The Ableism of Body Language Analysis

These thoughts brought to you by the ten consecutive punches to the self-confidence that is watching a YouTuber you respect laugh at someone for avoiding eye contact.

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[yokaipinata]

It doesn't help that all this "body language analysis" nonsense is also frequently used by 'pickup artists'/'dating coaches', which are their own can of worms

[coena]

Anytime I hear someone describe “shifty” behavior or “signs someone is lying” they end up just describing how I act when I’m telling the truth. Avoiding eye contact and fidgeting? Just standard neurodivergent behaviors.

[nomisunrider]

I was listening to a book about talking to strangers and the assumptions we make, and there was a chapter with a social experiment where people were asked to spot a liar. One of the examples, a girl twirling her hair as she talked, was named an “obvious liar” by most participants, including people like police or interviewers who are self proclaimed experts in the field of body language. I was baffled, cause I assumed she was just nervous, maybe stimming....and I was right.

[lucyheartfilia]

As a psychology student whenever people ask me about what they're thinking or what their body language is saying I always say "Psychology is for understanding minds and mental disorders, not reading minds or predicting events in life"
And people immediately give me a dirty look XD

[ghostoftheashplant]

Once I was having a conversation with this guy and he randomly stopped mid conversation to ask if he had offended me or said something that made me feel defensive. When I told him I had no idea what he was talking about he said "well, you crossed your arms. That means you're withdrawing from the conversation." When I told him "no, I'm just cold" he didn't believe me and started "explaining" "body language" to me. One of my special interests is dog training/animal behavior/communication which is like 95% understanding and interpreting body language. I was so offended.

[Pebble-With-a-Pen]

A list of things I do with my body just because I am neurodivergent:
-avoid eye contact (really love that my own [thankfully former] therapist told me this meant I wasn't paying attention to the conversation. /sarcastic)
-cross my arms, or put them in strange positions because it Feels Right
-fidget, with pretty much anything, at pretty much any time
-bounce my leg, and/or shake my hands, for any number of reasons
-avoid sitting too close to people I don't know
-avoid letting people stand behind me (it's just a habit!! I don't hold a grudge against you I just don't like it! I do this with my own family, who I have a decent relationship with!)
-similar to that last one, I *always* try to sit with my back to a wall, and avoid having my back turned to an open room
-hand flapping, rocking back and forth, etc etc, IT'S STIMMING. IT HAS NO LARGER MEANING
-"talk with my hands" (usually just because I just have excess energy, it has no correlation to my level of interest in the conversation)
None of these mean shit, other than I have adhd, anxiety, and possibly autism, and I move differently. That's it.

[andrecole]

I grew up as an autistic child with a mother that firmly believed this mumbo-jumbo, and thought she was genuinely helping me "Overcome and overachieve" by having me read all of the body language moves and their meanings. It is so validating to hear that I am not wrong for ever picking up on this "lesson"

[victorrodrigues]

As an autistic person I always thought the same and no one ever undertood me- And most of my neurodivergent peers in my friend circle agree

[princesscrystalofthejewelw]

I completely agree! The first time i watched a video like this i was like: "HOLD UP. You don't know this person. You don't know their habits." And "OF COURSE THEY WILL USING SELF-SOOTHING BODY LANGUAGE WHEN THEIR ENTIRE FAMILY WAS JUST MURDERED!"

[wriggleby]

I'm autistic and my biggest fear is somehow being a suspect for a crime. I have an interest in true crime and I just hate so much when I research a case and I see that people are presumed guilty because they don't make eye contact or fidget or don't say much or just generally seem uncomfortable, it really worries me. And when people assume someone close to the victim is to blame because they aren't grieving 'right'. It's so scary.

[BrieBoar]

Honestly, the only body language advice that I've heard that's truly useful is that you have to have a good understanding of someone's "default" body language in order to truly understand them. If you know the default, you can recognize when that particular person strays from their normal. The problem comes from assuming that there is one "normal" that applies to all people at all times.

