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phinarei https://phinarei.tumblr.com/post/648543992075681792:
vampirecrabs https://vampirecrabs.tumblr.com/post/624045947372093440:
full offense but if you ever talk about empathy like it’s a requirement for being a decent person i fucking hate you like. automatically
empathy isn’t an inherent human experience and it’s not a prerequisite for being good or kind or whatever else. you’re either wired for it or you’re not, it’s not a special skill you can unlock by caring about people hard enough or some other bullshit
hypoempathy (or fluctuating empathy) doesn’t make me or anyone else a bad person. we can care about other people and their emotions without experiencing empathy and to say or imply otherwise is ableist.
empathy ≠ compassion and empathy ≠ sympathy.
if you mean caring about people and their feelings say compassion. if you mean feeling sad for other people when they’re in pain say sympathy.
people who aren’t hypoempathetic / don’t have fluctuating empathy levels that include low or no empathy can and are encouraged to rb but do not fucking derail.
I have fluctuating empathy myself. My wife? None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Entirely baffled by the whole concept. I literally had to explain it to her and break down exactly how it works. She genuinely thought I was mocking her when I would be happy for her when she got new coffee because she knows I hate coffee myself.
She is also the woman who saw that I was about to become homeless while I was grieving the death of my first girlfriend and invited me to move in with her. The same day I met her by the way.
She’s the same woman who found out I had never had a birthday party and collected all of my friends from 3 different states to have a party celebrating the next birthday I had. We had known each other for four months.
She is the woman who found out that I had never had my own computer and she bought me the best gaming rig available at the time over my protests. We had known each other less than a year.
She is the woman who adopted 3 elderly dogs in 4 years to give them the best end of life she could. She had just lost her own mother when she adopted the first one and could barely get our of bed.
My wife is the kindest, most generous, most loving person that I’ve ever known. And she wouldn’t know empathy if it bit her on the ass.
Empathy is not a requirement for being a good person.
