From the DSM-V-TR:

"Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life)."

"Core diagnostic features are evident in the developmental period, but intervention, compensation, and current supports may mask difficulties in at least some contexts."

"Individuals who have developed compensation strategies for some social challenges still struggle in novel or unsupported situations and suffer from the effort and anxiety of consciously calculating what is socially intuitive for most individuals. This behavior may contribute to lower ascertainment of autism spectrum disorder in these individuals, perhaps especially in adult women. Thus, longer assessments, observation in naturalistic settings, and inquiring about any tolls of social interaction may be needed(Cage and Troxell-Whitman 2019; Hull et al. 2017). If asked about the costs of social interaction, for example, these individuals might respond that social interactions are exhausting for them, that they are unable to concentrate because of the mental effort in monitoring social conventions, that their self-esteem is adversely affected by being unable to be themselves, and so forth."

Observation is STILL actually essential to a diagnosis, you can't merely just claim to be masking, but it's not technically considered disqualifying for symptoms to only appear in certain contexts.

>Some people are "high functioning" autists, meaning that they are able to suppress their negative autistic expressions for the benefit and comfort of people around them. This doesn't make them "not autistic" -- they still are even if you personally can't tell. It just means they're putting on an act for you, to make you happy, so that you don't respond in the negative way they are used to being received. You are witnessing a performance.

The research I've seen on the cat-q shows that [1]:

- Neurotypicals men mask a statistically insignificant amount more than autistic men

- Autistic women mask a statistically insignificant more than neurotypical women

- Autistic women mask a statistically significant amount more than autistic men

- Autistics "Compensate" more, copy others behaviour, copy behaviour they learned from movies

- Autistics "Assimilate" more, they will force themselves unwillingly more than others to be social or not be social.

We should also get over what gets somebody defined as having "high functioning" or "level 1" autism. It's a lack of severity of social impairments AND restricted & repetitive behaviours. With autistic men specifically, the evidence points to the "high functioning" as simply naturally exhibiting less autistic social interactions and behaviours than the "low functioning" without any exceptional effort beyond what the everyday non-disabled person does. Some of them may be tortured actors, but said people are no more prevalent than they are in the general population. It's things like imitation, and being in unwanted social situations, which is more characteristic of autism.

>Being autistic comes with a great capacity for curiosity, creativity, artistic expression, innovation, and excellence associated with committing fully (as in actually 100%, eschewing loved ones and society) to an endeavor.

Those may correlate with autism, but aren't definitional of it. The DSM-V-TR's 1891 word diagnostic criteria briefly mentions "Special interests may be a source of pleasure and motivation and provide avenues for education and employment later in life" as the sole positive trait of autistics.

I don't mean to be a dick here - more activist. If these are qualities of autistics, they should either be part of the criteria for "Autism spectrum disorder" or autism should be conceptualised as being distinct from disorder similar to how we distinguish between being transgender and having gender dysphoria. Otherwise, one can say that all they wish, but they'll face negative stigmatisation from those who see autism as a definitionally negative mental disorder with no upside other than employability. "Autism" is quite the stigmatised word today and I blame psychiatry and The DSM for that more than anything else as they treat negatives associated with autism as definitional but not positives.

[1] ctrl-f "What it tests" "Average Scores" https://embrace-autism.com/cat-q/