[Ginxed-coffee]

I have a huge amount of trauma related to my grandma never telling me outright if she is upset with me but instead using guilt tripping, “body cues” (folding laundry with a frown and more force than it needs, stirring the pot faster, etc), giving me the silent treatment, generalizing sentences (like “no one ever helps me”, “I always do this”) to let me know she was angry. I’m autistic so I can’t naturally read others. However, due to this I learned to “read” these cues as “someone is angry with me” but the thing is that these are usually just cues that someone isn’t overtly happy with you all the time and now it sends me into panic to try to find what I did wrong when someone isn’t absolutely happy with me at all times and if they don’t show that they love me at all times my brain assumes they hate me. I can now refuse to read her social cues bc I don’t live with her, but this fucks up all my daily interactions because every hint of anything less than pure joy means the person is angry with me and hates me. My friends are understanding and most of my friends are also tistic and we have a rule about saying exactly what we think and feel, but the rest of my family members aren’t as understanding and they get angry with me all the time and do this to me expecting me not to spiral into panic. I cannot hold eye contact, I cannot actually read body language (even though my masking allows me to fake it and perfectly match anyone’s energy, making a perfectly suited version of myself for them which also makes it harder to interact with groups of ppl due to too much input and variables), and I cannot not fidget or even control my damn tone

[Depressbian]

I am both blind and autistic, and I wholeheartedly agree with everything stated in this video, this is the kind of attention towards problems that has to be shared and spread.

[KakiT]

The "every pointer to lying in body language is also a neurodivergence trait" thing is kinda funny bc my autism (which I don't bother to mask, amuses me when allos find me weird or especially creepy bc I'm a small skinny female) makes me speak the trust at all times if I'm not in danger. I just find honesty therapeutic, but the logic in these bs videos makes me look like the biggest and worst liar on the planet. I remember telling one lie trough my entire life living with my parents. One lie and it took me a lot of effort to tell (funny how the habitual lier I was lying to didn't pick up on the long ass pause I gave before lying)
I wonder how many gullible ppl embarrassed themselves by accusing an autistic person of lying and then being proven wrong publicly. I absolutely believe it has happened at least once

[dstroyer]

Now that I know im autistic the body language content makes me furious.
One of my worst memories is in middle school, a teacher pulled me out of class and kept yelling at me that I was rude and disrespectful for not looking at her or others in the eye, I tried telling her that it made me feel bad and uncomfortable and she called me a liar, I was in tears by the end of it. That memory has always stuck with me.

[JustA-Person]

The eye thing really gets me because I’m autistic and was always told make eye contact make eye contact u gotta make eye contact but then when I did start doing it consistently I was told that “staring” like that was “creepy”. And eye contact makes me lose focus on what I’m saying because it makes me uncomfortable especially the closer I am to someone.

[ronaldiplodicus]

I've been approached before by people asking if I was ok, when I totally was, just because I was sitting by myself. I'm just an introvert who enjoys being by myself. Everything is totally fine. If you want to understand someone, don't try to judge their behavior or body language, just ask them.

[wyvolf]

oh this makes so much sense. no wonder my """friends"" in school always picked me, a neurodivergent queer kid with dyslexia/dyscalculia, on the spectrum with adhd and sprinkle with levels of depers/dereal stuff, as a liar / master manipulator.
it was all ableistic pseudoscience!!

[Theresa-ujle]

“So and so pursed their lips together. This is a retrained, thoughtful expression, meaning we stuck a cord”
Little did they know, so and so had an itchy foot and can’t scratch it until they can take off their shoe

Some body reading can /potentially/ give insight, especially if you know them well, but it will never give the whole story. People are thinking about everything all the time, even if it’s ‘inappropriate’ for the moment

[iniminimoshimo]

my grandpa used to yell at me for giving him dirty looks when in reality it's just the face I pull when I'm confused and thinking about something. apparently it reads as 'angry' to others when it just means 'confused'.