Community research · Facebook · October 2026
I posted a short video: I am autistic and I am justice sensitive and I am allowed to say that. Hundreds of people replied, most of them angry. I read every comment and sorted them, so we could see what was actually being argued about. Nothing is quoted word for word, no one is named, and slurs are described, never repeated.
289 comments read · ≈50 more removed on sight · every comment paraphrased, no names · how this was handled
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If you were in that thread, you saw how it went. Most people arrived hostile, and most of that hostility was aimed at me, not at the idea. But underneath the noise, there's a clear pattern: nearly every misunderstanding is one the research already answers, and the course I’m building is grounded in that research. Numbers are how many comments touched each theme; one comment can touch several.
I removed about 50 of the worst comments before I saved the thread, so the real share of hostile comments is higher. With them counted, it’s closer to 70%.
191 of 289 comments were hostile or mocking. Only 43 were supportive. Counting the ≈50 I removed, it’s closer to 70%.
Most of the hostility went to me: my autism, my gender, my character, my politics, my face. Far fewer comments engaged with the term itself.
32 comments called the term invented. Next came “everyone has it” (12), “it’s political” (15), and “it’s a diagnosis” (11).
30 comments treated the trait as a political or moral claim, which is exactly the confusion the research, and the course, start by untangling.
20 rebuttals made points the research already makes: it’s perceived, it isn’t exclusive, regulation matters, it doesn’t make you right.
Your comments were brief. Where people described experience, it was felt in the body: rumination, anger, dissociation, being called a tattletale as a child.
Misconceptions · 91 comments
In the research, justice sensitivity means one specific thing: how readily a person perceives, and reacts to, events they experience as unfair. That’s a measurable trait. What is actually just is a different question, about how society should be arranged, and people disagree about it. Most of the misunderstandings below either deny the first exists or mistake it for the second.
The construct is treated as invented, as a diagnosis, or as a mood.
Another invented term; something universities dreamed up; pseudo-science; a new “disease” to feel different; labels for everything these days.
What the research says: The trait has validated scales and decades of data. The research itself treats the construct as imperfect, but an imperfect construct doesn’t mean the experience isn’t real.
That’s just being a decent human; most people care about injustice; you mean empathy; it’s like saying you’re autistic and you like wearing clothes.
What the research says: Partly right, and my caption said so. It’s a trait everyone has to some degree, measured as a range. The misreading is hearing a claim to own it.
A new mental illness; rewriting the DSM; a midlife-crisis diagnosis; where does that diagnosis get you.
What the research says: It’s a trait, not a diagnosis. One commenter said exactly that as a rebuttal.
Unregulated emotion and trouble with grey areas; righteous indignation you should learn to let go; the moral level of a young child.
What the research says: The short definition says it isn’t rigidity or oversensitivity. The course also says what you do with it is a separate question, which is close to the more measured versions of this point.
Sensitivity is heard as a political or moral claim.
Leftist or liberal “justice”; soft on crime; a stereotype of affluent liberal women; one commenter claimed justice sensitivity as the reason they vote conservative.
What the research says: You can have very high justice sensitivity and hold almost any politics. The conservative commenter illustrates the course’s point exactly.
Whose definition of justice; real legal justice or what you feel; moral relativism; justice as you see it isn’t a fact.
What the research says: The trait measures perceived injustice by design. Subjectivity is built into the definition, not a flaw in it.
My moral sensibilities are better calibrated than yours; you want to dictate how others see injustice; the most unjust people say things like this.
What the research says: Justice sensitivity doesn’t make someone just. It describes a sensitivity.
Misreadings of what I was claiming for myself.
An autism card for bad behaviour; allergic to accountability; another excuse never to own anything.
What the research says: Nothing in the trait or the course removes responsibility. What we do with it is a different question.
So now it’s because of autism; a defence lawyer joking he didn’t know his job made him autistic; this implies normal people don’t care.
What the research says: My caption opened by saying it isn’t exclusive to neurodivergent people.
Critics who agree with the research · 20 comments
Twenty comments written as rebuttals made points the research already makes, and several made points my caption had already made. A lot of the argument was with a claim nobody had made.
Hostility · 191 comments, plus ≈50 removed on sight
About half of the hostile comments (101) had a clear target. The other 90 were bare insults or dismissals with nothing to sort. If you’ve had comments like these aimed at you, you’re not imagining the pattern.
About 50 comments were so hostile that I deleted them as soon as I saw them. They aren’t counted anywhere else on this page, so every number here is lower than what was actually said.
The r-word, “crazy”, “psychotic”, calls to bring back asylums, low-IQ jokes. The single largest coded target.
You’re not autistic; self-diagnosed; light on the spectrum; faking it for views. Often paired with a claim to defend “real” autistic people.
Narcissism, attention-seeking, virtue signalling, wanting to feel special, an excuse.
Karen, hormonal, “women making things up”, liberal white women. Gender came up nearly as often as autism.
