NeuroQueer: A Neurodivergent Guide to Love, Sex, and Everything in Between

Product Information

Almost every time I see the term bodymind used in a piece of writing in disability studies or some related field these days, Margaret Price’s excellent 2015 article, “The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain,” is cited as the source of the word. My 15-year-old identified as LGBTQ and then gender diverse from age 12. In the past 12 months, they now have ADHD and autism diagnoses. Being neurodivergent and LGBTQ means that they are even less understood by their peers. My amazing kid has always been different — quirky, creative, out of the box. They show up in life as one amazing human, even as they continue to struggle to have people understand them.” — An ADDitude Reader Shannon, D. B., & Truman, S. E. (2020). Problematizing sound methods through music research-creation: Oblique Curiosities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. 19 (Open Access) Dora M. Raymaker’s published fiction so far includes the brilliant sci-fi detective novel Hoshi and the Red City Circuit, the short story “Heat Producing Entities” (which appears in Volume 3 of the annual Spoon Knife neuroqueer lit anthology), and the epic novel Resonance, which will be published sometime in 2022 (I’ve already read Resonance because I had the honor of being Raymaker’s editor on it, and I’m eager for everyone else to read it). Neurodiversity is a biological fact. It’s not a perspective, an approach, a belief, a political position, or a paradigm. That’s the neurodiversity paradigm (see below), not neurodiversity itself.

Another term you use a lot is “neurocosmopolitan” or “neurocosmopolitanism.” Where does neuroqueer theory fit into a neurocosmopolitan world? Such neuroessentialism is inimical to neuroqueering, to creative neurofluidity and creative hybridity. I'm already seeing some people criticize or reject the neurodiversity movement, or even the very concept of neurodiversity, because it's too associated with essentialism and with sorting people into rigid categories by “type of brain.” But that sort of essentialism is by no means inherent to the neurodiversity paradigm; on the contrary, I think that to some degree it's a relic of the pathology paradigm that the neurodiversity movement just hasn't managed to finish outgrowing yet. Until we do outgrow it, it's a pitfall that has the unfortunate potential to derail our journey toward a neuroqueer future. My recent work has been published in Qualitative Inquiry, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn't mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds. New paradigms often require a bit of new language, and this is certainly the case with the neurodiversity paradigm. I see many people – scholars, journalists, bloggers, internet commenters, and even people who identify as neurodiversity activists – get confused about the terminology around neurodiversity. Their misunderstanding and incorrect usage of certain terms often results in poor and clumsy communication of their message, and propagation of further confusion (including other confused people imitating their errors). At the very least, incorrect use of terminology can make a writer or speaker appear ignorant, or an unreliable source of information, in the eyes of those who do understand the meanings of the terms.The pathology paradigm starts from the assumption that significant divergences from dominant sociocultural norms of cognition and embodiment represent some form of deficit, defect, or pathology. In other words, the pathology paradigm divides the spectrum of human cognitive/embodied performance into “normal” and “other than normal,” with “normal” implicitly privileged as the superior and desirable state. Shannon, D.B. (2021) ' A/autisms:: a “queer labor of the incommensurate”: holding onto the friction between different orientations towards autism in an early childhood research-creation project.' International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, pp. 1-19. Just as a cosmopolitan perspective recognizes that there’s no “normal,” “superior,” or “default” culture or ethnicity, a neurocosmopolitan perspective––or a neurocosmopolitan society––is one in which no sort of mind is privileged as “normal,” or as superior to others, or as the natural default way for a mind to be. So, as a public service, I’m posting this list of a few key neurodiversity-related terms, their meanings and proper usage, and the ways in which I most commonly see them misused. NEURODIVERSITY What It Means: Neurodiversity is not a trait that any individual possesses or can possess. When an individual or group of individuals diverges from the dominant societal standards of “normal” neurocognitive functioning, they don’t “have neurodiversity,” they’re neurodivergent (see below). Example of Correct Usage:

Neurodiversity, simply put, is the diversity among human minds. For 15 years or so after the term was coined, it was common for people to speak of neurodiversity as “diversity among brains.” There still are plenty of people who talk about it that way. I think this is a mistake; it''s an overly reductionist and essentialist definition that's decades behind present-day understandings of how human bodyminds 4 work. Shannon, D.B. (2021) ' What do ‘propositions’ do for research-creation? Truth and modality in Whitehead and Wittgenstein.' Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research, 2(2) Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you. Save Well, I found the link by myself while discussing with a terf about the fact that the autistic experience and the (in this case) trans experience have more that one point in common. Arguments didn’t matter to her much, I must add, yet it mattered to me realising how, if we simplify this a bit, it has to do with wearing a mask and being someone who you are not, but who is convincingly similar to them, and the baffling experience of that impersonation being preferred rather than your real self just because the sake of normality. And I’d said, let’s try to diversify normality instead of normalise or make diversity normal. I heard the term neuroqueer for the first time during one of my internet deep dives. You know the ones: you have a seemingly-simple inquiry that you decide to look into and then BAM It’s 4 am and you’ve successfully hyperfocused your way down the spiraling timeline of the JonBenet Ramsey case, convinced you’ve figured out whodunnit.

What It Doesn’t Mean:

This premise remains integral to my conceptions of neuroqueer theory and the practice of neuroqueering. Truman, S. E. and Shannon, D. B. (August 2018). Queer sonic cultures: An affective walking-composing project. Capacious: Affective Inquiry/Making Space. Lancaster, Pennsylvania.