Masking

To cite this work: Mishra, A. (2025). Masking. Disability Dialogues. Sheffield: iHuman, University of Sheffield. 

Dr Ankita Mishra (she/her) is a Research Associate for Health Priorities for the Disability Matters project at iHuman, The University of Sheffield. She is particularly interested in participatory action research, creative and arts-based research methods that amplify multiple ways of knowing and being in marginalised communities affected by intersectional oppression. Ankita is passionate about de-scholarising the academy by transforming academic-community collaborations embodying the principle of ‘Nothing about us without us is for us’. This piece of writing reflects her ongoing research and practice on community collaboration and partnership work across transnational contexts.

The concept of masking has been extensively theorised in neurodivergence research, particularly regarding autism spectrum conditions (Hull et al., 2017; Lai et al., 2017). However, there remains a critical gap in conceptualising how similar processes might operate for individuals with chronic illness and pain, especially at the intersection of gender and race. This represents a novel theoretical terrain that warrants exploration.

As Price (2015) argues in "The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain," the artificial separation of mental and physical disability categories obscures important connections between different forms of embodied experience. Building on this premise, we can theorise that masking behaviors documented in neurodivergent populations may have parallels in chronic illness communities, particularly among women of colour who navigate multiple forms of marginalisation simultaneously.

Wilkinson and Wilkinson's (2023) joint-autoethnography of working in academia with chronic illnesses provides crucial insights into how masking manifests in higher education contexts. They describe the "complex balancing act" (p. 7) of managing pain alongside professional responsibilities, noting how academic environments often require what they term "performance of wellness" – a concept that closely parallels masking behaviors documented in neurodivergence literature. Their account reveals how academics with chronic illnesses engage in strategic concealment of symptoms to maintain professional credibility, carefully managing disclosure to avoid being seen as "unreliable" or "not up to the job" (p. 8). For women of colour in academia, this performance becomes additionally layered with intersecting racialised and gendered expectations.

The invisibility of chronic conditions creates what Patsavas (2014) calls a "politics of pain" wherein individuals must constantly negotiate the visibility of their disabilities. For women of colour, this negotiation becomes particularly complex. Drawing from Mad Studies, Bell (2011) demonstrates how psychiatric systems have historically pathologised responses to oppression. Extending this to chronic pain suggests that women of colour may mask pain symptoms not only to meet ableist expectations of productivity but also to avoid racialised and gendered stereotypes about "complaining" or seeking attention. Wilkinson and Wilkinson (2023) note how chronically ill academics often hesitate to request accommodations for fear of being perceived as "difficult" (p. 9), a concern that is amplified for women of colour who already face stereotypes about being "angry" or "demanding" when advocating for themselves.

Schalk's (2018) concept of "bodyminds" provides a useful framework for understanding how physical and mental experiences intertwine in the context of disability and race. As she notes, "The privileging of certain bodyminds over others is fundamentally tied to systems of privilege and oppression" (p. 6). This perspective allows us to understand how masking chronic pain might represent not just accommodation to ableism but resistance to intersecting systems of oppression.

Nario-Redmond et al. (2019) observe that passing and covering behaviors among disabled people often reflect strategic responses to hostile environments rather than internalized shame. For women of colour with chronic illnesses in academia, masking pain becomes a survival strategy within institutions that Wilkinson and Wilkinson (2023) describe as designed for "an able-bodied, mentally well workforce" (p. 5). This institutional design is further complicated by what Dotson (2011) terms "epistemic oppression," whereby the knowledge claims of marginalized groups – including claims about their own bodily experiences – are systematically undermined.

Bailey and Mobley (2019) suggest that disability justice frameworks must centralise the experiences of those multiply marginalised. Within this context, masking chronic illness among women of colour can be understood as navigating what Mollow (2006) identifies as the double bind of hypervisibility and erasure – their bodies are simultaneously subjected to heightened surveillance while their pain experiences are rendered invisible or illegitimate. Pickens (2019) further explores this paradox in her examination of Black women with chronic illness, noting how their bodies are simultaneously hypervisible and their suffering systematically disregarded.

The question of accommodations becomes particularly fraught in this context. Wilkinson and Wilkinson (2023) highlight how chronically ill academics often engage in "self-accommodation" (p. 8) rather than seeking formal support. As Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) observes in "Care Work," the burden of adjustment frequently falls on those least empowered to demand institutional change. For women of colour in academia, this self-accommodation is compounded by what Chatterjee and Maira (2014) identify as the already-existing burden of "cultural taxation" – the expectation that they will perform additional labour related to diversity initiatives while simultaneously proving their academic legitimacy.

This conceptualisation of masking in chronic illness, particularly for women of colour in academic contexts, bridges several theoretical traditions while highlighting a significant gap in current research. By drawing connections between neurodivergence literature, critical race theory, and disability studies, we can begin to theorise the complexities of (in/hyper)visibility employed at these intersections of marginalisation. As Ahmed (2017) argues in "Living a Feminist Life," the bodily experiences of women of colour offer important sites of knowledge production and resistance. Understanding how women of colour with chronic illnesses navigate academic spaces through masking practices provides crucial insights not only into their lived experiences but also into the structural conditions that necessitate such masking in the first place.

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.

Bailey, M., & Mobley, I. A. (2019). Work in the intersections: A Black feminist disability framework. Gender & Society, 33(1), 19-40.

Bell, C. (2011). Blackness and disability: Critical examinations and cultural interventions. LIT Verlag.

Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (2014). The imperial university: Academic repression and scholarly dissent. University of Minnesota Press.

Dotson, K. (2011). Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing. Hypatia, 26(2), 236-257.

Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M. C., & Mandy, W. (2017). "Putting on my best normal": Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), 2519-2534.

Lai, M. C., Lombardo, M. V., Ruigrok, A. N., Chakrabarti, B., Auyeung, B., Szatmari, P., Happé, F., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2017). Quantifying and exploring camouflaging in men and women with autism. Autism, 21(6), 690-702.

Mollow, A. (2006). "When Black women start going on Prozac...": The politics of race, gender, and emotional distress in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah's Willow Weep for Me. MELUS, 31(3), 67-99.

Nario-Redmond, M. R., Noel, J. G., & Fern, E. (2019). Redefining disability, re-imagining the self: Disability identification predicts self-esteem and strategic responses to stigma. Self and Identity, 12(5), 468-488.

Patsavas, A. (2014). Recovering a cripistemology of pain: Leaky bodies, connective tissue, and feeling discourse. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 8(2), 203-218.

Pickens, T. A. (2019). Black madness :: Mad Blackness. Duke University Press.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.

Price, M. (2015). The bodymind problem and the possibilities of pain. Hypatia, 30(1), 268-284.

Schalk, S. (2018). Bodyminds reimagined: (Dis)ability, race, and gender in Black women's speculative fiction. Duke University Press.

Wilkinson, S., & Wilkinson, C. (2023). Pain, No Gain? A joint-autoethnography of our working lives as academics with chronic illnesses. International Journal of Changes in Education, 1(1), 4-10. https://doi.org/10.47852/bonviewIJCE32021657