As someone who scores very high in #autistic masking, I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc.
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RE: https://mas.to/@KatyElphinstone/116070156336606549
As someone who scores very high in #autistic masking, I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc. lack of empathy with people they can't understand, and have never had to develop a means of safely communicating with to the extent there are scientific tests to rate that autistic capacity on a scale?
What I would love to see is people study allistics in the same way, but also require them to do so in a way that is alien to their dominant model of communication. 🧵
I say this because I used to communicate regularly with a friend's non-verbal son. We developed the start of a model from day 1, because I learned that in order to communicate, I must meet someone else on their terms in order to make myself understood. We were able to establish a somatic understanding in no time at all.
His family had been trying to communicate with him, specialists had been involved, but I was the only one to reach him.
🧵
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I say this because I used to communicate regularly with a friend's non-verbal son. We developed the start of a model from day 1, because I learned that in order to communicate, I must meet someone else on their terms in order to make myself understood. We were able to establish a somatic understanding in no time at all.
His family had been trying to communicate with him, specialists had been involved, but I was the only one to reach him.
🧵
I explained it clearly, but none of the allistic family members could really understand. I basically had to break it down to extremely basic building blocks, and while they could work with that with their son, they couldn't apply that to the rest of their lives. How is that NOT a disability?
They wanted me on as a full time caregiver, but I absolutely refused. One, I'm not the "Autistic Whisperer", and two, they had an explanation and access to more tools than their son, who had given up
🧵
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I explained it clearly, but none of the allistic family members could really understand. I basically had to break it down to extremely basic building blocks, and while they could work with that with their son, they couldn't apply that to the rest of their lives. How is that NOT a disability?
They wanted me on as a full time caregiver, but I absolutely refused. One, I'm not the "Autistic Whisperer", and two, they had an explanation and access to more tools than their son, who had given up
🧵
on trying to communicate with them.
As allistics, they had a complete INABILITY to understand the world from another perspective, something very clearly enumerated in testing for autistic masking. That level of masking to facilitate communication REQUIRES empathy, probably to a much deeper degree than simply going along as most allistics do, assuming things are normal and being "weirded out" when someone does something "abnormal" and acting on social biases without a lot of thought.
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RE: https://mas.to/@KatyElphinstone/116070156336606549
As someone who scores very high in #autistic masking, I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc. lack of empathy with people they can't understand, and have never had to develop a means of safely communicating with to the extent there are scientific tests to rate that autistic capacity on a scale?
What I would love to see is people study allistics in the same way, but also require them to do so in a way that is alien to their dominant model of communication. 🧵
@undead Projection.
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RE: https://mas.to/@KatyElphinstone/116070156336606549
As someone who scores very high in #autistic masking, I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc. lack of empathy with people they can't understand, and have never had to develop a means of safely communicating with to the extent there are scientific tests to rate that autistic capacity on a scale?
What I would love to see is people study allistics in the same way, but also require them to do so in a way that is alien to their dominant model of communication. 🧵
@undead I had someone tell me I don’t have theory of mind because I didn’t agree with their take on something. I’m at a loss years later to understand why that situation was okay.
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@undead I had someone tell me I don’t have theory of mind because I didn’t agree with their take on something. I’m at a loss years later to understand why that situation was okay.
I hate it when people do that. There is so much bias implicit in how Theory of Mind is constructed and applied. Using it as a social metric is broken. I've had different people explain it to me, and literally have had different explanations every time I've brought up issues with their "reasoning" behind their view of it.
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RE: https://mas.to/@KatyElphinstone/116070156336606549
As someone who scores very high in #autistic masking, I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc. lack of empathy with people they can't understand, and have never had to develop a means of safely communicating with to the extent there are scientific tests to rate that autistic capacity on a scale?
What I would love to see is people study allistics in the same way, but also require them to do so in a way that is alien to their dominant model of communication. 🧵
> I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc. lack of empathy with people they can't understand
the obvious answer is the 'ironic' one: they lack empathy…
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I hate it when people do that. There is so much bias implicit in how Theory of Mind is constructed and applied. Using it as a social metric is broken. I've had different people explain it to me, and literally have had different explanations every time I've brought up issues with their "reasoning" behind their view of it.
@undead @c0debabe "Theory of Mind".
You wanna predict a reaction, you try to figure out the base need driving your interaction, not the superstructure bullshit they'll use after to justify the behavior.
Materialism is how AND why the world works. Idealism is why the world in this local area works along these particular pathways.
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on trying to communicate with them.
As allistics, they had a complete INABILITY to understand the world from another perspective, something very clearly enumerated in testing for autistic masking. That level of masking to facilitate communication REQUIRES empathy, probably to a much deeper degree than simply going along as most allistics do, assuming things are normal and being "weirded out" when someone does something "abnormal" and acting on social biases without a lot of thought.
@undead Empathy is a function of experience. Researchers (outside of autism circles) have suggested two kinds of empathy: affective (relating to another's experience that matches their own), and cognitive (empathy for an experience unlike our own which must be imagined).
This is true of everyone. Autists, being in the minority, are expected to develop cognitive empathy for allists, a task made easier for us by another fact: affective empathy can be gained without direct experience through the use of narratives. Studies found that those who had read stories (even fictional) about someone with a different background became able to affectively empathize with real people of that background.
As with other vectors for differences in experience, there are simply more stories about allists, and a higher expectation for autists to empathize.
Allists are very good at having affective empathy for other allists, because they share common experiences of their own inner worlds. But they've not been tasked with understanding autistic mindsets, and haven't been exposed to our stories.
"Theory of mind" is a problematic phrase, and hard to use in a sentence. So I've come up with "extrospection" to describe the active process of perspective-taking for those unlike ourselves. It is a skill that can be learned by almost anyone. (I want this to catch on, so please stack it if you want!)
And it can be self-taught. It starts with curiosity and an underlying assumption that not everyone is the same.
[Edit to include @KatyElphinstone from the original thread.]
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RE: https://mas.to/@KatyElphinstone/116070156336606549
As someone who scores very high in #autistic masking, I keep asking myself why do allistics keep trying to assoc. lack of empathy with people they can't understand, and have never had to develop a means of safely communicating with to the extent there are scientific tests to rate that autistic capacity on a scale?
What I would love to see is people study allistics in the same way, but also require them to do so in a way that is alien to their dominant model of communication. 🧵
@undead wtf? Because "Janet" [from the jellyfish study] relayed poorly-checked information that led to someone's death, doctors think "Janet" is beyond reproach?
And because we beg to differ, *we're* broken?
What kind of f'ing planet is this?!?
<Breathe... Ffffff... Breathe... > -
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