Family portraitThree generations of women "somewhere on the autistic spectrum" |
Judy Singer is an Australian sociologist credited with coining the term “Neurodiversity” while completing an Honours Thesis at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) over the period of 1997 to 1998. Her thesis, subtitled “a personal exploration of a new social movement based on “neurological diversity”, was the first non-psychomedical academic work to map out what was proving to be the last great civil rights movement to emerge from the 20th century. This new movement was based on the pioneering work of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement . But the autistics were being joined by other neurological minorities, people labelled with ADHD, Tourettes, and the "Dys"abilities... praxia, lexia, calculia. Clearly this movement needed a banner term. Singer, in an Aha! moment came up with "Neurodiversity".
At that time disability communities were largely viewed via the "Medical Model of Disability" which asked "What is wrong with this individuals mind/body?". But Singer's work was informed by the "Social Model of Disability" which asked "What are the societal beliefs and barriers that are preventing this individual from fully participating in society?" which was developed in the 1980s by northern academics like Michael Oliver, Lennard Davis and Tom Shakespeare, and further by Australian Professors Helen Meekosha, Andrew Jakubowicz (Singer's thesis supervisor) and Lynne Davis who taught a groundbreaking course on "Disability Studies".
Her ideas grew out of her lived experience in the middle of 3 generations of women whom she then described as “somewhere on the autistic spectrum”.
Like many people “on the spectrum” and especially as a woman seeking work in the early 1970s, Judy experienced difficulty finding employment. Fortunately, like many autistics, she was able to find a career in the burgeoning new field of IT which opened up a new world of opportunities for women.
When Judy became a parent with a child who appeared to have a “mysterious” disability, her carer responsibilities compelled her to give up her career. Instead she went back to University to pursue her true interests: anthropology and sociology.
Judy has a long career in community organizing: she was the founder, via the internet, of the world's first support group for people raised by autistic parent, became the secretary of Sydney’s largest support group for the parents of autistic children and a co-founder of Sydney’s only independent social club for teenagers on the spectrum. She was elected a director of Shelter NSW, Australia’s peak body for housing justice but since the rediscovery of her work in 2017, she has been fully occupied with advocacy within the Neurodiversity discourse.
A more recent portrait of 3 generations of the Singer women taken in 2011
Sadly Judy's mother Agnes passed away in 2012
Agnes had lived with undiagnosed Autism and PTSD as a result of being an orphaned teenage survivor of Auschwitz. She and Judy had a troubled relationship which only healed when Judy began to understand the pressure her mother was under to mask her autism and trauma.
