How Society Forces Autistics to Become Inhibited & Passive

A “deleted scene” from my book Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

Devon Price

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Photo by Baptista Ime James on Unsplash

Eric, a Black queer parent in his forties had to spend years looking for a psychiatrist who would even entertain assessing him as Autistic.

He knew he wanted the potential legal protections that a diagnosis could afford him, particularly the option to take qualifying exams for graduate school in a quiet, private setting. He’d found test-taking environments to be completely destabilizing and distracting his entire life — so much so that he’d barely even gotten into his graduate program. Yet for all the exclusions he had repeatedly faced, Eric’s neurodiversity was something that white-dominated institutions around him always refused to see.

He tells me, “A former therapist said to me, trust me, if you were Autistic, you’d know by now. And I was telling him that I did know, I had known for a while, but I needed it recognized officially! You learn to get by because you have no support, then you are denied support because you’ve found a white-knuckled way to get by.”

When Eric looks back on his life, he sees the experiences of a marginalized and unheard Autistic everywhere. He has always been obsessed with horses, collects…

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Devon Price
Devon Price

Written by Devon Price

He/Him or It/Its. Social Psychologist & Author of LAZINESS DOES NOT EXIST and UNMASKING AUTISM. Links to buy: https://linktr.ee/drdevonprice