Had to “out” myself as autistic to my writing class??

So, this may not be coherent, because I’m actually really shaken up from this happening 🥲 But I wanted to hear opinions or maybe reassurance.

People don’t immediately know I’m autistic (I think… lol.) because in classroom settings of all places, I’m very gregarious and become this, like, class clown version of myself, and I can make everyone laugh, and I’m having a good time, and I’m on good terms with all my classmates and professors. It’s not even like I’m masking, it just feels natural in the group setting.

So I don’t know what it is, but as soon as I’m 1-on-1, like if I’ve gone and gotten lunch with a classmate who I don’t know well yet, it feels like it takes 200% of my effort to interact. I have no idea what to say, and I feel myself becoming very awkward. And I have literally been “accused” of being autistic 3 times now, each time when I was on adderall, because for some reason it completely takes away my ability to mask.

I am autistic, and getting diagnosed has helped me to stop torturing myself every day about social interactions that I wasn’t 100% on my game for.

That being said, in my writing class, I submitted a lighthearted satirical story about an autistic person (she is described as autistic, you don’t have to assume.) It’s just treating social mis-steps in daily life as funny and no big deal, instead of the character torturing themselves about them, because that’s the kind of person I’m working really hard toward becoming.

Basically, there’s 9 students, and these two girls didn’t say anything until the end of the time allotted to my manuscript, and then one asked in an accusatory way if I did any research about autistic people to write it.

Feeling kind of attacked, I said, “Well, no…” and she made a face like “are you serious rn” so I just quickly added, “My brother is autistic!” (a lie), because I didn’t want to say I was.

Then the other girl said, “well shouldn’t you let your brother tell his story” or something like that. And I said, well, this isn’t about him per se, it’s just about experiences of autistic people.

And then the other joined back in and said “well then you do need to do research to write something like this, and do it very carefully, or better yet not write about marginalized people’s (this wasn’t the term she used) experiences at all” !!

I felt like I was literally in fight or flight mode. My whole body started overheating and I just blurted out, Ok, I am autistic!

And I thought I had just made this huge confession, and they would feel bad, but instead the girl just made this disgusted face and looked at the other one like I’d lied on the spot to defend myself.

Now my whole class either knows I’m autistic, or thinks I lied about being autistic to defend writing a story! I just feel like shit.

I’m also asexual. Do I have to out every aspect of my identity that I normally don’t disclose to write about it? I get wanting good representation, but I just feel like there’s something wrong about forcing people to share details that might make make people judge you for identity reasons. Maybe it would be easier to “come out” every time, but it feels too personal to do this with strangers often 🥲