AuSociality: Conceptualising Autistic Sociality Through An Ecological Lens

Exploring The Structural Nature Of Autistic Social Connections

Abstract

Autistic community has traditionally been ignored by the medical industrial institution at large, positioning Autistic people as asocial and in deficit when engaging in social exchanges. In this article, the author explores the nature of the double empathy problem by positioning Autistic community through a post-humanist lens, as a mycelial structure growing in a rhizomatic nature. Thus, the author argues that Autistic sociality (AuSociality) represents a non-hierarchical interdependent social style that creates a fundamentally different culture when compared to mainstream sociality. It is then this socio-cultural difference that the author argues creates the double empathy divide.

Introduction: The Myth Of Social Deficit

For decades, dominant medical and psychological frameworks have positioned Autistic people as fundamentally lacking in social capacity. This framing is deeply embedded within what Chapman’s (2023) Empire of Normality critiques as the normative machinery of psychiatry. It casts Autistic communication as broken, deficient, or incomplete; the Autistic person in this story is alone in the social world, reaching out but never quite achieving self-actualisation. This concept of never achieving true sociality echoes Yergeau’s (2018) demi-rhetoricitiy where we are both too Autistic to achieve rhetorical value, but simultaneously not Autistic enough to engage in the rhetoric surrounding autism. Thus, we are both deficient of social capital by exclusion and simultaneously framed as suffering for not having enough social capital.

I would however argue that this framing makes a fundamental mistake by assuming that Autistic people lack the social ability required to access the social capital provided by community.

Emerging Autistic-led scholarship and community discourse suggest something incredibly poinient: that Autistic people are not asocial, but differently social; that what has been misread as absence is in fact difference. This difference is not random or disordered, but patterned; culturally, relationally, and deeply complex when approached as an ecological phenomenon.

This article explores that possibility. It reframes the Milton’s (2012) double empathy problem as a rupture between two distinct social ecologies. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, alongside Autistic scholars such as Nick Walker, M. Remi Yergeau, Robert Chapman, Erin Manning, and Helen Edgar, it proposes a new conceptualisation: AuSociality; a rhizomatic, mycelial mode of being with others.

The Double Empathy Problem As Cultural Rupture

The double empathy problem, first articulated by Damian Milton (2012), suggests that communication breakdowns between Autistic and non-Autistic people arise from mutual misunderstanding rather than unilateral deficit. This shifts the question from “What is wrong with Autistic people?” to “What happens when different ways of being meet?”

Yet even this framing, while powerful, often remains at the level of interaction. It describes the traits of disconnection, but not its deeper structure.

To understand that structure, we must move beyond individual cognition and into a broader cultural cognitive style.

As Nick Walker (2021) argues in Neuroqueer Heresies, neurodivergence is not simply a neurological variation but a way of being-in-the-world; a relational ontology. Similarly, Remi Yergeau (2018) challenges the assumption that Autistic people lack rhetoric, instead demonstrating that Autistic communication has been systematically misrecognised by neuronormative frameworks.

The double empathy problem, then, is not merely a mismatch of signals. It is a collision of epistemologies; two different ways of organising meaning, attention, and connection at the level of social culture.

Rhizomes and Mycelium: Mapping Autistic Sociality

Autistic social behaviour can be understood as a form of ethodiversity (Tarragnat, 2025) where behaviour and existential nature differs from broader human ecologies and sociality. To make sense of this difference, we turn to the concept of the rhizome.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987) describe the rhizome as a non-hierarchical network, spreading horizontally, without a central root or organising authority. Unlike tree-like (arborescent) structures, which impose order through hierarchy and linear progression, rhizomes grow through connection, multiplicity, and emergence.

This concept maps uncannily well onto Autistic modes of sociality.

Autistic communities often form not through rigid social hierarchies or implicit rules, but through shared intensities; common interests, mutual recognition, and moments of deep resonance. Connections are not governed by status or social performance, but by attunement. As with Munday’s (2023) Neuroanarchy concept, they actively resist normativisation and the enforcement of rigid social structures.

Here, the metaphor of mycelium becomes useful.

Mycelial networks, vast underground fungal systems, operate through distributed intelligence, resource-sharing, and mutual support. They are not visible in the same way as trees, but they sustain entire ecosystems. They communicate chemically, adaptively, and relationally.

Neimanis (2009) positions humans as bodies of water stating “We are both materially and semiotically entwined with other bodies of water”. Autistic culture is deeply entwined from space to space, and as such I would understand the AuSocial community as the fungal mycelium, connected and interdependent; sharing resources and knowledge across a rhizomatic structure. We are all entwined and impacted by one another either directly or indirectly.

Autistic sociality, or AuSociality, can be understood in similar terms:

• It is distributed, rather than centralised

• It is interest-driven, rather than norm-driven

• It is relational, rather than performative

• It is emergent, rather than scripted

As Helen Edgar (2023) suggests in her work on Autistic relational spaces, these modes of connection create entire realms of interaction that are often invisible to those outside them but deeply meaningful within.

