I updated “Autistic Empathy” and “The Double Empathy Problem: Developing Empathy and Reciprocity in Neurotypical Adults” with a selection from “I’m autistic. I just turned 36 — the average age when people like me die. – Vox”.

I’ve spent my whole life being told that non-autistic people are so brilliant and intuitive when it comes to social issues. Like many autistic people, though, I haven’t always felt like I’ve seen much empathy, compassion, or understanding. And the evidence is starting to suggest that we’re not wrong about the level of judgment and stereotyping we face.

Source: I’m autistic. I just turned 36 — the average age when people like me die. – Vox

“Double Empathy Problem” also received a selection from “A Pathological Look at Neurotypical Behavior – An Intense World” to round out the opening grafs reversing the pathological lens.

Another odd behavior neurotypicals exhibit is their habit of “small talk.” From what we can tell, small talk appears to be talking just for the sake of talking. A “how are you doing” results in the same non-answer of “fine.” It seems unlikely everyone everywhere at all times is truly “fine,” so it seems that that is a non-answer to what is in fact a non-question. It has been observed that if you give an actual answer to the question, the questioner gets frustrated and impatient, as though they are annoyed that you would actually answer them. A whole conversation can actually go on like that, with general questions giving rise to pat answers so that you could actually change out any pair of people and you would end up with the same conversations each time. The vast majority of their conversations are not about anything of any substance, and, again, they seem positively annoyed if you try to engage them in such a conversation. As a group neurotypicals seem positively frivolous most of the time.

Source: A Pathological Look at Neurotypical Behavior – An Intense World

It also received a couple selections supporting the point on marginalization, critical distance, and imagination.

Marginal people are those who are the dominant culture to some extent but are blocked from full participation because of their social status. One need not be a marginal person to be a sociologist, but marginality has often provided the critical distance necessary to inspire a thriving sociological imagination.

Source: Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society, Updated (Available Titles CengageNOW) – Kindle edition by Margaret L. Andersen, Howard F. Taylor. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Being the majority and having the majority power, they can just be themselves without worry about how anybody is thinking about them.

Du Bois would probably not be surprised if he learned that other minorities were put in similar situations in the U.S., but it probably didn’t occur to him that there were people out there with different kinds of minds, and that they too would develop such a doubleness.

I know all about this double-mindedness, because I experience it constantly. I not only have to think about what I’m going to say or do, but I have to think about how others might take it. I can either just say or do whatever I want as I want and hope that I don’t do something that will set people off, or I can always consciously think about everything I say or do before I say or do it, testing against what I expect the expectations are (and hoping I’m getting those right). If it takes me a moment to respond to something, it’s because I’m going through all this nonsense to make sure I don’t say or do something wrong.

Source: On the Double-Mindedness Developed Among the Different – An Intense World