Tuesday 21 December 2021

Part 1 of 2: Is the Neurodiversity Movement being colonized: by Business

Part 1: Exploring the New Colonialism in Business

Part 2: Re-colonization by the Psycho-Medical Complex

#neuroColonialism #neuroGoldrush #neuroAssets #neuroGold #supersessionism #Franchise #PyramidScheme #PonziScheme #BrandingGoldrush


The Eagle has been associated with Empire since the ancient Romans.
 It’s not hard to see why:  the ruthless descent out of the blue
swooping in to snatch its unsuspecting prey

I’m calling it! The Neurodiversity Movement is being colonized in plain sight, spearheaded by those past masters of the art of colonization: the British, the Americans and, as ever, close on their heels,the Europeans.

If you think Colonialism is a thing of the past, think again. You do not have to be a continent to be colonized - any territory, physical or conceptual, will do.

Beware of the push by some business and institutional entities with globalising ambitions to swoop in and impose themselves over the grassroots neurodiversity movement that we built. And then use it as a launching pad to extend their global reach.

Our movement has already significantly changed the (Western) world simply by the moral power of our discourse and its win-win logic, without needing the help of any self-selected and unelected leadership group.  

The power of the ND movement is that it is a leaderless and non-hierarchical network held together by the internet. Thus it gives both individuals and local or national social enterprises the freedom and power to have “a voice”, in whatever medium suits them best. It is out of our free interactions that we have managed, within a few years, to shape the policies of corporations, institutions and, increasingly, governments. We don’t need to impose ourselves on the globe.

But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And when all you have known for the last half a millenium is the dazzling wealth, power and prestige brought by colonisation, at least to the Upper Crust, then everything else looks ripe for take over.

Colonialism is no longer about swooping down like eagles on the physical territory of a people and then subjugating them, suppressing their culture and beliefs and snatching their resources and labor until you’ve bled them dry.  Colonization today has to be much more subtle.  

Enter CyberSpace: a virtually infinite conceptual territory, full of dazzling riches, conceptual assets initially given away by their creators for the sheer pleasure and passion of creating without thought of profiteering.

The new Neurodiversity Colonisers are Johnny-Come-Latelies who try to swoop in on conceptual territory built up by the pioneering work of the movement, impose themselves as a layer above us, and then try to extend their reach across the globe.

What motivates the New Colonialists?

Unlike the Old Colonialists, this new mob are not after gold or slaves.

By "Old Colonialists", I am not referring to the age of cruel and ruthless buccaneering perfected by Britain and Europe in the 16th century. My model is the 19th century version, a more "enlightened" era that needed a more humane justification for its plunders. Above all it  had to be something the plunderers themselves could believe to salve their consciences. Thus the new empire builders and colonizer imagined themselves as part of a superior “Civilization” who were "there to help the natives, bring them to civilization, and convert the heathens to Christianity”. And indeed, missionaries did persuade “the Natives” to accept them by bringing in European healthcare ideas (such they were), thus softening up indigenous people up for the exploitation to follow. They did some good, but see the bigger picture. 


How the Colonialists Saw Themselves

 

 

The Bigger Picture

 


I argue that some of our contemporary colonizers are still under the sway of this mentality. They truly and naively believe that they only want to help. Instead of Christianity, they want to bring "Progress" to the non-"white" world. Thus they can hide from themselves baser, albeit natural, human drivers - the drive for self-realization, the exercise of their own talents, the desire to expand their influence, and power - in the sense of the freedom to shape the world in their own image, the prestige that will accrue to them and the income to sustain their commanding position at the top of the tree. 

They are not in it for "gold" or "slaves" these days. 

Instead of gold, they merely would “love” to  receive your “donations” for their altruistic cause. And of course, you will have to pay membership fees… for “operational costs” to be “ploughed back to return to worthy colonials”. But you will have to look in the small print to find out how much you will end up paying in time and money.

Needless to say they would find the concept of enslaving you appalling. No, they just want you to volunteer your time out of pure altruism, while they jet around the world in your name.  It  makes more economic sense than slavery - you don't even have to provide shelter and food for your workers.

Don’t fall for it. If you are an NFP (Not-for-Profit) or Social Enterprise, don’t pay their fees,  only to find yourself working double time for little gain.

