Hello, welcome to another episode of Unpacking Neuroqueerness. This is your host, George
Muniz Gund. This episode is going to be a relatively short one, but in my opinion
a very important one. And it is why autistics are often accused of being untruthful. So
to start off this episode, I wanted to first remind everyone of the double empathy theory.
And for those that aren't familiar with the double empathy theory, the double empathy theory
was developed by an autistic social psychologist in the UK named Damien Milton. And basically
it talks about how autistics have a different style of communication because out there in
the medical world we hear autistic people described as having deficits in communication,
but when you break it down, what it really is is a difference in communication. It's
kind of like speaking a different language. And this was discovered because studies were
done and they showed that autistic people actually communicate better from autistic person to
autistic person than neurotypicals do from neurotypical person to neurotypical person.
The biggest misunderstandings occur when neurotypicals and autistics try to communicate with each
other because neurotypicals have certain ways of communicating which I'll get into and autistics
have other ways of communicating. So I also talk in a little more depth about the double
empathy theory in episode 12 of this podcast. It's one of the very early episodes, but I
do recommend checking that out because I feel like the double empathy theory is one of the
most important core parts of the neurodiversity paradigm. Anyways, so now I wanted to talk
about the main differences. I mean, there are a lot of things, but I'm going to talk
about the main thing, the main difference that I observe in between as an autistic person
growing up in a neurotypical society. This is what I've observed and I've also talked
to other autistics that have observed this about neurotypical communication. So neurotypicals
or non-autistics or even people that are neurodivergent but not autistic, they will
use direct communication, sorry, they will use non-direct communication. Autistics tend to
use direct communication with no hidden nonverbal implications. Now neurotypicals because of
the way they're raised and they're socialized in society, like you know, because of the
way basically like these social norms that we have in place today in most countries.
People are always scanning for nonverbal cues and expecting other people, including autistic
people, which don't communicate this way, to make corresponding facial expressions when
speaking. And they also, they think, they study facial expressions as sometimes they
give more importance to the facial expression or the tone or whatnot instead of what's
actually being said. And that is a big disadvantage. These kind of social norms where people focus
a lot on eye contact and tone and facial expressions can harm autistics because autistics naturally
are averse to eye contact because of sensory overload and also because it's a lot, it can
be harder for us to focus on what the person is saying if we're looking at their eyes.
It's actually easier if we're not looking at their eyes. But people interpret not making
eye contact. Neurotypical people tend to interpret that as being shady or evasive or hiding something.
And then also, autistic speak in a very monotone way and that can also be misread by neurotypicals
as being cold or careless or curt or blunt or whatnot. Like I've been misinterpreted
that way many times just for speaking in a more monotone voice. And then of course, with
facial expressions, autistic people, including myself, not everyone because every person,
every autistic person is different. But from what I've observed, most autistic people,
including myself, tend to not make a lot of different facial expressions while talking.
Like sometimes for me, especially if I'm trying to make a point and really be as clear and
detailed as I can with something, I'm going to be very focused on my speech. And I'm going
to be saying a lot in my speech, but I might not be really paying attention to my facial
expressions. And my facial expressions might sometimes not correspond to the emotion I'm
feeling when I'm speaking. And a lot of us have kind of more blank face when we tend
to speak, even if we're really excited about something and we also get misinterpreted as
not being happy or not being excited about something when we are, but we're just really
focused on the words instead of whatever facial expressions we're making. So those are just
some reasons why kind of a basic rundown of why we tend to get misinterpreted for the
way we communicate, the way we speak, our intonation, our lack of facial expressions,
and our aversion to eye contact. So this is going to be another short but sweet episode
and hopefully you are able to get a lot out of it. Thank you for listening and I'll see
you guys next time.