"It’s like Tumblr became animate and wrote a book. The handful of potentially interesting or useful bits are buried in a mountain of bullshit sprung from the author’s cartoonish and fanciful web of logically-inconsistent ideological priors. "

"Ughhh. I wanted to like this book SO bad. The disappointment is particularly painful because I had such high hopes.

First, let’s go through the positives. He makes a lot of interesting points! I liked the introduction and first chapter the best, where we learn a bit more about how autism presents on brain scans and the like, and it delves a bit into the science of it. I liked the medical vs social disability aspect, and how a significant portion of what renders us autistic folks disabled is a lack of accommodation. I liked hearing all of the other autistic folk’s stories. That was really interesting and cool.

Around the halfway point is where things started to go downhill imo. There was as much, if not more, discussion of gender identity, sexuality, and race as there was discussion of autism. I would’ve been fine with that if this was a book on those things, but it really felt like autism was shoved to the back so we could focus fully on other matters. The way it was handled felt very much so like virtue signaling, like he was cramming as many social justice subjects in as he could so that you can’t say anything negative without being racist, homophobic, or transphobic. I’m all for supporting autistics who belong to those groups, but this is marketed as a book on autism, not a book on gender studies and race. I picked it up because I wanted a book on autism. I didn’t want a book on violence against the LGBTQ community and racial oppression with a few mentions of autism. Again, it very much felt like virtue signaling.

The thing that really upset me was when he said being autistic is “an eerily similar experience� to being a closeted gay person. In what way is being closeted equivalent to being disabled?? He goes on to talk about how in both cases people are so oppressed and can’t ever truly be themselves. I honestly find this really offensive. Being closeted doesn’t make it so you have to drop out of college because you’re in so much pain all the time you can’t keep up. Being closeted doesn’t make it so you can’t leave your bedroom for months at a time because the entire world is too stimulating. Being closeted doesn’t make it so you go fully nonverbal for days and physically can’t ask for help. Being closeted doesn’t make it so you can never live alone because you can’t manage basic tasks like bathing or cooking without help. Being closeted doesn’t make it so you can’t drive due to spacial awareness issues, or make it so you’re fully dependent on AAC to communicate. Saying that being closeted is equivalent to having a disability is extremely disrespectful, not only to disabled people but also to closeted people. They aren’t remotely similar.

Another thing that bothered me was when he was talking about finding community and giving advice on how to connect to other autistic people, and he said to “make sure to center Black and brown and queer voices in your autistic spaces� (paraphrasing bc I don’t remember the word for word). I’m all for supporting and uplifting minorities, but I think when you’re trying to find ~autistic~ community, it should be the ~autistic~ voices centered?? This felt especially off coming from a white man. (yes I know he’s trans, that doesn’t change my feelings here.) Again, it felt very much like virtue signaling.

The final thing that bothered me is at the end, when he started getting into accommodations that we as Autistic people need, and how to push for said accommodations. The accommodations he thinks would benefit the autistic community? Outlawing loud music in businesses, defunding the police, and abolishing prisons. I’m sorry, what???? Yes, reducing the volume in most places would be nice for me, but I think pushing for loud music to be outlawed seems kind of ridiculous. His entire argument for defunding the police and abolishing prisons is that they’re racially unjust institutions, which sure, but talk about that in a book on race, not a book on autism. Neither of those things have anything whatsoever to do with autism or accommodating Autistic people. According to him, if we could just outlaw loud music, defund the police, and abolish prisons, we’d be set! No mention of the autistic people who stim with loud music, or the autistic people whose abusers are currently in prison, or the autistic people who love going to concerts. Those people aren’t important, all we care about here is making sure the pedophiles who prey on autistic people at much higher rates don’t get arrested! /s

So yeah. I was really excited to read this book, and I went into it fully expecting to love it. Unfortunately I did not love it. :( "

"Breaking my "no reviews" policy because this mess of a book somehow has over 4 stars on here. This is not a good book. This is not even an acceptable book. At times I was convinced that it must be satire, but apparently it is not(?)

About 2% of the content in this book is interesting and useful. It is spread diffusely across the first couple chapters. The rest of the book betrays the author's unhealthy relationship with the concept of identity, as well as a shocking lack of self-awareness and a disturbing degree of hypocrisy. The author presents well-known maladaptive behaviors as reasonable "special interests" and "stims," and fails to connect their specific history of psychological turmoil to the compulsions they proudly depict in the text.

The author speaks in sweeping generalizations, despite this being a book about "diversity." The author portrays autistic people as "weirdos," "nerds," and "geeks." The author disparages the notion of giftedness, placing the word in quotes any time it is used, and fails to acknowledge the entire 2e population outside of the context of a "trope." In a book that urges the reader to rethink how society alienates autistic people, the author openly alienates autistic people.

Sex and gender play a strange role in this book. The author presents many anecdotes from autistic people who care about their gender identity and sexual orientation, but fails to acknowledge the many autistic people who could not care less about either of these things. The author also presents sex work as a strictly positive choice that some autistic people make for themselves, despite writing in Chapter 4 about how consent can be tricky for autistic people and describing in many places the ways in which autistic people are vulnerable to abuse and manipulation. It goes on and on. I finished reading out of a morbid fascination, but it's not worth it.

Beyond its various harms, this book completely fails to live up to its promise. It purports to be a "guide" to the process of unmasking, but it barely touches upon any mechanisms for how to unmask psychologically -- a process that requires far more than simply choosing to do so -- and completely fails to address the cognitive changes that occur in the process. It contains various self-help-style elements like tables and worksheets, but the exercises are, as another reviewer said, the type of thing you could easily find on pinterest. There's no insight here whatsoever.

The book's large-scale structure appears to make sense, but the text itself is disorganized and repetitive. The book contains several obvious typographical errors (homophone substitutions) and the writing on a small scale is mediocre at best. As other reviewers have said, do not let the fact that this person works in academia fool you.

Finally, just a personal gripe: this book talks a lot more about "autistic identity" than about autism itself. Those are not the same thing. If the book had been called "unmasking autistic identity" I would not have wasted the three hours of my life I spent reading it.

TL;DR -- This person is not an expert on autism and should not be treated as such. Skip this book."