High-Masking Isn’t Low Needs - It’s Expensive Survival

"You seem fine!" they proclaimed, congratulating my camouflaged collapse, mistaking borrowed functionality for comfort. What they called “low support needs” was just debt accrued in a neuronormative economy - and the bill always eventually comes due.

I. Rejecting the Social Model as the Framework ≠ Denying the Construct

Disability is inherent:
→ My sensory system is a live wire; fluorescent lights aren't "annoying" - they're neurological violence.
→ Autism levels exist, and they are not inherently harmful: the needs I have as a level 2 are different from a level 1, but both are real and the needs are non-negotiable. Note: privilege distorts perception - affluent autistics sometimes may unmask more visibly, not because their support needs are higher, but because they have the safety to do so.

Disability is socially constructed:
→ Society weaponizes difference: It pathologizes autistic joy as "perseveration" and frames accommodations as "special treatment."
→ The betrayal: Systems often confuse trauma-trained compliance (ABA survivors and other folks who learned to mask with compensatory behaviors to survive) with "low support needs." High-masking late-diagnosed autistics also sometimes misread unmasked peers as "higher support needs" - a mix of projection and internalized ableism. We mistake visibility for severity, forgetting that for many, unmasking is a luxury before it’s a need.

The distinction:
"My disability is real; the violence done about it is constructed."

II. High-Masking = High Cost, Not Low Needs

Debunking the myth:
→ What systems formerly saw when they saw me (before unmasking): "Polite, articulate, high-achieving."
Clinical reality: A nervous system negotiating ransom terms with every demand (PDA profile).

→ What systems see when they see some autistics who are knee-deep in autistic burnout but still engaging in compensatory independence: "Coping well."
Clinical reality: Dissociation as full-time labor, paid in spoons you don’t have.

The indictment:
Calling someone “low needs” because they can mask is like judging a building’s stability by its paint job. That house might be one strong wind away from collapse.

III. The Cashmere Camouflage Paradox

Privilege can masquerade as “low support needs”:
→ Wealth buys masking supplies: time sovereignty, trauma therapy, and quiet apartments.
→ It also buys the safety to unmask - sometimes leading to the misperception that affluent unmasked autistics are "higher support needs" when they’re just safer to unmask. For many BIPOC autistics, unmasking risks violence - not just misunderstanding.
→ The lie: "See? You don’t need much!" (said while standing on your pile of unpaid neurological debts.)

Question for practitioners: Does your assessment distinguish compensated needs from absent needs?

IV. This Is Where We Turn Defiance Into Demands

Non-negotiables:
→ Levels measure needs, not worth: level 1 autistics deserve accommodations and care, just as level 3 autistics deserve accommodations and care. Neither threatens the other. Accommodation does not have to be zero-sum game.
→ Pride isn’t performative: Disabled Pride = a glorious “no thank you” to eugenicist pity - whether you’re masked, unmasked, both, or fluctuating depending on the situation and your safety.

My disability is mine - the migraines, the dissociation, and my glorious overclocked nervous system. The violence you layer on it? That’s your shame to carry.