And if you are disabled in any way, don’t volunteer your time and talents! We're past masters there and should be over that particular scam!

Nothing about us without us
 And no one using us without fair pay

A final caution: Will the latest entrant, Institute/Society/ for Neurodiversity” end up as a cartel, which gradually pushes out the actual pioneers of the movement who value their independence, their capacity to innovate on their own terms,  and refuse to join? If the owners can tempt enough punters with wild promises of global glory, will wiser organisations feel pressured to join up or be pushed out of business? It's an open secret that that is already happening. 

How it works

It’s not about gold, but the symbolic power that accrues to those who successfully claim the right to name "The Other"

In the traditional colonial model,  first come the colonizers, who subdue local resistance, and make it safe for the gold-diggers to move in.  In the new model, the goldrush came first. When pioneers having staked out the territory, they attract the attention of the colonisers.  

It’s the difference between physical territory and conceptual territory

In traditional Colonialism, first came the missionaries and the adventurers, “discovering” places that were not actually “lost” to the ancient peoples who lived there. Then came the “little red soldiers” backed up by money-hungry monarchs and aristocracy and later by the new money of the Industrial Revolution. With the colony thus subdued, and an influx of white populations needed to maintain the invader's stranglehold, the European lower classes were allowed to rush in to stake their claim, take a risk, and if they made it, become the new upper class to lord it over the natives

In the realm of cyberspace, first came the actual Neurodiversity pioneers, the creatives, the activists, then came the “Helping Professions”. With burgeoning ND enterprises in full swing, it finally attracted the interest of privileged or pathologically ambitious entrepreneurs who imagined themselves born to rule.

It works thus: the more all-encompassing a Brand Name,  the more the media will come flocking to anoint the owners as the spokesperson for the masses, and the more power and prestige they will accrue.

And all they needed was a grandiose moniker and the cost of a slick website! 

How to identify a would-be Neurocolonizer

I do not include corporations, educationional institutions, start ups whose Neurodiversity policies only apply to their own staff or students. I applaud them.

I shall not name these organizaton yet. But here are some clues. They may:

  • have the words “Global” or “International” in their title, and yet they are all USA, UK or Europe citizens and the smiling faces on their glossy PR materials are nearly all white. In the case of the Neurodiversity, those faces will usually be male autistic computer codeeer
  • simply use the majestic Definite Article “The” as in The Whatever of Neurodiversity.  In case you’re not a grammar nerd, let me remind you that the definite article suggests that whatever follows is universally acknowledged to be the only one of its kind 
  • burst onto the scene with a conference claiming to be The 1st International/Global Neurodiversity Whatsit
  • be just one individual with the gift of the gab, whose office is an alcove in their bedroom and yet they call themselves the Neurodiversity Whatever International
And finally if a little digging reveals that the organization is actually floating a risky social franchise pyramid scheme and you won't be anywhere near the apex 

Then, be very cautious!

The Neurodiversity movement is doing very well in changing the way society simply by the moral pressure of its discourse, the win-win logic of its claims, and the activism that arises from it.

Even if these fly-in johnny-come-lately come in peace, and are merely naive well-meaning do-gooders still living out feel-good missionary fantasies, if they approach you with grand offers of global influence for the common good, think twice before you get all carried away

Thursday 30 September 2021

Cordelia does Selection Criteria: a cautionary tale for CEOs and recruiters

Introducing 

The Cordelia Variant

of the syndrome currently known as "Autism"

Cordelia's Portion (Ford Maddox Brown)

Synopsis

King Lear, aging ruler of Britain intends on retiring and wishes to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia

But to win the greatest share, they must meet such selection criteria as he devises

Being an absolute ruler whose power has clearly stupefied him absolutely, he reckons one criterion is all he needs, to wit,  “Which of my daughters loves me the most?”

He makes a Very Baaaaaaaaaad Choice

Spoiler Alert!

