K.J. ElphinstoneIs empathy political?
A thread on autistic empathy.
A still-quite-popular belief about autistic people is that we lack empathy.
I think this is faulty logic.
Here's why:
A thread 🧵
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#ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergent
#DoubleEmpathy #TheoryOfMind
It's true we may lack socially approved ways of expressing fellow-feeling.
Ones that are aware of status and social positioning, and the importance of social performance.
Which could, in a lot of contexts, get read as not caring 🤷♀️
But…
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Maybe our empathy just looks different?
I think autistic empathy can be quite practical (if we're not feeling overwhelmed or under pressure).
And genuine - if not always very smoothly expressed.
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When I was young I'd feel awful about myself if certain people expressed sympathy for me, but I hated it.
I thought there was something wrong with me!
Now, I think I was reacting to incongruence... my skin prickling.
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Now I know that a lot of what gets called "empathy" isn't quite that simple.
It can be about showing deference, or superiority. Or virtue signaling.
Pleasing the right people, in the right ways, at the right times. Making yourself look like a good person.
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Now we're onto the topic of power dynamics 😁
I've noticed autistic empathy can be rather unorthodox. 💟
That could mean feeling compassion for animals, plants, trees, octopuses, sharks, avatars, our plushies… or even inanimate objects.
🧸
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So perhaps it's about direction of travel?
Service and deference, in society, are meant to flow upwards.
Yet we autistics, it seems, are more likely to feel for the excluded person, the animal or child… the spider in the bath, or the earthworm on a sunny road.
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Empathy is usually believed to be a personal virtue, that some people have and others don’t.
I don't think that's the whole story.
It’s also shaped by power. By conditioning. By rewards and punishments. By who’s allowed to have needs, and who's trained to attend to them.
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Autistic people often don't fit that mold.
We get called rigid, naive, inappropriate. But I think it might be a lot more to do with ethical consistency.
If we’re told honesty matters, we tell the truth. If we’re taught kindness matters, we try to direct it where it seems most needed.
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So perhaps autistic people aren’t empathy-impaired at all.
Just misaligned with a social order that expects empathy to be smooth, selective, strategic, performative, and status-aware.
And maybe that's really what gets pathologized.
End of 🧵
Full article, with refs, in the link below.
Hazel-Quercus 🟡⚪🟣⚫@KatyElphinstone empathy is NTs is 'performative'. yes, absolutely.
can anyone look around at the state of the world and think that neurotypicals are doing a good job of practicing empathy? or that they even have the right to define what empathy looks like, to the exclusion of others?
my autistic friends are extraordinarily empathetic, it just doesn't look exactly like what we are told it's supposed to.
Kenneth Bousquet@coppercrush @KatyElphinstone You're absolutely right.
sonja@coppercrush @KatyElphinstone @BernieDoesIt not only does our empathy not "look correct", we are also chided for not performing it correctly.
Yes, making us terrified for even trying. I should add this aspect to my article actually.
🙏🥰
@KatyElphinstone @coppercrush @BernieDoesIt for me, ive noticed that when people call you out for "doing empathy wrong", theyre actually asking for pity and sympathy, which makes me think that many many people don't know the difference between empathy and sympathy.
i will readily admit that certain aspects of my empathy is
lacking (for example, i dont know exactly what it feels lile to lose a parent), and i can *try* to fake sympathy but my initial reaction is just to treat people the way i want to be treated which is not what people want.
Morgan ⚧️@emily_rugburn @KatyElphinstone @coppercrush @BernieDoesIt there's also a lot of value in acknowledging where you can't empathize. When my dad died, I would have *loved* if people acknowledged that they don't know what it's like to lose a parent. Instead it was shit like "yeah my fish died once that sucked" and that was absolutely not what I needed. I appreciate genuine empathy, and I appreciate self-aware sympathy, but the shit neurotypicals call empathy is frequently very unhelpful
@raphaelmorgan @KatyElphinstone @coppercrush @BernieDoesIt and theres such on emphasis on fake sympathy. and i just. cant. do it.
Hm yes, so actually just honestly saying "I don't know what you're going through."
Sad Trombone 
@raphaelmorgan @emily_rugburn @KatyElphinstone @coppercrush @BernieDoesIt I hypothesize NTs are deeply uncomfortable with empathy unless they are genuinely good person(?), NDs are not. I could be wrong of course
@farah @raphaelmorgan @KatyElphinstone @coppercrush @BernieDoesIt im not sure they know the difference between empathy and sympathy
Sky, Cozy Goth Prince of Cats@emily_rugburn @coppercrush @KatyElphinstone @BernieDoesIt This seems like it's along the same lines as when many of my fellow non-autistics say they communicate well and autistic folk don't, only for it to be obvious on observation that such complainers are stubbornly stuck in one mode of communication and refuse to consider others.
