I feel that people with mental disabilities/conditions have latched onto the medical “neurodivergent” term as a political “us against them” label. This can backfire spectacularly.
you have people with minor anxiety calling themselves neurodivergent now. the term has sort of lost all meaning. if everyone is neurodivergent, nobody is.
Maybe the experiment that is “normal” was a fad. We didn’t even have a word for it until the 1600’s as physical and mental impairments were much more common and it wasn’t until mass manufacturing and early sciences became a thing that our cultural obsession with uniformity cropped up.
As we built up science changed models. It stopped trying to find easy universal constants and started looking at the just how naturally variable everything is. Like how cancer is actually not a singular diagnosis but a very large family of vaguely related conditions that all operate and respond in very different ways. Curing the entire disease family is fighting a hydra.
We could very easily revert to a pre “normal” society model but instead of that being informed by ignorance it could be through compassionate study.
Though we got a ways to go. A lot of people are very… passionate about holding onto the label of normal and the “right” for others to only be referred to as deviation.
A lot of people are very… passionate about holding onto the label of normal and the “right” for others to only be referred to as deviation
Who tf takes pride in being normal? Hell the term “normie” is a derogative term. No one is bragging about how normal they are and I think this is a made up enemy to make pursuing the normalization of “neurodivergence” a more noble goal.
In reality we have people saying they suffer from “time blindness” and want exceptions to be made because they can’t figure out how to structure their life in a way that allows them to function with the people around them. Everyone has issues, and everyone should figure out ways to minimize how those issues impact their life and the people around them. Instead, we have people submitting to the idea that “I’m neurodivergent there is nothing I can do to improve its just who I am” to excuse their faults.
Often the " bragging about how normal they are" isn’t the way that shakes out. I am thinking more specifically about people who throw tantrums about being called “cis” or “hetero” or “allistic” or even “allosexual” . To a lot of these people they refuse to have any label applied because they figure they should just be assumed the normal and the default and no word should exist that describes their state. To them any descriptive labels are just for “deviations” and being treated on the same footing as a deviation even a little is a threat to the supremacy of normalcy. Often one gets the impression that they want communities of queer or neurotypic people to internally refer to them as “regular people” not so much “normies” as they would probably find that derogatory as well.
Neurodivergence used as an excuse not to improve is just shitty behaviour. For a lot of us knowing our type of Neurodivergence can open doors to figuring out learning styles or work arounds when the something that should work but doesn’t. On the other hand sometimes someone will try to force something that provably has never worked for you and not have a lot of empathy when you try and warn them that what they are trying to do has a history of not shaking out for you like they expect it will. It’s a two way street. Knowledge of your personal weaknesses and workarounds can be frustrating for other people who see it feom the outside as you not doing what they want because of lack of gumption and willingness to “try” when really you are just very tired trying to do this something for other people have recommended over and over and have developed a boundary to explain that for you it’s a fool’s errand to try again. To the other person they have never seen all the attempts you have made before doing it their way so to them it just looks like lazy.
I feel that people with mental disabilities/conditions have latched onto the medical “neurodivergent” term as a political “us against them” label. This can backfire spectacularly.
I’m not so sure. I feel like the term is so broad and vague that it makes it difficult to attack them as a group. Which is presumably the point.
Disability, mental disorder, retard, etc etc etc
The words used to objectively discuss people who are different seem to always drift towards derogatory uses.
So we shed those labels, come up with new ones… and the cycle continues.
If someone cared to find a citation, I’m sure something exists on google scholar.
I believe it’s known as the lexical treadmill
you have people with minor anxiety calling themselves neurodivergent now. the term has sort of lost all meaning. if everyone is neurodivergent, nobody is.
Maybe the experiment that is “normal” was a fad. We didn’t even have a word for it until the 1600’s as physical and mental impairments were much more common and it wasn’t until mass manufacturing and early sciences became a thing that our cultural obsession with uniformity cropped up.
As we built up science changed models. It stopped trying to find easy universal constants and started looking at the just how naturally variable everything is. Like how cancer is actually not a singular diagnosis but a very large family of vaguely related conditions that all operate and respond in very different ways. Curing the entire disease family is fighting a hydra.
We could very easily revert to a pre “normal” society model but instead of that being informed by ignorance it could be through compassionate study.
Though we got a ways to go. A lot of people are very… passionate about holding onto the label of normal and the “right” for others to only be referred to as deviation.
Who tf takes pride in being normal? Hell the term “normie” is a derogative term. No one is bragging about how normal they are and I think this is a made up enemy to make pursuing the normalization of “neurodivergence” a more noble goal.
In reality we have people saying they suffer from “time blindness” and want exceptions to be made because they can’t figure out how to structure their life in a way that allows them to function with the people around them. Everyone has issues, and everyone should figure out ways to minimize how those issues impact their life and the people around them. Instead, we have people submitting to the idea that “I’m neurodivergent there is nothing I can do to improve its just who I am” to excuse their faults.
Often the " bragging about how normal they are" isn’t the way that shakes out. I am thinking more specifically about people who throw tantrums about being called “cis” or “hetero” or “allistic” or even “allosexual” . To a lot of these people they refuse to have any label applied because they figure they should just be assumed the normal and the default and no word should exist that describes their state. To them any descriptive labels are just for “deviations” and being treated on the same footing as a deviation even a little is a threat to the supremacy of normalcy. Often one gets the impression that they want communities of queer or neurotypic people to internally refer to them as “regular people” not so much “normies” as they would probably find that derogatory as well.
Neurodivergence used as an excuse not to improve is just shitty behaviour. For a lot of us knowing our type of Neurodivergence can open doors to figuring out learning styles or work arounds when the something that should work but doesn’t. On the other hand sometimes someone will try to force something that provably has never worked for you and not have a lot of empathy when you try and warn them that what they are trying to do has a history of not shaking out for you like they expect it will. It’s a two way street. Knowledge of your personal weaknesses and workarounds can be frustrating for other people who see it feom the outside as you not doing what they want because of lack of gumption and willingness to “try” when really you are just very tired trying to do this something for other people have recommended over and over and have developed a boundary to explain that for you it’s a fool’s errand to try again. To the other person they have never seen all the attempts you have made before doing it their way so to them it just looks like lazy.