In the end, everybody dies ðŸ˜¥

By the end of this exercise, you will have learnt:

  • King Lear’s Cordelia is possibly the first Autie in English literature
  • If you frame your selection criteria to invite flattery and self-promotion,  you may find you got the wrong person for the job.
  • And by the time they've successfully climbed over your head up the corporate ladder, you may be looking for a job yourself
  • Identify the characteristics of the Cordelia SyndromeVariantVirtuosity

Lesson Plan


  1. Do the required reading
    *You may apply for an exemption if you have Severe Acquired Shakespeare Intolerance due to early traumatic experiences with the Bard in high school
  2. Learn the to recognise the signs of Cordelia Virtuosity amongst your candidates
  3. Demonstrate your proficiency as a recruiter by intelligently discussing the set questions amongst your peers

Required reading



King Lear

Act 1. Scene 1
(Disclaimer: text accuracy honoured in the breach)

The Selection Criteria

KING LEAR

Demonstrated fluency in declaring which daughter doth love us most

Candidate Responses

GONERIL

Sire, I love thee more than words can express; Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty; Beyond the rarest riches. No less than life itself, TBH, with grace, health, beauty, honour; As much as child e'er loved, that makes breath poor, and speech unable; blah blah etc etc

GRAND DUCHESS JUDE (GDJ)

[Aside] OMG, how canst Regan and Cordelia toppeth this?

CORDELIA 

[Aside] OMG, what shall Cordelia do? Mine tongue bendeth not to flattery. Methinks will I best love and be silent

GDJ

[Aside] Marry, craven Regan picketh up the gauntlet and runneth withal

So REGAN goes

#MeToo Sire! My sister hath taken the words right out of mine mouth only she falls way short. Trust me,  I alone bask in the sunshine of your dear highness' love

CORDELIA 

[Aside] Ah poor me! For want of that glib and oily art, I am undone!
Now must needs I step into this breach

Exeunt GDJ, leaving the rest to Shakespeare
overcome at the tragic lack of Neurodiversity Awareness
amongst Elizabethans

. . .

KING LEAR

Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

CORDELIA

Nothing, my lord.

KING LEAR

Nothing!

CORDELIA

Nothing.

KING LEAR

Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.

CORDELIA

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty 
According to my bond; nor more nor less

<... etc etc...>

KING LEAR

So young, and so untender?

CORDELIA

So young, my lord, and true.

KING LEAR


Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever.
E'en the barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.

FYI Lear full script here


 IT DOTH NOT END WELL

The wicked sisters soon throw Lear out 
to wander mad on the icy blasted heath 

Too late doth he wake to his folly 
For alas, poor Cordelia, she is dead

King Lear weeping over Cordelia's body
Artist James Barry 1788


King Lear mourns Cordelia, then kills himself.
Everyone else is already dead anyway


What is the Cordelia Virtuosity?


From birth, Cordelians: 
  • find being deceptive mentally painful
    thus cannot lie, deceive, cheat or self-promote

  • find illogic mentally painful
    thus can't bear being illogical themselves, can't stand it in others

  • have no more "Theory of Minds (0ther than their 0wn)" than anyone else
    thus they have no "Theory of Deceptive Minds"
    and can naively end up being exploited by those who do

  • have not a skerrick of  malice or desire to hurt
    but their logical bluntness can be misunderstood

But let's not go overboard with a tendancy to the Rainbows and Sunshine School of Neurodiversity

Cordelians may be born Holy Innocents, but that does not make them "Inherently Saints". Allegiance to pure logic based on mistaken assumptions can also lead to extremism, conspiracist thinking and unfortunate allegiances aka "Sidekick Ayndrome"

Questions for discussion

  1. Would Cornelia have benefitted from Social Skills Training?

  2. When is masking a good idea? 

  3. What questions could King Lear have asked to determine who would make the best ruler for his country

 

Tuesday 1 June 2021

Don't be too delicate girls. Payment is not a dirty word

[This is a reprint of my featured article on Linkedin as at December 2021]



I thought people joined Linkedin because they meant business. So I'm amazed that business people are constantly inviting me to their events without mentioning payment, as if mentioning payment was so indelicate as to be taboo.How did we become so coy?

How did we become persuaded that it was indelicate to mention money in job interviews? Who benefits from such delicacy? Not work-seekers, that's for sure. If the would-be recruiter doesn't make the offer transparent, the seeker is immediately wrong-footed as if "greedy" if they raise this fundamental question.

This is especially so if we happen to be in a "caring" or "social justice" profession. Mostly women, no? It is then assumed that we are happy to give away your intellectual property for the sake of saving everyone else (except ourselves).

