Love on the Spectrum and the Mask We Refuse to See
I have been thinking a lot about Love on the Spectrum.
Not because I think the discourse around it is especially good. It isn’t. Most of it is outright terrible. Terrible discourse, however, often reveals something quite useful. It shows us where our frameworks are overly simplistic and don’t work. It shows us where our language has become flattened in order to be legible. It shows us where people are repeating the right words while missing the actual point.
And I think that is what is happening here in all the various discussions around Love on the Spectrum.
Now, this should be obvious, but apparently it isn’t - I do not think it’s bad that autistic people are on television.
I think it is good even.
I think it matters that real autistic people (as opposed to allistic actors cosplaying autistics) are visible. I think it matters that the autistic people on television are not only the polished, articulate, professionally successful, slightly quirky geniuses that media already knows how to sell (think of the Good Doctor, Atypical, etc.) I think it matters enormously that autistic people with more visible support needs are seen by the public at large.
That is not the problem.
In fact, one of the strange things about the backlash to Love on the Spectrum is that some of it ends up sounding like: “Why are these autistic people being shown? Why not people like me? What about us Level 1 autistics? What about low supports needs autistics? What about us high-masking autistics?”
I think it’s super important to be very careful here.
Because lower support needs autistic people already have representation on television. We just don’t call it being autistic.
We call them weird.
We call them nerds.
We call them annoying.
We call them intense.
We call them socially inappropriate.
We call them difficult.
We call them the joke.
Dwight Schrute is not called autistic. Leslie Knope is not called autistic. Half the characters in Parks and Recreation are not called autistic. Most of the characters on Malcolm in the Middle are not called autistic. Many of the “quirky,” obsessive, socially blunt, rigid, intense, pattern-seeking characters we have been watching for decades are not called autistic.
And this is precisely the point.
Because if they were called autistic, the joke would become harder to justify. It wouldn’t be “appropriate” to laugh at them (though the abled have no issue with harming the disabled in the outside world when no one else is watching.)
If the audience were asked to recognise those characters as autistic, then laughing at them, mocking them, humiliating them, or treating them as inherently ridiculous would become a little too obvious. It would reveal the cruelty sitting underneath the comedy.
So television has found a very convenient trick by writing “autisticly -coded” characters.
They don’t call them autistic.
Then the whole world can laugh at autistic traits without having to admit that this is what it is doing.
That’s why I am not convinced by the argument that Love on the Spectrum is bad simply because it does not show enough “high masking” autistic people. They are everywhere in media. They’re just unnamed. They’re critically unexamined. They’re the weird coworker. The intense friend. The obsessive genius. The socially inappropriate neighbour. The person whose autistic traits are funny as long as nobody says the word autism.
The problem isn’t that higher support needs autistic people are being shown. The problem is what the show does with them.
The problem is how viewers are being taught to see them. The problem is that the media industry has created a world where autistic people are either unnamed and mocked, or named and infantilised.
Neither is liberation.
What bothers me most about the conversation around Love on the Spectrum is the claim that the people on the show are “unmasked.” I see a lot of this from lots of well meaning low-supports needs autistics, but also my fellow medium-supports needs autistics and high-supports needs comrades.
I keep seeing this argument, especially from autistic folx, usually identified as autistic later in life, online. The idea is that people who criticise the show are just “high masking” autistic adults who are uncomfortable seeing “real” autistic people. The people on the show, we are told, are unmasked. They are authentic. They are what autism really looks like when it is not hidden under neurotypical performance.
I think this is deeply wrong.
The people on Love on the Spectrum are not unmasked.
They are highly masked.
They are just wearing a different kind of mask than many late-identified or lower support needs autistic adults are used to recognising.
This is one of the places where our public conversations about masking have become far too shallow.
People often talk about masking as if it only means pretending to be neurotypical. They imagine masking as making eye contact, suppressing stims, forcing small talk, going to work, getting married, having children, holding a degree, or appearing “normal” to the outside world.
And yes, that can be masking.
But it’s not the whole thing.
Masking is not just “looking neurotypical.”
Masking is adaptation under pressure.
Masking is what we do to survive in environments where our needs, movements, communication, emotions, rhythms, and ways of being are treated as wrong.
Masking isn’t one behaviour. It’s not one aesthetic. It’s not one social class of autistic people. It’s not one diagnostic history.
Masking is what happens when an autistic person learns that some version of themselves receives more safety, more care, more approval, more affection, more money, more protection, or less punishment than another version.
And for autistic people who were diagnosed young, especially those who went through ABA or behaviourist interventions, the mask often looks very different.
I know this, because I am one of those people who went thru ABA as a kid.
Some of our masks don’t always show up as the mask of “I am basically neurotypical.”
Sometimes it’s the mask of “I am the right kind of autistic.”
The polite autistic.
The cheerful autistic.
The innocent autistic.
The harmless autistic.
The compliant autistic.
The autistic who follows the script.
The autistic who accepts correction.
The autistic who performs social skills in a way that makes other people feel successful.
The autistic who says the thing they were trained to say.
The autistic who has been taught that our natural way of relating is wrong, and that love, approval, and safety depend on becoming legible to others.
This is still masking.
It’s not unmasking simply because it does not look neurotypical.
In fact, one of the cruellest things about behaviourist approaches to autism is that they often do not teach autistic children how to be ourselves. They teach autistic children how to perform the version of autism that adults find tolerable.
That performance can then be mistaken for authenticity.
And that is exactly what I see happening with Love on the Spectrum.
People watch autistic participants who have clearly been shaped by years of being corrected, coached, scripted, managed, and observed, and they say: “Look. Unmasked autism.”
But this isn’t an unmasked autism.
This is autism after training.
This is autism after surveillance.
