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

This isn’t just an article explaining how empathy works in autistic people. It’s is about how empathy works, and doesn’t work, in society. The author points out that what we (mainstream society) see as empathy, often isn’t really empathy at all, but is purely performative virtue signalling.

Everyone could benefit from reading this article, regardless of their neuro type.

@Susan60

Thank you 🙏🥰

Interestingly, I got the book "Against empathy", by Paul Bloom, out of my University library last week. I'd highly recommend it, as he goes into the definitions etc. We're basically saying a lot of the same things regarding how empathy gets defined, but just using different words.

@Susan60

Another fascinating thing I've got from the book - which looks at various studies into the matter - is how not having empathy (as currently defined) doesn't result in more violence, cruelty, etc.

My autistic brain says perhaps we are really underestimating the role of logic in social justice and kindness.

And in fact, a lot of what we currently call empathy results in partisanship, and dehumanizing other groups 🤷‍♀️

@KatyElphinstone
Ohhh…

All of that conflict & cognitive dissonance I’ve experienced over the years… 😩

@KatyElphinstone

Thanks. I’ll put that book on my list.

Are you doing a psych degree? Post grad?

@Susan60

I'm doing a PhD on autism and intergenerational trauma.

@KatyElphinstone @Susan60 Oh, work that needs doing, for sure!

(person with psych PhD)

@naga

🥂😊

@Susan60

@KatyElphinstone @naga

Excellent!

@KatyElphinstone @naga

I’d love to see more study on autism & ageing. I think Sandra Thom-Jones is doing work on this.

@Susan60

That is practically a revolution in itself. Do autistic people age? And are not just children playing with trains? I honestly wonder sometimes if autistic adults are not just extremely inconvenient to the establishment.

It sounds very interesting. I'll look her up.

@naga

@KatyElphinstone @Susan60 And looking at autistic people aging is incredibly confounded with generation.

I'm in the US, and was born in 1969. Nobody was going to look at a hyperlexic kid skipping grades and ask, "hm, maybe autism?"

The actual autistic behaviors and tellls? "Well, everybody knows geniuses are eccentric." And no follow-up.

I started speculating about being autistic around age 30, and adopted the label around age 50. But lots of trauma in between.