Workers in the sector are already struggling and have the same bills to pay as our employers. That's why I aim to raise the issue in all future requests for my services as I hope everyone who reads this will agree that it is a social justice issue to be similarly upfront.

What I do is actually work. Hard work, based not just on “lived experience”, but on my years of academic study, my early career as a neurominority woman in IT, my foundation and key role in many voluntary community groups both local and autistic, including co-founding and establishing Sydneys first independent social club for Autistic teenagers, still thriving after 20 years .

So do not ask me or any other ND activist for a “coffee” so you can “pick our brains”.

And BTW I am one of the 35% of Australian women who retired with nothing but the paltry age pension to sustain us after a lifetime of work and caring. My autistic adult child and I live in tumble down public housing run by a negligent neoliberal govt who uses every opportunity to vilify us, while leaving our homes to rot.

Wednesday 24 February 2021

The Future of Neurodiversity




I'm afraid I don't have the gift of clairvoyance. When I look into my crystal ball, I see through the glass  darkly, very darkly.  And even more so in these times. Now pandemic, global warming, the rise of populism and the decline of what we called "Western Civilization", in all its horror and glory,  point to a future of socio-economic upheaval and uncertainty. History teaches us that in such times the dominant majority, and those who indentify with it, will turn against minorities and seek to eliminate them. 

The best advice in such times is to expect the best, but prepare for the worst. 

It will require courage to stand up for minorities - not just our own, but that of others, because divided we must beg but united we can bargain. 

And it will require us to work together. By "work" I'm not just referring to "paid work" though it is good to have if you can get it. But I will venture a prediction that paid work will be harder to get for more and more people, while employment terms and conditions will deteriorate. 

Instead, I'm talking about real work in the service of the future of humanity, not “busy work” as commercial and industrial conscripts goaded by the carrot of consumer goodies and the stick of a punitive “welfare” system. 

Don't  buy in to the belief that the possession of  paid work, no matter what the terms and conditions, is inherently a virtue. See also my awkwardly but meaningfully titled piece,  Is Paid-workliness Next to Godliness?

Work is not a virtue when our labour is used to pollute the planet for the sake of producing consumer junk for people in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction and desire due to the meaninglessness of their working lives.

And as for the Zero Sum Game of substituting an occasional autistic coder to replace a non-autistic coder in a shrinking employment market, think: 

Playing Musical Deckchairs on the Titanic 

Musical chairs game sinking couldn't find an image of the Titanic


So here's what I think are the most important aims that the Neurodiversity Movement can have, beyond the core goals of advocacy for recognition and respect for human variation 

  • the recocnitiongof  neurodiversity as a necessity for cultural sustainability, in the same way that biodiversity is a necessity for ecosystem sustainability
Going into an uncertain future, I advocate joining movements who are working towards
  • A living UBI - Universal Basic Income (see pilot results from Finland)
  • An end to the vilification of Unemployed People, and who wouldn't like to bet that a high proportion of them are Neurodivergent? 
  • Investment in public housing
  • Investment in Health
  • Investment in Inclusionary Education... 
You know you want it! Especially an UBI. It used to be a fringe idea. Now it's going mainstream. 

But, you cry, "How are "we" to pay for it?"

That's a political issue - you get what you fight for. NeuroMinorities when lobbying together, are a big voting bloc!


Image 1: Globe as Crystal Ball by Gerd Altman on Pixabay
Image 2: Downsizing Musical Chairs https://www.wannapik.com/vectors/3887, adapted by JSinger

Sunday 21 February 2021

Neurodiversity: It's politics, not science!

... or ...

It's the name of a social justice movement, not a diagnosis




You may have heard critics of the Neurodiversity paradigm dismiss it with "It's not even scientific" or "It's pseudoscience". 

Of course it isn’t. It's not meant to be. 

Neurodiversity simply names a biological truism, a self-evident fact that adds nothing to what we already know about the world.  You don't need a cross-disciplinary PhD in a brace of "~ologies" to figure out that every human brain on the planet is as unique as each fingerprint. It follows that there is a virtually infinite diversity of humans on the planet, with infinitely diverse minds complexified further by experience in equally diverse bodies. 

