rats_and_cats wrote:
I guess this was a poorly worded post. I meant to say that the word "neurodivergent" seems to have expanded to include mental illnesses, which confuses the definition.
Within the past year
on Twitter, Kassiane Asasumasu, who originally coined the term "neurodivergent," clarified that she always meant to include mental illness as well as developmental disabilities.
See also
NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS by Nick Walker.
rats_and_cats wrote:
Neurodiversity is supposed to be about accepting different brains like one would accept different races, combatting the idea that people with neurological disorders need to be cured or eliminated. However, that message gets muddled when people with depression and anxiety start using the word "neurodivergent" and calling people without mental illnesses "neurotypical." I think that hurts the neurodiversity movement because mental illnesses are objectively bad and nobody who actually has them wants them to be a part of their identity. I know there are autistic people (and people with other neurological disorders) who want to be cured, but there are many who are just fine the way they are and just want to be taken seriously by the people around them. There's a huge difference between a neurotype and a mental illness.
As Nick Walker says in the above-linked article:
Quote:
Some forms of innate or largely innate neurodivergence, like autism, are intrinsic and pervasive factors in an individual’s psyche, personality, and fundamental way of relating to the world. The neurodiversity paradigm rejects the pathologizing of such forms of neurodivergence, and the Neurodiversity Movement opposes attempts to get rid of them.
Other forms of neurodivergence, like epilepsy or the effects of traumatic brain injuries, could be removed from an individual without erasing fundamental aspects of the individual’s selfhood, and in many cases the individual would be happy to be rid of such forms of neurodivergence. The neurodiversity paradigm does not reject the pathologizing of these forms of neurodivergence, and the Neurodiversity Movement does not object to consensual attempts to cure them (but still most definitely objects to discrimination against people who have them).
11 Jul 2022, 12:07 pm
