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Regular reminder that being an asshole is not a symptom of any form of neurodivergence. (You can replace “neurodivergent” with depressed, anxious, bipolar, etc. and the diagram works equally well)
ETA: social faux pas, awkwardness, and genuine symptoms of neurodivergence don’t make you an asshole. I shouldn’t have to say this? An “asshole” is someone who enacts a pattern of abusive, controlling, harassing, and/or harmful behavior with no remorse or concern for how other people are affected.
You're still making it a bit too easy for you. "Not caring about other people’s feelings" is very close to "Not able to understand why somebody reacts and feels a certain way" but is definitely not the same thing.
I'm a parent to (at least one diagnosed so far) autistic child and there are plenty of situations in which this very kind, friendly and empathic person is simply unable to understand why one of the other siblings reacted as they did. Has nothing to do with whether they care or not.
This is valid criticism and I’m going to sit with it.
All the same, most of the (adult) autistic folks I’ve known in my life have been quick to apologize and take responsibility, even when other peoples’ reactions don’t make sense to them.
Absolutely. Part of masking is to emulate behavior you've observed even though you don't understand it.
The child in question often need us parents to point out what happened and then they're able to say the correct things. What I meant was that it's not obvious to them that someone got offended - at all - to begin with.
Well said and point well taken.
I always encourage people to communicate, gently and clearly, what the other person did that was hurtful. I have so much empathy for people who are clueless (hi, hello, it’s me). But no empathy at all for people who callously, intentionally harass and hurt others.
OK, but being able to understand the reasons why a person is upset is irrelevant to how you respond when you're made aware that your actions upset them.
Again, if you apologize and try to understand your mistake, you're not an asshole.
"Not understanding other people's feelings" is called lacking empathy, which is a common autism symptom. I'm saying this because it seems like you might be confusing "empathy" with caring about people, a misconception which harms people who lack empathy.
That's an old misconception. Autistic people don't lack empathy any more than neurotypical people. Autistic people may not react the way a neurotypical person expects somebody with empathy to react, but that doesn't mean there's no feeling of empathy. Sometimes we can easily understand someone's feelings, but still not know what we're expected to do in response to that information.