A scientific investigation of Neurodiversity would have to find two individuals on the planet whose minds are exactly alike. Identical twins? As soon as one infant looks to the left and sees something that the other doesn't, their minds being to diverge. Neurodiversity is a not a scientific concept because it cannot be tested or falsified, though what a dream job it would be to get a grant to travel the world analysing each brain to get a perfect match. Y

es, you can have genetic matches, but not if you factor in culture and experience

And secondly, having been blessed, or cursed, with a highy systematizing (!) sociologizing brain,  my intent was political, unifying and liberatory, not divisively intent on putting individuals "under a microscope".

By political, I mean the combative process by which organized groups in societies make decisions about how to allocate resources, power, and status. 

Members of Neurological minorities, whether diagnostically labelled or not,  have generally been been discriminated against: denied resources, disempowered, and devalued from school through life trajectory and work career, which affects our standard of living unless we are lucky enough to be born into a well-to-do family. This must change. Thus our fight for recognition and a fair share of resources, influence, and status is a political fight. And to have the political clout we need to organize ourselves. 

The Dialectics of Neurodiversity
The Dialectics of
Neurodiversity
Click to enlarge

That is how the Neurodiversity movement began. First it needed a catchy name, a banner to gather under. And then the people came and fleshed out the agenda for change. And then as people always do, they disagreed on this and that,  polarised, debated, and sometimes even trolled each other, and a consensus began to evolve, with extremist views acting as a delimiter. And that is how politics is, and how the world changes by what is called a dialectical process 

To this end, instinctively - albeit semi-consciously, as I never imagined how this would actually take off  decades later - I came up with the word "Neurodiversity" for two specific political functions

·         to add a necessary new category to what is now called "Intersectionality".

·       to suggest an umbrella term for an emerging social/political movement based on the pioneering work of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement. It had become clear that ASA movement's paradigm was beginning to be adopted by other Neurotribes who had different diagnostic labels but common issues of exclusion

To be clear, this is how I first used the word "Neurodiversity", this and nothing else. 


That’s all.

Neurodiversity is a conjoined word which trades on two of the era-defining developments of 20th century science

·       the ascendency of Neuroscience, the "hard" science of the physical brain, - with pictorial proof yet - over Psychology, the study of that elusive substance, the Psyche

·       the rise of environmental science, from which emerged, in the 1980s, the term Biodiversity, another truism, coined expressly as an argument for the conservation of the species

The intention was to sound authoritative based on the combined heft of neuroscience and environmental science, not to be scientific.

The word Neurodiversity could be called a Koan – it caught on because it delivers an instant Aha! moment to so many of us. We hear it, we know it, it fits our times and for many of us, names our struggles. But the word is perhaps an exercise in consciousness that begs a question: Now that we have foregrounded the uniqueness of each human mind, 

“What is humanity going to do about it”?

What humanity has "done about it" depends on the cultures we have been born into. And our diversity of human cultures have, needless to say, dealt with it in their own diverse ways. 

Although I majored in Anthropology, I daren't make pronouncements about other cultures, other than to state that, from what I have learned so far, there are no utopias out there, not even amongst the remaining hunter-gatherer that some idealist romantics would still like to exalt to the status of "Noble Savages". Like individuals, the cultures we create have their strengths and weaknesses, winners and losers, as delimited by their available natural resources, of which, significantly, famine was the ultimate delimiter. 

Instead I will confine my observations to what I know best, our Dominant Patriarchal Western Christian Civilization.  (DPWCC). Armed with this conglomerations of beliefs, DPWCCs conquered most of the world over the past millenium, enslaving other peoples, including their own women and amassing massive fortunes as a result.

DPWCC is a mouthful. Let's call this obviously life-threatening (to others)  psychologically diseased constellation "Capitalist Syndrome". 

But like every other labelled disability, Capitalist Syndrome has its strengths and weaknesses  

Weaknesses: an  exploitative juggernaut which worships "The Market", "The Workplace"  and its High Church "The Mall" like we once worshipped our Father-God. It concentrates inequality and turns molehills of inequality into mountains that few can climb, that keeps everyone on a constant treadmill of anxious striving to outpace everyone else, lest we fall into the abyss of poverty and shame. 

