Translator: Leonardo Silva
Reviewer: Raissa Mendes What do you think
when you hear this phrase: "He bent over backwards"? Or this: "She was on the ball"? What you probably
didn't imagine was this. Or maybe this. The English language is full
of colorful expressions, metaphors, slang, and we use these in the conversations
that we have every day. For 99% of the population, it's a comfortable means of communication. For the remaining 1%, however, all that colorfulness
is not only uncomfortable, but extremely confusing. And not only because people
bend over backwards or are on the ball, but because a simple wink
can have different meanings in different contexts. And sometimes, a friend will say something
to another friend which sounds like an insult, but it makes them laugh instead of cry. Who are these people
who see funny pictures of flexible men or who can't understand sarcasm? These people have a condition
called Asperger's syndrome, which is a type
of high-functioning autism. Now usually, when I say "autism" and I ask people
what they understand by it, they tell me it looks
something like this, your quirky genius type, stimming, bouncing, flapping, rocking, or my personal favorite: restricted interests. Yes, it is true that there are people
with Asperger's who display these traits. It is also true that these
are only stereotypes and a small part of the entire picture. If Asperger's were
as easy to spot as this, then there would be
no problem at all in diagnosing it. Unfortunately, Asperger's, like life,
is far more complicated. And if you're a girl with Asperger's,
things get even more tricky because all the diagnostic tools
that professionals use were designed to spot Asperger's in boys. Now, this gender bias leaves
thousands of Asperger girls undiagnosed, unsupported, sometimes even after
they've taken the test. My younger brother was diagnosed
as being on the spectrum when he was three and a half. His autism was obvious, or stereotypical. He was late to talk, he bounced and flapped his hands, and he wouldn't make eye contact. My parents took him
to get an assessment done. Within two months, he was diagnosed, and the proper supports
were put in place to help him. Fast-forward eight years,
and he's doing just great. And then, there was me. I didn't bounce, I didn't flap. I was a shy but diligent student, I got good grades
and I didn't cause trouble. But what I did do
was hide under the table and cover my ears at lunchtime because the noise of my chatting peers
was too much for me to cope with. I was quiet, I let others make up the rules
of the games we played, and I shared my sparkly pens
when no one else would. And it took 14 years for anyone
to notice that I was struggling, desperately. For many high-functioning girls,
it takes even longer. Why is this? Shouldn't our confusion
around other people be obvious to our teachers, our friends, let alone our parents? And what I find is that there is a very
simple, if unfortunate, reason for this. It's because of something we do to cope. We do it subconsciously, but it results in us
camouflaging our autistic traits, and it is called "masking". Asperger girls are usually
bright and sensitive, and when we're younger, we use these qualities to achieve
a kind of superficial social competence. Like detectives, we watch, and we listen, and we try to make sense
of the things people do and why they do them. It's a hard job. It's exhausting. We work both day and night shifts. The clues often lead us wrong. But we don't have any other choice, because it's our means of coping in a world which is
so socially confusing to us. When I was younger, I would mimic
my favorite cartoon characters: their way of walking, the words they used and how they spoke to one another. I absorbed this information and then applied it
to my social interactions, almost like copying and pasting. But I quickly learned
that life is not a cartoon, people are not characters
who behave predictably, and imitation can only take
an Asperger girl so far. By the time they reach adolescence, trust me, they are mentally exhausted
and emotionally wrecked. Social relationships become
so much more complicated, and for an Asperger girl, every conversation becomes
like a math problem. And I remind you here
that we are not all quirky genius types. I managed to mask
my Asperger's for 14 years, and then, I crashed. The loving people in my life
rushed in to help. And one day, I found myself
sitting in a room with two occupational psychologists, a bag of feathers, thumbtacks and a book about flying frogs. This apparently was the ADOS test, the standardized test
used to identify autism, the same test that my brother took
seven years previously. They set me some simple tasks, and they asked me questions
about my life, my family, my interests. I responded to these
in the only way that I knew how: by copying and pasting the correct answer. So I smiled, I shook hands, I gave eye contact, as I knew I was supposed to. I'm not sure what the story with the flying frogs
was meant to tell anyone about me, but apparently it told them
that I wasn't on the autistic spectrum. In fact, I scored a zero. I failed. I "really, really, really"
didn't have autism. But it wasn't me who had failed the test. It was the test that had failed me. And there are women in their thirties,
forties, fifties, and even older, who are only just getting diagnosed now, usually after identifying
their difficulties themselves by taking online quizzes. And this simply isn't good enough. These women have spent
decades of their lives not understanding
a crucial part of themselves. They can end up
in the mental health system, being misdiagnosed
with mental health disorders, medicated and treated
for things they don't have, and then suffering the consequences
and the complications of these medications. In a recent survey, 23% of girls with anorexia were
subsequently discovered to have autism. Twenty-three percent. A further 40% have
coexisting anxiety disorders. Countless more are being
treated for depression. And I wonder: how many of these girls might have been spared
these mental health difficulties had their underlying Asperger's
been identified sooner? I got the correct diagnosis in the end; not through ADOS, but in spite of it. I am one of the lucky ones, and I don't want any more girls
to slip through the net like I did. We need to become better
at identifying difficulties in girls, even if they're subtle. We need an accurate and broader tool
to diagnose autism in all its many forms. Because autism is not black and white; it is a spectrum of color. And we need to open our eyes
to see all of it. Thank you. (Applause)
