerous to me anymore and it doesn’t cause the same type of stress as described in testimonials from the book. Is the degree of difficulty that people have with this kind of behavior the distinction between allistic and autistic people? It doesn’t seem like the behavior itself is the distinction. I mean maybe I’m way out to lunch and the behaviour I’m describing in myself are truly uncommon and I’m actually realizing I’m neurodiverse but i think that’s just stealing autistic valour. In any case, I think the book would be stronger if it highlighted in more clear terms how some of these traits can manifest in neurotypical people and how exactly they differ from autistic people.

Regardless of the above, I’m finding the book very useful in how I think about engaging with kids. The general rules about support/accommodation seem really widely applicable. Being a volunteer with ND kids that don’t know you well can be fraught, but this book is helping me take away good general approaches.