Criticism of "inappropriate facial expressions" label

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I've got a criticism of the "inappropriate facial expressions" label for those of us with ASD - I don't see as all one category, but rather two separate categories of "improper" facial expression - but both of which can cause the "uncanny valley" effect that so many of us know about...

1) Overt inappropriate facial expressions: these are when people are telling a joke you've got an angry expression, a sad expression, anything negative... and vice-versa i.e. when it's a more sombre conversation, you've got a smile of some sort, and of course people would think that's deranged (and you're deranged).

2) Facial expressions resulting from coping mechanisms or adjustments: this is a more legitimate category, but can still cause the "uncanny valley" affect. For instance, if you've got a furrowed brow b/c you're trying to interpret some unspoken nuance or idiomatic expression, and not to take it literally (and thus appear foolish). So, while NT peers just get it right away, they see your facial expression and think, why's he struggling, isn't this obvious sh*t?? Or, in another example, when scrutinizing facial expressions we might take a couple of seconds longer to process it and formulate an appropriate response - again this is a coping mechanism or "masking" - and I recall reading a Harvard Health Sciences study from over a decade ago, that said folks with Asperger's (the term used at the time, not autism) when reading faces had to rely on their prefrontal cortex, which is used for analytical functions - as opposed to the amygdala, the seat of emotions in the inner brain's limbic system, which their NT counterparts would do by default.

So, my theory is THIS is what, unfortunately, may contribute to that subconscious (or unconscious) uncanny valley affect in neurotypicals - they can't explain why we've got a more "concentrated" facial expression for "basic" social exchanges, thus it's deemed inappropriate - when it's anything but. And unfortunately, as many of us ASD folk know only too well, neurotypicals for the most part don't even know why they feel these visceral negative emotions after a social exchange with us... but they just do, and there's something primal that gets triggered in their brains that tells them to avoid us. To compound matters, this can create a vicious circle where the more we become anxious that this is the unjust avoidance response we'll get, the more likely it is to happen.

I'm somewhat fortunate in that this experience has diminished over the years, but it took a helluva lot of practice and advice from a small circle of trusted friends - almost to the point where I do think I've got more amygdala activity for more seamlessly processing facial expression, but it's not as consistent as I'd like. I'd really have to do a brain scan in a semi-controlled experiment to get any reliable indicator of that...ain't gonna happen, that's not a high priority for the medical research community!

Inappropriate really just means that the facial expressions don't match the internal experience of the person. I think they lumped it all together because it's easier to identify that the facial expressions aren't quite right than it is to categorize them.