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

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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. And then you look at M. Remi Yergeau’s work, and it’s full of all these fresh mind-bending insights, because Yergeau’s approach to the topic of neurodiversity is based in the field of rhetoric––and that’s a whole other lens that reveals entirely new potentials of the topic. 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: Regardless of which specifics resonate with different readers, my hope is that in some way or another the book will awaken in each and every reader an expanded sense of the possible. My hope is that the book will inspire readers to explore of the infinite realms of creative potential that lie beyond the walls of normativity. Shannon, D. B. (July 2019). Sounding a neuroqueer future: Walking-composing in Northern England. Disability and Disciplines: The International Conference on Educational, Cultural, and Disability Studies (CDS). Liverpool, UK.

Truman, S. E., & Shannon, D. B. (2018). Queer sonic cultures: An affective walking-composing project. Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry. 1(3) (Open Access) Neuroqueering is ultimately an act of resistance. For writers like Enger and Yergeau, the questions and critiques formed by the LGBTQ+ movement and queer theory can help facilitate the emergence of a new, self-defined rhetoric of autism. Questions for you: By being aware of your neurodivergent identity and your queer identity, and recognizing that they interact, you have successfully neuroqueered. Considering how your other identities, such as race, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, ect., interact with your neurodivergence and your queerness is also neuroqueering. And, as I increasingly find myself in the position of reviewing other people’s writing on neurodiversity – grading student papers, reviewing book submissions or submissions to journals, consulting on various projects, or even just deciding which pieces of writing I’m willing to recommend to people – I’m getting tired of running into the same basic errors over and over. 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.

The idea that there is one “normal” or “healthy” type of brain or mind, or one “right” style of neurocognitive functioning, is a culturally constructed fiction, no more valid (and no more conducive to a healthy society or to the overall well-being of humanity) than the idea that there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture. The neurodiversity paradigm starts from the understanding that neurodiversity is an axis of human diversity, like ethnic diversity or diversity of gender and sexual orientation, and is subject to the same sorts of social dynamics as those other forms of diversity—including the dynamics of social power inequalities, privilege, and oppression. From this perspective, the pathologization of neurominorities can be recognized as simply another form of systemic oppression which functions similarly to the oppression of other types of minority groups. The worst and most widespread abuses have been those perpetrated under the guise of “behavioral therapies” (e.g., Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA), which have been used to torture and traumatize two generations of autistic children, and which remain popular with parents and professionals despite the warnings of autistic adult survivors. The popularity of these abusive “behavioral therapies” can be traced directly to the focus on the impossible goal of making autistic persons into non-autistic persons, a goal implicitly mandated by the pathology paradigm. Behaviorism circumvents the impossibility of this goal by pretending that superficial outward compliance with specified non-autistic behavioral norms is the same thing as “recovery from autism,” while ignoring the long-term psychological costs of such compliance and of the abusive methods used to attain it. She points to the similar rhetoric surrounding queer and autistic people as well and how it’s used to justify conversion therapies; she argues similarities between gay-to-straight conversion therapy for queer people and Applied Behavioral Analysis for autistic people.

Our school offers multiple learning strategies to accommodate the neurodiversity of our student body.” Examples of Incorrect Usage: When I say that a future society that's been transformed by the neurodiversity paradigm would be a neuroqueer society, what I mean is that in such a society there would be no such thing as neurotypicality, no such thing as a “normal mind.” It would be commonplace for people to regard their own minds and embodiments as fluid and customizable, as canvases for ongoing creative experimentation, in much the same way that more and more people are doing with their genders. I should note here that part of the idea of neuroqueerness is that heteronormativity and neurotypicality are inextricably entwined with one another, and to queer one is inevitably to queer the other to some degree. In addition to embracing both gender-fluidity and neurofluidity, a neuroqueer culture would recognize gender-fluidity and neurofluidity as being entwined and as synergistically interacting with one another. Another term you use a lot is “neurocosmopolitan” or “neurocosmopolitanism.” Where does neuroqueer theory fit into a neurocosmopolitan world? A neurocosmopolitan individual accepts and welcomes neurocognitive differences in experience, communication, and embodiment in the same sort of enlightened way that a cosmopolitan individual accepts and welcomes cultural differences in dining habits. In a future society that's truly embraced the neurodiversity paradigm, neurocosmopolitanism would be the prevailing attitude toward neurocognitive differences among humans. This left autistic activists with the question of how best to describe the nature of our minority status. Being autistic isn't an ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality—so what sort of minority group were we? Autistic scholar Judy Singer, writing on this topic in the late 1990s, provided an answer when she coined the term neurodiversity. 1 Just as humanity is ethnically diverse, and diverse in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and numerous other qualities, humanity is also neurocognitively diverse, and autistics are a neurominority group. I coined the term neurominority a few years after Singer gave us the term neurodiversity 2; it seemed like an obvious extension of Singer's concept, and I'm sure others also came up with it independently. Another essential term is neurodivergent, coined by Kassiane Asasumasu somewhere around the year 2000; to be neurodivergent is to diverge from dominant cultural standards of neurocognitive functioning. 3Just as the prevailing culture entrains and pushes people into the embodied performance of heteronormative gender roles, it also entrains and pushes us into the embodied performance of neurotypicality—the performance of what the dominant culture considers a “normal” bodymind. And just as heteronormativity can be queered, so can neurotypicality: we can subvert, disrupt, and deviate from the embodied performance of being neurocognitively “normal.” That's neuroqueering (or being neuroqueer). 6, 32 What are your thoughts on using queer theory as a framework for understanding the neurodivergent movement and many autistic people’s relationship with gender, self-perception, and sexuality?

Another term you use a lot is “neurocosmopolitan” or “neurocosmopolitanism.” Where does Neuroqueer Theory fit into a neurocosmopolitan world? PI: Prof Cathy Burnett, Sheffield Hallam University; with Dr Gil Adams, SHU; Prof Julia Gillen, Lancaser; Dr Terrie-Lynn Thompson, Stirling. Truman, S. E. and Shannon, D. B. (August 2020). Speculative Songwriting and Queer Futurities. European Congress of Educational Research (ECER). Glasgow, Scotland. [Conference cancelled] Shannon, D. B. and Truman, S. E. (July 2018). Queer the landscape: Walking-songing-researching from Melrose to Lindisfarne. Beyond The Pedestrian. Liverpool, UK.

Postgraduate Certificate in Education: Primary (Music semi-specialism), University of Exeter, 2012. The correct word here would be neurodivergence, rather than neurodiversity. An individual, by definition, cannot be “diverse” or “have diversity.” A lot of neurodiversity scholarship so far has had a disability justice focus; it's been aimed at challenging the abuses engendered by the pathology paradigm, and working toward societal accommodation and inclusion of neurominorities. This is necessary work, and we still need a good deal more of it. I mention in the book that I originally came up with the term neuroqueer in early 2008, in a paper I wrote for Dr. Ian J. Grand’s Psychodynamics class in the Somatic Psychology graduate program at California Institute of Integral Studies. National Professional Qualification of Middle Leadership, Institute of Education (UCL), 2016 (part-time).

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.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) (Open Access) The conceptualization of neurodiversity as diversity among bodyminds has been central to neuroqueer theory from the start. My orientation as a scholar is transdisciplinary, and part of what attracts me to transdisciplinarity is how generative it can be to look at a given concept or phenomenon through a variety of different disciplinary lenses.