Minor Gestures and the Subtle Architecture of Connection

One of the reasons AuSociality is so often misrecognised is that it does not always conform to dominant expectations of social behaviour. It does not necessarily announce itself loudly or clearly; instead, it often operates through what Erin Manning (2016) calls minor gestures.

Minor gestures are small, often imperceptible acts that nonetheless carry transformative potential. They are the hidden shifts in attention, the subtle acts of recognition, the shared moment of focus on a particular detail.

In Autistic sociality, these gestures might include:

• Parallel engagement in a shared interest

• The offering of information as a form of care

• The quiet presence of co-regulation without demand

• The recognition of another’s intensity without judgment

To a neuronormative observer, these gestures may appear insufficient, incomplete, or even absent. But within an Autistic socio-relational ecology, they are the very fabric of connection. This is the site where the double empathy problem becomes most visible as a failure to perceive communication that is already happening. Neuronormative sociality lacks the ability to perceive the minor gestures that constitute the Autistic socio-relational ecology.

Neuroqueering Sociality: Beyond Normative Interaction

To fully grasp AuSociality, we must also consider the process of neuroqueering.

For Nick Walker, neuroqueering involves disrupting and reimagining normative assumptions about mind, behaviour, and identity. It is both a personal and political act; a refusal to conform to neuronormative expectations, and an exploration of alternative ways of being.

AuSociality can be understood as inherently neuroqueer. It resists:

• The demand for constant eye contact

• The prioritisation of small talk over meaningful exchange

• The performance of socially acceptable affect

• The linear progression of conversation

Instead, it embraces:

• Nonlinear communication

• Depth over breadth

• Authenticity over performance

• Connection through shared focus

In this sense, AuSociality is a challenge to the very idea of the norm itself rather than simply being a deviation from social norms.

The Political Ecology of Misunderstanding

The misrecognition of AuSociality is not neutral. It is shaped by systems of power.

As Robert Chapman (2023) argues, the concept of “normality” is historically contingent and politically enforced. It privileges certain ways of being while marginalising others. Within this framework, AuSociality is actively devalued as a form of sociality.

Similarly, Remi Yergeau (2018) highlights how Autistic communication has been systematically excluded from what counts as legitimate rhetoric. Autistic voices are often dismissed as incoherent, inappropriate, or irrelevant; not because they lack meaning, but because they do not conform to dominant expectations.

The double empathy problem, then, is not simply interpersonal. It is structural. It reflects a world that has been designed for one kind of sociality, and which struggles to recognise another.

Toward Recognition: Reframing AuSociality

If we are to move beyond the double empathy divide, we must do more than increase awareness. We must reframe our understanding of sociality itself.

This involves:

1. Recognising Autistic sociality as valid and complete
   Not a lesser version of neurotypical interaction, but a different form altogether

2. Valuing minor gestures as meaningful communication
   Learning to perceive connection where it has previously been overlooked

3. Embracing relational multiplicity
   Accepting that there are many ways to be social, not just one

4. Challenging neuronormative standards
   Questioning whose ways of being are privileged, and why

In doing so, we begin to see that the problem is not a lack of empathy but a lack of shared ground and cultural competence. Neuronormative social styles approach AuSociality the same way one might read a language they are unable to translate

Conclusion: The Mycelial Future

Autistic community is not a collection of isolated individuals. It is a living network; a mycelial web of connection, care, and shared experience. It grows beneath the surface, often unseen, in a rhizomatic style. It resists hierarchy. It thrives on mutual recognition.

When we are able to understand it as difference as opposed to deficit, we open the possibility of something new. Not a world where Autistic people are forced to adapt to dominant norms, but a world where multiple forms of sociality can coexist. Where mycelial rhizomes in shared space and where minor gestures are recognised as the seeds of transformation.

A place where empathy is not a one-way demand, but a shared practice of becoming-with.

References

Chapman, R. (2023). Empire of normality: Neurodiversity and capitalism. Pluto Press.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Edgar, H. (2023, July 28). Ethodivergent hearth building: A relational neuroqueering community practice. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/ethodivergent-hearth-building-a-relational-neuroqueering-community-practice/

Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.

Milton, D. E. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & society, 27(6), 883-887.

Munday, K. (2023, April 17). Definitions for Autistic shielding and neuro-anarchy. Autistic and Living the Dream. https://autisticltd.co.uk/2023/04/17/definitions-for-autistic-shielding-and-neuro-anarchy/

Neimanis, A. (2009). Bodies of water, human rights and the hydrocommons. Topia: Canadian journal of cultural studies, 21, 161-182.

Tarragnat, O. (2025, February 25). What is ethodiversity? Ombre Tarragnat. https://ombretarragnat.com/2025/02/25/what-is-ethodiversity/

Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, Autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.

Yergeau, M. R. (2018). Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness. Duke University Press.

Stimpunks Foundation. (n.d.). Neurodiversity and cultural paradigms.