The recent addition of neurodiversity is bad

by PatrickClSim3Low
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Re: The recent addition of neurodiversity is bad

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@DellaLuna48while it's understandable that some people may come to that conclusion based on the fact that the thesis it was published in was around autism, the idea that it was coined as a descriptive word for ASD is actually untrue.

 

Here's what Judy Singer had to say about it. This is from the introduction she added to a re-publish of the thesis, the republished version is called "neurodiversity: the birth of an idea" and came out in 2016 -

"This word Neurodiversity did not come out of the blue, but was the culmination of my academic research and a lifetime of personal experiences of exclusion and invalidation as a person struggling in a family affected by a “hidden disability” that neither we nor society recognised for what it was. Nevertheless, we sure knew how to shield ourselves from the critical neurotypical “gaze”, and had developed plenty of strategies to try to pass for normal. While my focus was on AS, I considered that the scope of neurodiversity was far broader. It could encompass the near-absurdist splinterings of the then DSM IV, even perhaps gender identity and sexual preference, surely properties of the mind."

..DSM IV of course covering everything from autism to ADHD to anxiety, and everything in-between; including mental health.

And this is from the opening of the 1998 thesis itself -

"As new identities, alliances and movements form and re-form themselves, there are signs everywhere that we are beginning to divide ourselves not only along the familiar lines of ethnicity, class, gender, and disability, but according to something new: differences in “kinds of minds”. People with all kinds of marginal “disabilities” like ADD and dyslexia are beginning to form communities and produce texts that examine the ways that they have been misunderstood and mistreated. Educational theories have had to adapt to the forces of individuation, and are beginning to cater to different cognitive styles and “multiple intelligences”. All kinds of medical and educational specialists, self-advocacy and support groups are springing up, based on these “neurological” differences."

There really is no "later", was explicitly coined to mean everything from the start, you can't really get any clearer evidence for that than her stating it was envisaged as encompassing the full spread of DSM IV. it was never meant to be ASD alone.

IMO the main issue is it being called "social awkwardness" when it is in fact explicitly social anxiety disorder.

 

And far from it being a community not spoken to, it was designed by someone who has social anxiety disorder and with the input of others who also do.

Would your feelings about it be any different if it was named accurately, i.e. social anxiety rather than social awkwardness?

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