Aspies do have empathy.

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Why do people say that people with Aspergers lack empathy?The people on Wrong Planet have a lot of empathy and seem to identify with others suffering,even with NTs who are difficult to understand.A lot of NTs don't seem to have empathy and don't seem to notice suffering unless it's pointed out to them.Some people don't seem to identify with others suffering.I've noticed this with the way they treat animals.I think this is because animals can't speak up for themselves,so they take advantage of this and are cruel to them.I think this is what happened to me when I was younger.I didn't speak up for myself and I was bullied just for being quiet.Everyone's different but in my experience Aspergers people generally seem to have more empathy than NTs.

I don't see a lot of identifying with NT suffering here. I see a lot of assumptions about what they're like, what they meant, and what they think.

From my understanding, when medical professionals refer to autistic people lacking empathy, they are talking about the ability to recognise emotions. One important survival mechanism for animals is that they need to be able to recognise when another animal is angry, annoyed, sad etc. Autistic people tend to lack this intuitive awareness.

On the other hand, autistic people are definitely able to feel and understand emotions once they are made aware of them. This is the more widely used definition of empathy.

I think people confuse these different types of empathy and assume that autistics don't feel anything. Someone feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Auties' lack of empathy is about cognitive empathy (i.e Theory of Mind).

Oversimplified example:
-NT can bully, and they do know that they are hurting you and they like it.
-Aspies can "bully" (apperent bullying), but it's not they intention to hurt you.

PD: Don't use these examples to generalize.

I've found that assumption really strange. I do think it is more what Aaronzx said, that we might have a harder time reading people's emotions and then responding to those, but when we are aware of their feelings, our capacity for empathy is the same.

I would add that, just as with NTs, I see people with AS who will discount/throw out other people's emotions if they find them "illogical" or think they don't "make sense." I think NTs might hide this behind moral judgments more, while people with AS are more likely to straight up state that they don't think someone else's emotions make sense or that they find their emotions "wrong" in some way.

I do find that the (both Aspie and NT) people who come across as least empathetic are often those who fall into the most dominant segments of the population. They are used to being the default center of attention and are less likely to have been in a position of having to repeatedly "code switch" or mask parts of their identity in order to get their needs met or avoid exclusion. When you have to "code-switch", and the more you need to, the greater the likelihood that you won't assume your experiences are the only ones or the choices you have are the same ones others have. To me, this explains the relatively greater rate of empathy I've experienced when interacting with people who are female, non-white, LGBTQIA, "disabled", lower-income, etc. (I think these experiences can also push some people (especially those who experience fewer lower societal status markers) towards a bitterness of not wanting to extend empathy to others when they themselves were denied it in a similar situation.)

I've only gone to one AS meeting, but I and my Aspie friend whom I went with were both very disturbed at the way that NTs were really disregarded, devalued, and dehumanized by many of the other people there (Coffeebean, I'm new to these boards and I'm hoping they're not as you're describing them!). To me, empathy isn't being able to feel for someone else in the same position or with the same experiences as you. It's being able to feel for someone else in a very different position or with a very different set of experiences than you. This kind of thought takes creativity (interesting side note: I came across a study a while back that showed empathy as linked with an actual spatial ability to imagine oneself in a different place) but it also comes with costs -- increasing our empathy means that we may experience more suffering in the world (through knowing others' suffering) as well as increasing our own pain (realizing the pain we've inadvertently caused others, feeling shame for how we've hurt others, feeling more anxiety about the possibility of hurting others).

Agreed. The clinical understanding of Empathy has more to do with being able to read nonverbal "body language" cues and understand what emotions another person is experiencing and knowing how to respond appropriately, than it does with 'resonating' to another person's emotional state, which is Sympathy.

Most people don't make the distinction between the two, but they are not the same thing.

I am not particularly adroit at guessing what someone else is thinking or feeling just by looking at them, and even when I completely understand and sympathize with what another person is going through emotionally, I usually have no idea how I'm supposed to react to that or what they need me to do and even if I do know, I'm not always able to offer much in the way of comfort.

Also, keep in mind that the diagnostic criteria involving Empathy and Theory of Mind are written with autistic children in mind and children with autism have a much more limited emotional and intellectual palette than adults with autism, because they have less life experience.

I think the whole topic of empathy and autism is really unclear and confusing.
I struggle with empathy in a few ways. The most obvious one being, I get so absorbed into what I'm doing that I can appear to be blatantly disregarding other people's feelings and needs. Which is true, I'm really am tuning them out, but not at all intentionally at all. It's like I'm in another realm. I think that's one very obvious reason, that probably many of us struggle with. Which is the unintentional "offensiveness". 
But that alone doesn't mean we lack empathy. And in fact, I don't know many people anyway who are particularly good at actually empathising with people, because it sucks up an insane amount of mental and physical energy. Most people simply sympathise and then move along. 
Empathy requires massive amounts of work and the ability to really be aware of people. Which brings me to my next point. I either do not empathise at all, or I empathise so heavily that I am just as miserable as the other person I'm trying to relate to. I don't really have an in between setting. And that level of empathy is hard to translate into readable or audible explanation for me (since I also struggle to communicate feelings as a whole). It's a deep feeling. 
I don't not empathise, I struggle to find balanced levels of it. I struggle with figuring out when and where to apply it, and to what degree. I empathise so hard for every little circumstance that I eventually go into overload from that, shut off, and have to go through a period of no empathising in an attempt to take a mental break. 
I really don't think we lack or don't have the ability to empathise. But just like missing social cues, it's something that needs more help with developing and expressing. 
As far as NTs being less empathetic than people with AS, I just don't agree. I think that kind of abusive or insensitive behaviour can happen in anyone who was/is abused and treated poorly themselves. But I see where you're coming from. It's not easy to be in that position where everyone is labeling and making false assumptions about you. I don't appreciate that people assume I'm just being insensitive or rude when that couldn't be further from the truth. 