Liberal, leftist, soft on crime, and one reference to a culture-war phrase for empathy. Overlaps with the gendered comments.
Shut up, get off the internet, nobody cares, half-finished thoughts shouldn’t be published.
Comments on my eyes, face, glasses, forehead, and body.
One encouraged me to harm myself. Others called for locking people up or taking away rights.
No codable content: profanity, “cringe”, “yawn”, “who cares”.
I can only go on what people said about themselves. Six commenters said they were autistic. Four rejected the term, mostly saying they’d never heard it or found it embarrassing, and that’s a fair disagreement to have. The other two agreed. Several hostile commenters described themselves as “normal”. The gendered and political framing suggests many came from well outside this community, most likely through the algorithm.
Recognition and lived experience · 43 comments
Your comments were short, often just “same” or “me too”, and easy to miss in that thread. I saw them. The ones that described experience match what I call a moral radar: injustice felt in the body before the mind has words for it.
Same, me too, this is me, this makes sense. Several said they had always felt it and never understood how others weren’t bothered.
Losing a day off to rumination. Anger strong enough to need dissociation. Being labelled a tattletale at school for wanting rules kept. A partner calling their sense of fairness overdeveloped.
Justice consistent rather than sensitive; pattern recognition applied to ethics; a gift of insight; a trait at the core of most religions. A retired restorative justice worker said it should be humanity’s default.
Asking why people are bothered by someone describing their own experience; pointing out the reaction ratio on the post.
A parent and a nephew with the same strong sense of justice, one of them autistic.
Reading the reaction
These are readings of patterns, not judgements of individuals. I’m not diagnosing anyone. But the reaction itself turns out to be a good illustration of the trait.
Many commenters reacted quickly and strongly to something they experienced as unfair: someone, as they saw it, claiming a label, a special status, or permission. That’s close to how the research defines justice sensitivity. Everyone has the trait to some degree, and the thread showed it.
The research names victim sensitivity, the sense that you’re about to be treated unfairly, as the facet most likely to turn into suspicion. A recurring move was suspicion of motive: she’s after attention, benefits, subscribers, or an excuse. That reads less like a response to the idea and more like a fear of being taken advantage of.
Again and again, the objection was that I was trying to be special. That suggests many heard a claim of status, or a ranking of moral worth, which the research doesn’t support. Justice sensitivity doesn’t make anyone just.
Facebook cut my text off after one sentence, so most people only saw the caption. Many replied to claims I didn’t make: that it’s exclusive to autism, that it’s a diagnosis, that it makes me right. Without a definition, people filled the gap with their own.
Thirty comments treated a nervous-system trait as a political position. One commenter claimed justice sensitivity as the reason they vote conservative, which shows the research’s point that the trait comes with any politics.
Those folks have problems that have nothing to do with justice sensitivity. It’s actually scary that people like that are allowed to even be on social media. The thing is, I don’t need to disappear because assholes exist.
Gendered hostility came up nearly as often as denial that I’m autistic. For many commenters, the problem seemed to be who was talking about her own experience, more than what she said.
Method and limits
I saved the comments from Facebook and read all 289 that had content (tags and empty replies left out). Each one got an overall stance (hostile, disagreeing in good faith, supportive, or off-topic) and as many themes as it touched. I used an AI assistant to help sort and count. The judgement calls are mine, and someone else would draw some lines differently. This is community research, not a clinical study. If you commented and want your words left out, tell me and they’ll be removed.
The course isn’t open yet. This is an early look at how it starts. Everything here comes from the research the course is built on.
Justice sensitivity is a measurable psychological trait: how readily a person perceives, and reacts to, events they experience as unfair. It is studied with validated scales and decades of data.
The research measures that trait. It doesn’t tell you what is just, and the course keeps that separate: a theory of what is just is a political or philosophical claim about how society should be arranged. That second question is contested, and the course doesn’t hand you an answer.
“One is a claim about what is right. The other is a fact about how a nervous system is tuned.”
You can have very high justice sensitivity and hold almost any politics.
It comes from one research tradition, relies on self-report and is easily misread. “An imperfect construct does not mean the experience it is reaching for does not exist.”
Not injustice that has been objectively established. That distinction is built into the measurement itself.
Victim, observer, beneficiary and perpetrator. Victim sensitivity, unfairness done to you, is the facet most likely to turn into suspicion. Module 2 goes deeper.
“Justice sensitivity doesn’t make someone just. It describes a sensitivity. What we do with it is a different question.”
Draft course material. Wording may change before the course opens.
I’m still building this course. It isn’t available yet. It’s built on the research behind everything on this page, and it takes apart almost every misunderstanding in that thread, starting in Module 1: what the trait is, what it isn’t, why it can’t tell you what’s just, and why it doesn’t make anyone right. If you recognized yourself here, or you’re tired of explaining it, this is the language I’m writing for you.