Reminds me of when monolingual English-speakers complain about the language skills of English-as-a-second-language speakers, who are literally doing more language
@skysailor @coppercrush @KatyElphinstone @BernieDoesIt it seems as though...theyre...lacking...
EMPATHY 🤣
EMPATHY 🤣
Laurent Bercot@coppercrush @KatyElphinstone Counterpoint: there are a significant amount of neurotypical people in the world who have, and practice, empathy, but they're not in positions of power.
The problem is that the structures of power make it easier for sociopaths to rise to the top. There is no empathy at the top (because in a hierarchical world, it's really difficult). We live in a world ruled by sociopaths.
But empathy exists in NTs. It's in the local communities. It's in the little people. It's not in the news.
Yes, that's true... By definition really, when you look at what having relative power does to people. I call it the 'empathy lobotomy' 😢
https://www.neurofabulous.org.uk/what-power-does.html
and...
CJPaloma might be hiking@KatyElphinstone @ska @coppercrush I think this is only true of "power over" or authoritarian forms of power.
I think power is often misunderstood, and reduced to include only certain forms of power.
Power itself is the ability to make binding decisions about things. We do that in cooperative ways all the time in healthy relationships and well functioning groups, This doesn't seem to corrode empathy/compassion.
But totally agree, hierarchy bound (authoritarian forms of) power sure do.
These are the effects of relative power, according to research studies.
So, really, simply having more power than those around you.
But yes, in terms of agency, I think I get what you mean... and I'd call one type 'liberatory power' and the other 'supremacist power' (which I got from Cyndi Suarez' book on power). Does that sound about right?
@KatyElphinstone @ska @coppercrush
yes very much, I'm not familiar with her, but the framing sounds intriguing. My distinctions come fmostly rom Riane Eisler's work on dominating vs nurturing societies.
And how from that it's hard not to notice how these dominator societies typically have heavy colonial histories and authoritarian strains running all through them…
Riane Eisler - exactly this. I love her work, came across it thanks to @punishmenthurts, who wrote an alternate 'the autistic and the blade'..
I've used her concepts in some of my articles, e.g., https://www.neurofabulous.org.uk/should-parents-be-paid.html (ref-ed in footnote 6). And working on a book length project about power dynamics - so interesting how many of us are thinking about these topics!
I think it's great, as I reckon we need some change urgently.
And yes, the colonial histories - the Vikings (and other cultures like that) who for some reason we all revere, grabbing slaves and so on.
Dominating and taking.
Sorry to do that "have you read" thing on you... but have you come across Thorstein Veblen's 'Theory of the Leisure Class'? It was just really... thought provoking. How we came to ..ok, situation in early 1900s since I think that's about when he wrote it.
@KatyElphinstone @ska @coppercrush lol, no worries. the title is familiar, but no, after reading the wikipedia article, I'm sure I haven't... looks like he had some great observations though. I can see having them stick in your mind and furthering them. Good luck on your book, I have some thoughts on power dynamics myself, if you're interested, more info at my bio as they say.
Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama@KatyElphinstone @ska @coppercrush
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but there are areas in life where NTs lack it, it’s my obsession, spanking. They may have empathy generally, but they pretty much all get around it in that area - and of course that makes it harder for the next generation to empathize in that area, that’s the NT psychology of repression.
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I can rant for days about empathy, it’s an infodump, never enough, but I think that will do here. 💜
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but there are areas in life where NTs lack it, it’s my obsession, spanking. They may have empathy generally, but they pretty much all get around it in that area - and of course that makes it harder for the next generation to empathize in that area, that’s the NT psychology of repression.
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I can rant for days about empathy, it’s an infodump, never enough, but I think that will do here. 💜
Dianora (Diane Bruce)@ska @coppercrush @KatyElphinstone Yes of course it does but the media loves to conflate autism and sociopathic behaviours.
Philippa Cowderoy@Dianora @ska @coppercrush @[email protected] And psychiatry loves to use the idea we "don't understand" to help their gaslighting fuckery, ofc
bjb 
Sociopaths are a small fraction of the population (maybe between 10-20%), and I would argue that makes them atypical and not "neuro-typical".
Maybe they are neuro-divergent in their own way.