The Double Empathy Problem is like you're D&D characters, and your CHA (charisma) is only full-strength with your own neurotype. When autistics encounter allistics, each sees the other's CHA at -4. Autistics can use the Masking skill to help on some CHA rolls.
The Social Model of Disability is like how a Halfling is fine in their home village, but in a Human town they are too short to reach all the things that have been built for people twice their height.
Am I on the right track here? What would make these better? And do folks have other explanations they have had success using?
@joshsusser@actuallyautistic I think a better way to put it is: autistic people have their own culture. This is largely due to the fact that we see things differently than allistic people do. We see the world in a relentlessly systematic way; a bottom, up perspective, compared to the more casual top down sort of view.
Now imagine that you're talking to someone else from another English speaking country. You're speaking the same language, the words make sense, but they're not making sense. Not to mention a difference in sensitivities. Either of you would be totally lost in the other's culture unless you spend a significant amount of time around people of that culture, and, in some cases, if those differences are accommodated by the host. This sums up both the Double Empathy Problem and the Social Model of Disability. Our "culture" isn't understood by most allistics, and so for that reason our differences aren't accommodated.
@joshsusser@actuallyautistic To illustrate the differences in perspective: imagine you go to an art museum, and you see a sculpture that is a bunch of fragments hanging in such a way that they make the shape of a face when you view it from a distance and at a certain angle.
Allistic people would see this as a sort of "face sculpture." Taking the whole and filtering out the smaller, unimportant details.
Autistic people see as fragments that look like a face when you look at it right, focusing more on the smaller details, seeing it not as just one, whole thing but as every, little detail that makes a whole picture.
Now imagine what an entire world view would look like when you view every, little thing in this rigorously, systematic way, and that can help people understand why there's often things lost in translation when autistic and allistic people interact.
In some places, that need to examine every detail can be a good thing. Along with our lifetime of experience of understanding things different to what those around us understand. Any time negotiations are required, we can be the leaders in carefully defining scope and terms, and getting everyone on the same page.
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