Strengths: it has delivered the preconditions for an egalitarian society, at least for its members: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom from famine. There is now in principle enough for the inclusion of everyone to extend to the other necessities of life. 

Nevertheless, this monoculture is gradually being diversified and its autocratic hold weakened by various factors. These include: 

  • transfers of wealth and populations by globalization, including the movement of formerly colonized people back into the lands of their colonizers
  • the post-war human rights movement that emerged as a reaction tp the horrors of the Nazi eugenicist extermination camps, based on the psueudoscience of race, and which led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
  • the emergence of one minority movement after another demanding civil rights pioneered by African Americans Americans, Women, and Gays etc.

And this is where the Neurodiversity came in. By the end of the 20th century, Westerners had been forced by the first intersectionalist movements to question their ingrained beliefs about the inferiority of black and indigenous people and women and the criminality of homosexuality.  

These movements had made it generally unacceptable for civilized people to air derogatory opinions about the above minorities. But it was still open season on "nerds", aka Aspies  -  as we learned to call ourselves. One of the triggers for me to start thinking about Neurodiversity included the film "Grease" in which it seemed perfectly normal, natural and unremarkable that the the nerdy character Eugene, should was bullied by the gang, who were assumed to have "hearts of gold". And this is par for the course for so many other films with the obligatory nerd character humiliated for the hilarity of the crowd. 

That is partly why I wanted to add Neurodiversity to Intersectionality, so that the mistreatment of neurological outsiders could no longer be casually overlooked.

Politics and Intersectionality

Broadly speaking, politics is the process by which societies make decisions about how to distribute resources, with status, power and wealth accruing to those who are best placed to control the resources. 

Without going into the history of why society began to classify people according to their neurological profiles, and punishing some 

Despite the complaints of angry conservative outrage-manufacturers, intersectionality is a tool of social analysis that is increasingly used by policy makers.  out of the recognition that as nations we must come to terms with the reality that we are no longer a monoculture, and must learn to understand each other's backgrounds and learn to get along. 

It's important to notice that the categories of intersectionality:  Age, Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Religion,  Sex, Disability, are devoid of rank or judgment, except for "disability", which only goes to show how much disability is still considered a second class category.  The correct term should be of course ABILITY

We all have socio-economic class, we are all ethnic, we are all gendered etc, we all have abilities Yet all of of these categories have been used to classify, grade, rank, disempower and impoverish people. That is what makes these categories political, as per the definition on the right. 

Politics and the unequal distribution of resources

While our culture is nominally still Christian, notice that the political “Right” who tend to be the most vociferous about their allegiance to Christianity, act according to the tenets of “jungle law”. They preach Christianity, but their practices of Neoliberalism support Darwin’s survival of the fittest. Market law makes clear that those who are unfit or unproductive within Neoliberalism’s limited ideas of productivity deserve what the get, and should be grateful for  the meagre pensions doled out to them.

And this is where Politics come in:

In the broadest sense, politics is about the distribution of resources and in our society that is massive inequity. There is still a long way to go.

I know the explicitly political nature of these terms can make the dominant majority uncomfortable, if they want to frame the issue in medical or commercial terms, whether for the financial and/or status benefits of expertise. And who can blame them? We live in a stratified social order, and must needs struggle to retain our place.  But discomfort is part of social change. Thanks to globalisation, and how the colonized nations have come back to bite those who benefitted from colonization, there are no more Anglo monocultures, and never will be. That is why intersectionality manifested. We need to learn how to get along. 

This is not to say that there’s no such thing as disability, or no role for helping professionals. 

Difference shades into disability depending on the amount of help required by individuals and their families. We do not want to go back to a world where (primarily) women had to give up their own dreams  because there was no help or advice available for them as carers. We still have a long way to go, when we see that mysogyny has recast Refrigerator Mothers into “Autism Moms” if they shd show a reluctance to acquiesce to the roles assigned to them whether by medical authority or the Twitter mob. It takes a village to raise any child, and more so if the child is developmentally more labour intensive

Take Home Lesson: ND is not a classificatory term dividing us from them. We are all Neurodiverse. We live on a Neurodiverse planet in which amoral nature generates endless genetic diversity, while we humans have evolved the capacity to make judgments about nature’s bounty. What Neurodiversity brings us is a challenge to find a place for everyone and to distribute the bounty fairly.