British Home Secretary Suella Braverman says LGBT, gender discrimination not grounds for asylum https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2023/09/26/British-home-secretary-urges-refugee-convention-reform/6841695731279/ (Me: STFU let her live as LGBT in Uganda or Lebanon to understand and have minimum of empathy and understanding)
@nedhamson @harriettmb she’s like thatcher in that you do that and she’d come back and still keep stamping down….you can’t teach empathy to someone who doesn’t want to learn…
@gemma You can’t teach empathy. Full stop. @nedhamson @harriettmb@mastodon.ie
@AlliFlowers @nedhamson @harriettmb thinking like that results in discrimination against people who lack native empathy… you can develop empathic thought processes, even if you don’t have the hardwiring for it.
In the same way people with empathy can learn to turn it off…
@gemma I’d need to see some scientific studies upholding this. I’ve never seen a study suggesting that empathy can be learned. And even if someone who has empathy can turn it off, it doesn’t stay off permanently. It’s too painful. @nedhamson @harriettmb@mastodon.ie
@AlliFlowers @gemma @harriettmb When you lose status or votes for not being empathetic, you can learn to be functionally empathetic even if you do not feel it.
@nedhamson Fake it until no one notices? @gemma @harriettmb@mastodon.ie
@AlliFlowers @nedhamson @harriettmb I mean it feels a little turing testy, but if you meet me when I'm masking, and you can't tell I'm neurodivergent, what's the difference?
If you cannot tell whether someone is empathic naturally, or emulating empathy (and acting in an empathic/caring/considerate way), is it really faking it?
@gemma This is a case of opinion vs. science. @nedhamson @harriettmb@mastodon.ie
@AlliFlowers @nedhamson @harriettmb
Your assertion is that you cannot teach empathy...
As part of that assertion, you've cited a paper in medical ethics that describes figuring out how to teach empathy, and cited your own unpublished research (which is in the field of instructional design?).
I'm not finding this a productive discussion, given it distracts from the inhumanity of claiming that persecuted queer and afab people should be blocked from claiming asylum within the UK.
