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…

2/10

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.

3/10

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.

4/10

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.

5/10

#PowerDynamics #Hierarchy

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.

🧸

6/10

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.

7/10

#Autistic

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.

8/10

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.

9/10

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.

@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.