Helena Mary Cole

Autism does not have any physical characteristics, so when people talk about “looking autistic,” what they mean is they can tell from the person’s behaviour. Sometimes, a person’s autism will show up in something like the way they move (they may appear uncoordinated), or the fact that they’re flapping their hands or spinning, or the fact that they can’t respond to you in a way that makes sense when you talk to them. This may work if the autistic person in question has level three support needs, which makes up the minority of autistic people. Most autistic people will not have these kinds of noticeably different behaviours, or else they will have learned to mask them. And so I generally find that when a non-autistic person is “looking for” someone’s autism, they look for the wrong things entirely.

I wonder sometimes how many people know that “mentally challenged” is not listed in the diagnostic criteria for autism, or how many know that the roof is in the process of being blown off the entire notion that a non-speaking autistic person is automatically unintelligent. “Not able to have a conversation” is not in the diagnostic criteria, either, nor is “has no friends or spouse or job.”

One of the most common myths about disability in general is that a disability never varies from one affected person to the next, in how it manifests, in its severity. Not all blind people are completely sightless; not all wheelchair users have no use of their legs at all. A person with cerebral palsy may not be able to move or speak on their own, while others may be fully able to speak and walk, but have a limp. It’s the same disability, with the same causes, but it can affect the person in a variety of ways, depending on many things.

That’s why it’s not really helpful, when “looking for” a person’s autism, to conclude that because they have friends, or don’t flap their hands in front of you, or can have a conversation with you, they must not be autistic. You’re looking for the wrong things and asking all the wrong questions.

The first category of the diagnostic criteria (according to the DSM-V) can be summarized by saying this: an autistic person does not bond with other people in the usual ways that most people expect. Instead of asking “can I have a conversation with her,” you should ask, “how’s my bond with her?” You might be dealing with an autistic person if you’ve said or thought any of the following about them: “I can’t warm to her – I don’t know why but I can’t” or “He’s hard to get to know” or “I don’t think she likes me” or “I just don’t understand people like that.” There’s something different about that person and you can’t put your finger on what it is… Well, that thing you can’t put your finger on is called autism.

An autistic person will have a degree of social blindness, and that works both ways. Which is to say, they’ll have trouble reading your social cues but will also have little to no awareness of how they’re coming across to you. When you’re meeting someone for the first time, you expect to get certain signals, spoken or not, from the person if they like you and/or are interested in getting to know you. An autistic person does not know what those cues are, and so they are unable give them to you – they aren’t even aware they failed in this – so you’ll probably conclude they didn’t like you and weren’t interested in getting to know you. When in fact, the opposite may be true. That autistic person just didn’t know how to show it, or even understand that they weren’t showing it.

Similarly, you may feel as if that autistic person rebuffed your friendly signals, and be offended. But really, that person didn’t recognize your cues and has no awareness that they rebuffed anything, and will be confused if you become hostile towards them. It will probably take them some time to pick up on your hostility, but when they do, it will be source of distress. They don’t know why you don’t like them – they like you.

I have very, very rarely met anyone I didn’t like, and it comes as a surprise to me if and when I discover that a person does not like me. It’s not at all mutual.

I have a theory that the reason why people are accepting of a child being autistic, but less accepting of an adult with the same condition, is because kids get more grace if they’re socially inept. Autism is cute when the person is a kid who’s still growing and learning, while adults are expected to have outgrown their ineptitude. People want to define autism from that little kid blurting out something not-quite-appropriate but funny, not that person in the office who’s hard to deal with for incomprehensible reasons. There are probably things in play here similar to what I touched on earlier when I was talking about why an autistic adult’s family may not accept their diagnosis: people may have been uncharitable towards that difficult coworker, and so they have a need for the person’s annoying traits to be their own fault, rather than the manifestations of a disability. Again, no one wants to think they picked on a disabled person for being disabled.

There needs to be more awareness. But you’ll find that autistic people are generally very gracious. If you unknowingly picked on us because we were unknowingly autistic, we’re willing to forgive and move forward. If you extend us some grace in the future, we’ll be happy with that. Speaking for myself, anyway.

So, anyway, I said that the way to “spot” someone’s autism is to ask yourself “how’s my bond with that person.” In the case where you don’t know the person that well, and don’t expect to know them well because that’s not the kind of relationship you have with them, then you might have to look for their autism by observing their bonds with people besides yourself. Does that person seem to connect well with people in general? Or are they kind of a loner? Or, if that person does have a few good connections, how would you characterize the group? Do they keep to themselves as a sort of little club that you find hard to understand or can other people easily break in? Autistic people, diagnosed or not, have a way of sniffing each other out and becoming friends. We can be very good at bonding with each other, just not with the wider world.

And if you are not in a position to tell one way or the other how well the person is able to bond with people, then you’re not in a position to make the call on whether or not that person is autistic. But really, how well a person is able to bond is best known to that person themselves. You trying to “spot” it may be an exercise in futility.

An autistic woman in particular may be skilled at giving off a powerful impression that she knows how to bond in the usual ways. We’re are extremely observant. We’ve been watching other people all our lives and have picked up on many things, and memorized them. So, many of certainly are able to monkey neurotypical bonding effectively.

Let’s say I’ve had a good day, or I’m hosting a person or two in my own home and I’m feeling very comfortable and in my own element. I probably won’t have much trouble with speaking in that context. Also, I won’t have much trouble finding my script of “acceptable things to say.” A person I’ve just met in that context will probably not be able to spot my autism, and may come to feel a connection with me. But here’s the rub: I will have a lot of trouble feeling a connection with them because that wasn’t me I was expressing when I was running through my script. That was a version of myself I’d been stuffing into a mold all my life in order to pick up a few crumbs of social acceptance. The real me did not make an appearance. The real me probably wanted to deliver a half-hour lecture on the difference between the simple past tense and the present perfect in English, and perhaps contrast it with the differing ways those two things get used in French, and then go on to comment on how the present perfect doesn’t even exist in Lithuanian. The real me wanted to pace around maybe, and yes, even flap my hands because the subject of grammar makes me happy. The real me bursts into song randomly and quite often. But the neurotypical world doesn’t have much patience for that girl, so I’ve learned to keep her under a tight lid.

I can talk, and I can script magnificently sometimes, but click with people? Not really. Not authentically.

That’s what autism is. That’s why it’s so hard to spot in lower support needs autistic people. But if you’re still interested in looking for it for whatever reason, these are my suggestions.