Live Last read · last published · next check
We can validate experiences of abuse, believe survivors, and hold people accountable for harm without using language that increases stigma, distracts us from the mechanisms of abuse or dehumanises an entire group of people. When language causes more harm than it helps, it is worth asking: is this language actually useful? Who does it serve? Who does it harm? The term “narcissistic abuse” has…
Over the past decade, the concept of neurodiversity affirming practice has had a significant impact across healthcare, community services, education and workplaces. This shift has been important when it comes to challenging deficit-based understandings of neurodivergence and promoting principles of respect, dignity, autonomy and belonging for neurodivergent people. Neurodiversity affirming…
There is no such thing as a “neurodivergent condition” or “neurodivergent diagnosis”. A socio-political identity and term cannot and should not be used to categorise a group of diagnoses or conditions. You cannot diagnose hierarchy, power or systems which is what neurodivergent is naming. Neurodivergent disrupts psychiatric authority. Neurodivergent shifts the conversation from pathology to…
Like most communities, the neurodivergent community is not immune to reproducing the same hierarchies they seek to dismantle. As someone who is multiply neurodivergent, this is something I both witness and experience frequently. I call this phenomenon neurosupremacy which I first named and described back in 2024. Neurosupremacy is the belief that certain neurodivergent people are superior to…
Short answer? Yes. In order to understand how and why neurotypical people do exist, we need to understand a couple of things about neurotypical. Despite what people may think, much like the word neurodivergent, neurotypical didn’t emerge from psychiatry or neuroscience and it wasn’t coined to describe a ‘normal brain’. Neurotypical originally started off as satire - a way to mimic the…
I’m an inconsistent person. I’m inconsistent in the way my attention ebbs and flows throughout the day; it isn’t steady; it shifts in intensity, direction and focus. I’m inconsistent when it comes to my capacity; I don’t have the same capacity every day. I’m inconsistent in my ability to communicate; I can take days or weeks to respond to emails or messages. I’m inconsistent in my moods and…
This essay was originally produced for my Masters of Arts (Women and Gender Studies) at Flinders University. The white, heteropatriarchy is a system of power that reinforces gender norms and roles based on rigid and binary understandings of masculinity and femininity as well as whiteness. The gendering of Autism is yet another way to perpetuate cisgenderism and erase those who deviate from…
Firstly, we need to understand how and why neurodivergent is a socio-political term. When we say a term is socio-political, we are acknowledging the social and political factors and dynamics at play - oppression, privilege, inequality, exclusion and more. What does this have to do with neurodivergent? Neurodivergent is a social and political term. Neurodivergent names a social position -…
Before I introduce The Neurodiversity Smorgasbord, I would like to acknowledge that this framework which I started to develop in 2022 has been inspired, shaped, influenced by movements that have come before as well as Mad, Disabled and Neurodivergent Indigenous and Black scholars, thinkers, writers, leaders and activists. Individuals who have been imagining, creating and sharing alternative ways…
Our society’s emphasis on and understanding of normal has never been about what is actually normal, it has always been about what is seen as socially acceptable as well as what traits are beneficial for capitalism. Put simply, the concept of normal is a social construct with the aim of controlling individuals by enforcing a right way to function, a right way to be, a right way to exist as a human.…