Interesting! I have always viewed sympathy as sort of a weaker version of empathy, like "I know what you're feeling and good luck dealing with it!" To me, empathy implied a greater sense of unity ("I know what you're feeling and it matters to me"). But in your description, I am not intuitively empathetic. I've of course gotten better at reading body language cues over time and with sustained interest/effort, but I still often ask people who are in distress what they need. Because I am sincerely sympathetic, I think many respond well (I am not just doing something because I think I have to; I genuinely care about their distress). I also sometimes offer a few guesses as to what they might need for them to pick from. Since I don't really know any NTs, this seems to work decently. Many of my friends are not huge huggers and appreciate being asked if they need a hug rather than being touched at random as if it's supposed to help them. For friends who are experiencing emotional distress and needing to talk and process, I often try to just listen in an engaged way for an unlimited amount of time but if they want feedback and responses, I offer various options (devil's advocate, what the other person might've been thinking, positive spin, solution-oriented, general soothing, validation). Interesting to think of this as sympathetic rather than empathetic.

I think it is because not only do we miss a great deal of non-verbal communication that goes on among NTs... we don't care about what they are saying. NTs are into one another's stories. They follow the drama whatever it is. They care and share. Aspies don't.

I am much the same way. I can feel for people and want to try and help them if they're in distress, but I'm not always the best at picking up on whether someone is upset and I have little intuitive sense as to how to respond appropriately. I mentioned to the therapist who diagnosed me as being on the spectrum how I sort of learned how to console people when they're upset, mostly by watching others do it then cognitively figuring out, "OK, I'm supposed to do this." Listening to others when they're upset and offering them solutions come much more naturally.

It took me so long to write out my comment I didn't see the others getting into the clinical meaning of empathy (which helped relieve some of my confusion with that), or empathy vs sympathy.

But speaking of empathy vs. sympathy, have any of you seen this? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

I think it puts into perspective really well what the difference is.

I don't generally lack empathy. I generally know what people will feel and so can judge what to say and what not to say. I don't like being blunt, and if I do want to be blunt in a situation, I will be aware that this may upset them. We can all be blunt sometimes, but usually I know better not to be if I don't want to upset that person or if the time isn't right.

I'm also good at lying too (which does not mean I'm lying right now, I mean when I need to lie I will). Like when I was a teenager at school, my friends started being bitchy towards me, but I didn't want to tell my mum anything when I got home, instead I just said ''yeah, school was OK''. This was because I knew she had other worries on her mind (family and money issues), and I didn't want to add to her worries. And no, I was never told not to tell my mum, I was a decision I made myself.

Last Saturday my friend burst into tears when I first got there because her neighbours were getting her down, and then my eyes began to water like I wanted to cry too, because I could feel her strong emotion. She's not really a cuddly person so I didn't cuddle her. I just put my hand on her shoulder and just listened to her and understood, and then said, ''take a deep breath'', and she did take a couple of deep breaths then felt a little better, and said she's thankful for having me as a friend. Sometimes I feel she is overreacting with her neighbours, and another friend of our's has said that to me too, and she's NT too, but I still know not to say that to her because I am aware that it will upset her more and make her feel alone in her issue with her neighbours. I know that it's not very nice feeling alone with your problems.

I can go on and on with many situations where I feel very empathetic. This is why I have trouble saying ''no'' to friends, because I'm more worried about disappointing them than myself. Or when I'm running late when meeting a friend, I worry and I text them to say how long I will be. But I've met NT friends before who have turned up late or never turned up at all and never said sorry nor felt guilty.

^ This. I'm pretty much the same way.

We have empathy, we just aren't good at showing it.

People have said this, but if you want to look it up, the distinction is between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. The former is the capacity to understand people intuitively, and the latter is the capacity to care. Autistic people lack the former, to varying extents, but not usually the latter. Contrastingly, people who lack affective empathy but not cognitive empathy are psychopaths (they intuitively understand people but don't care about them).

The cliché of Aspergoids empathy is a bit of a half truth, that's been poorly ascribed by NT people and then adopted by some Aspergoids themselves.

The truth according to contempory psychiatry is that empathy has 2 components, Affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Aspergoids are often deficient in cognitive empathy with varying degrees. This means we/they can't read peoples intentions or motives like a NT could.
Affective empathy is feeling other peoples misfortune or pain. According to Wikipedia Aspergoids are not deficient in this form of empathy. It's on Wikipedia.
I for one have nore feeling and compassion for people than quite afew of my NT mates.