Like many autistic women, my resting face isn’t naturally smiley. I’d call it neutral, but some people make judgements. One morning, I was walking home with a bag full of lovely local produce for lunch and dinner, enjoying the sunshine and in my own little world. I saw a man up a ladder, cleaning windows, and was about to say good morning to him when he shouted, “cheer up love! It can’t possibly be as bad as that!”

In my sixties at the time, I was startled at being told to rearrange my face for a complete stranger, especially since I had been perfectly cheerful. “You wouldn’t dream of saying that to a bloke,” I said, “so why say it to me?”

“I was only being polite,” he retorted. “You should be grateful for the attention.”

“You weren’t being polite at all. You were being rude!”

“I was not. You’re the one who’s rude! You’re a bad woman, who had a bad upbringing, and I hope you have a terrible day!” His diatribe followed me up the road.

At the time of the window-cleaner incident, I didn’t know I was autistic, but I did have memories of being picked on for my unconscious facial expression. I might be called ugly, or asked if I was OK, or why I was unhappy. It could be very irritating. As a feminist I thought about it then in the context of the control of women, the social pressure to look good, to stay young, to wear makeup, to fit in. I did try, but I rarely got it right, and by my mid-fifties, I refused to smother my face with cosmetics that felt and smelled repulsive to me. The false face was consigned to the jar by the door.

Once I learned I was autistic, another dimension came into play. In her book, ‘What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic’, Annie Kotowitz says “if people misread my face, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with me – it just means they don’t speak my language yet”. We are frequently misread and misunderstood. Typically, it is assumed that if an autistic person doesn’t get what is said to them, or asks for clarification, or has the “wrong” facial expression, it is their fault and their responsibility to correct.

However, communication is a two-way street. Dr Damien Milton, an autistic researcher at Kent University, coined the phrase “the double empathy problem” to describe the communication disconnect between neurotypical and autistic people. A study into the phenomenon discovered that people communicated well with others of their own neurotype, but less well when the groups were mixed. The study and the double empathy theory are important because they place weight equally on neurotypical and autistic communication, labelling neither as intrinsically wrong. You can read the relevant paper and a short abstract here:

Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective – PMC (nih.gov)

I know I overthink other people’s actions and possible motivations. So if you catch me not smiling, please don’t assume I am miserable, and I will do my best not to second-guess you. If I ask for more clarification, please don’t assume that I am challenging you; I simply need more information. If I don’t respond straight away as you expect, please allow for the fact that my brain is wired with bridleways and backroads rather than motorways and dual carriageways. I hope that, as people come to understand difference better, we will all learn to make fewer assumptions about each-other and that autistic people will not so often be assumed always to be in the wrong.

Photo, connection, human and dog on a beach, apart and together.