More and more people are coming to terms with not only their queer identities, but also their neurodiversity – and for many of us, both.
I first came across the term “neuroqueer” in an article about a local writer and it captured my imagination.
It is a framework that intersects the fields of neurodiversity and queer theory. For many it’s a way of engaging in ‘the queering’ of one’s own neurocognitive processes by allowing ourselves to move beyond what is seen as the ‘neurocognatice norm’. Or if you will, celebrating your difference and making it work for you – not for everyone else. It is a radical act of self-acceptance.
My own neurodiverse journey started when I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia while at university. I also came to realise I was queer around the same time.
More recently, I was told I should seek an ADHD assessment. But when I sought help with this the GP told me it’s unlikely to happen – the lists are too long. Meanwhile, I gained some coping strategies from books such as “It’s Not A Bloody Trend” by Kat Brown. Accessing this information, and understanding myself through this lens is enough for at the moment.
But it did spark an investigation for me.
In recent years there has been an exponential rise in diagnosis of neurodiversity, especially in women and people of marginalised genders. As we understand more, and with a pandemic allowing for introspection, more and more people have sought to be formally diagnosed, or are self diagnosing in lieu of the availability of assessments.
Like any rise in numbers some have questioned the validity of these new diagnoses without sharing the nuanced reasons why there are more. It’s never a social contagion, but always to do with people being able to access information, and seeing themselves represented in it.
Even progressive voices in media such as the feminist Polyester Podcast have created content provocatively asking “why is everyone neurospicy now?” I wasn’t sure about the title, so I headed to the comments. One comment captured what I was worried about, “it’s the same rhetoric used when people say that ‘everyone is queer these days’”.
The “it’s just a trend or just a phase” attitude is reminiscent of age-old queerphobias of all kinds. Denying people reality and de-validating their experiences in headlines that don’t capture nuance can be damaging.
I remember when I was in my first queer relationship – I told a friend. She reacted by rolling her eyes and implying that I was just attention-seeking. As I express to friends that I think I have ADHD many years later I feel a hesitancy too. I fear the same reaction given the cultural norm of talking about this is ‘well everyone is a bit now’. It’s true nuerodiversities are a spectrum, but this narrative harms a bigger conversation we need to have.
"My own neurodiverse journey started when I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia while at university. I also came to realise I was queer around the same time. "
Writer
Interestingly, Polyester Podcast hosts employ what’s called the pathology paradigm when talking about neurodiversity. This is when we start from an assumption that significant divergences from dominant sociocultural norms of cognition and embodiment represent some form of deficit, defect, or pathology.
Nick Walker challenges this in “Neuroqueer Heresies.” Walker makes the case that neurodivergence is a cognitive difference that is not catered for in society and thus has a disabling effect on these people. In capitalism markets prefer that we are homogeneous to make it easier to sell to us, and neurodiversity throws a spanner in the works.
Walker makes the point that saying it’s an “illness” is similar to saying that being queer is an illness. This concept has lingered for both sexuality and gender identity despite the World Health Organisation decatgorising both as diseases many years ago. It’s thanks to this harmful narrative that conversion practices remain shockingly still legal in the UK. The new Labour government have committed to making these practices illegal, tantamount to torture in some forms – but so did the last Conservative government, and they didn’t deliver on it.
“Our Autistic Minds” is an enlightening approach to discussing neurodiversity. The BBC documentary shows how the world disables neurodiverse people, by putting barriers up, and expecting everyone to interact in the same way.
It follows Murray who describes the hurt as a young person of being spoken about by others as if he wasn’t there. He talks about being infantilised or having assumptions made about his intelligence.
He is an insightful young man that has the capacity to communicate deeply about his experience with the right tools and support. It’s people’s ignorance regarding his autism that is hurtful to him, not his autism.
As I get older more and more friends are “coming out” as queer, trans and as neurodivergent. In many cases there seems to be some overlap. There is some evidence to suggest that more people identify as queer who are neurodivergent.
What I see more and more though, is the parallels between neurodiversity and queerness.
Nick Walker discusses how masking, a strategy used by some autistic people, consciously or unconsciously, to appear non-autistic in order to blend in and be more accepted in society, has parallel between how queer people may self police things like hand movements if they’re seen as too effeminate.
Neuroqueering however, is a response to this that puts the individual – not cultural norms – first.
By applying lessons of rejecting heteronormativity, we can act against neuro-normativity too?
Neurodivergence should be taken seriously – everyone’s experience of neurodivergence is valid wherever they fall on the spectrum, in the same way as everyone’s right to identify as queer should be respected, regardless of what kind of relationship they are in or how they present.
However, applying neuroqueer theory could help liberate those of us, deemed ‘spicy’ by the media, to be tasty just the way we are.
This article is part of a QueerAF and Inclusive Journalism Cymru partnership dedicated to uplifting Welsh LGBTQIA+ emerging and marginalised journalists.
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