My assumption was that though the poll is rough and ready, as most of my twitter followers are pro-Neurodiversity it would be a reasonable measure of how they think about this question
The Poll Question and Final Results
Explaining the subtext
- By "this is horribly simplistic" I signified that I am aware that this is not a scientifically valid poll.
- And by "purists", I meant social model or medical model fundamentalists.
Why didn't I say so? Because if I had, respondents would have got tangled up in defensiveness and would have dragged me into increasingly arcane academic theorizing in the totally unsuitable twitter medium.
I wanted to elicit gut reactions.
- I also suspect that many of those who did choose Option 1. "a medical condition" were Neurodiversity critics.
That is why I prefer qualitative to quantitative methods. Too often, profilers actually create reality rather than sample it. I always sense a subtext that subliminally informs us of the latest view of normality they measure difference from.
Then again, I must admit that these tests can flush out some very broad trends. As it happens I just tried out Amanda Kirby's Neurodiversity Profiler app, and though I found the process agonizing given my pedantic nature, it actually gave me results that matched what I already knew about myself.
So finally let me apologize to everyone that I have tormented into feeling torn between the importance of having a voice, versus having to suppress their much more nuanced and complex thoughts to do it
So I think the results here are valuable, but please make up your own mind.
