Revealed: Who "Really" Coined "Neurodiversity"? An evidence based corrective

Blume? Singer?

or...

Turtles All The Way Down?

An Actual Correction of a Scurrilous Libel

(based on actual original documents!)

  Spoiler: It was me!

I refer to the scurrilous, erroneous and self-serving trashtake of my work by the two most prominent Northern Hemisphere academic Johnny-Come-Latelies to the #Neurodiversity discourse, Robert J Chapman, Nick Walker, and their 4 acolytes. They promote their confabulations as :

An "overdue correction" on the origins of neurodiversity theory".

         (Scare quotes mine. It's actually a "premature ..."... oh, never mind...)

How did this seemingly envious crew manage to get their mishmash of wishfulthinking and confirmation-bias past the - so far nameless -  purportedly "expert" fact-checkers of the highly esteemed Sage Journals: Autism? 

Alas, when I complained to the publishers that they had been misled, I had a visitation from the mighty Sage Corp's inhouse team of Legal Beagles who retorted with what appeared to be a threatening letter. But who am I to know what a threatening letter from lawyers looks like? I have never had one before.  But

 Dammit, Sage Journals have spawned a whole new industry
 based on my original work! 

Soooo not nice of them!

Meanwhile, thanks to Sage's gullibility, my brief holiday from living below the poverty line is over. But don't cry for me, America, UK, wherever...  Fortunately I live in Australia, which has a relatively more human welfare system than what goes down in the US and UK.  Thus, I live in secure, albeit neglected, Public Housing and receive the Age Pension.  So at least I can't end up on the streets living in a cardboard box on a diet of tinned baked beans. 

You can see the Sage 6's poorly researched allegations and my factual rebuttal on Dropbox in "blow by blow" tabular format. 

• Dropbox: Rebuttal of Sage Publication claims in annotated and commented essay
• Dropbox: Detailed paragraph by paragraph rebuttal in tabular form
  Stop Press: Oops! Sorry! you can't access my Dropbox because I can't even afford to pay the subscription fee. Since Sage published the calumnies of these contenders, I appear to have been cancelled, and people seem afraid to hire me. I am looking into Google Docs which appears to be free, and has better tools. 

So this new generation of upwardly mobile scholars and academics identify themselves as a group of “6 International Scholars of Neurodiversity”. 

"International"? Quite an over-reach for a mob of Brits and Yanks. But what can we expect of the relics of the former British Empire? It seems they haven't got used to the fact that the days of empire are over. 

As a Southern Hemisphere scholar I'd like to issue the first of my own correctives: this crew may more accurately be described by a more nuanced subtitle: one which references what used to be known as "Northern Hemisphere Cultural Imperialism". But I couldn't think of a suitable acronym for 

 "6 Unreconstructed Northern Anglo-Colonialist Pretenders to The Neurodiversity Crown"

So for brevity I will refer to this crew as "The Sage 6".  Though you may soon conclude that they have shown anything but "sagacity".

Given the error-laden claptrap this collective have dished up, any academic worth their salt might deduce that the Sage 6 are singularly devoid of the most basic research skills let alone ethics. And even logic, as I will outline below. But for the grandfather of all absurdities, see  down below, "The Final Absurdity" that got past Sage's esteemed editors".

The gang of 6 are: 

• Dr Robert J Chapman, the Young Pretender to the neurodiversity crown,  
  Hey Robert, be my guest! Take it if you want it that badly, for you will find that "heavy is the head that wears the crown".
  
  
• the Not So Young (despite his very fetching avatar ... depicted below) American author Nick Walker.  PS. I don't do pronouns on command. If someone does not respect me, why should I respect their demands?
   
• ... and their 4 acolytes

What might have motivated the Sage 6?

Their beatup is rumoured to be motivated by a "Revenge of the Trans" vendetta, but who am I to say? 

You may ask what my "crime" was to invite such vicious payback. You can see the answer here. 

Sage Publications Inc.'s Defence

According to Sage's publishers, their purported fact-checkers are "people with expertise in the matter". 

I'm still waiting to find out who these so-called "experts" are. Whoever they are, Sage's highly experienced editors might surely have had the nous to realise that these people might not have access to my original documents and correspondence. Which they absolutely do not!

And to add insult to injury, Sage have sooled their dedicated in-house legal team onto me, who have sent me some (very deniably) threatening letters. Although who am I to decide what feels threatening to me in the face of Sage's learned legal counsel?

As I already explained, I cannot afford a legal team to go up against a publishing juggernaut like the mighty multinational corporation Sage Publications Inc. 

My correction of an actual Disrepresentation

I begin on a far from trivial correction,: 

The Sage 6 are hardly “International” scholars. 

American + British does not = “Internationality”.
It adds up to North-Centrism aka
Northern Hemisphere Cultural Hegemony

The 6 contenders rely heavily on two shaky platforms:

1. The, dare I say, resentful so-called “evidence” of a non-scholar, Martijn Dekker, whose ignorance of academic process in the social sciences should be glaringly obvious to any academic. But somehow the Sage 6 fell for it anyway. For Dekker's information, every academic thesis undergoes a comprehensive ethics review before acceptance. From this, it can be deduced that my thesis was checked and accepted.  I have rebutted Dekker’s absurd confirmation-biased confabulations here. Not only are they libelling me, but they are libelling my university. 
2. A lot of freewheeling assumptions about the role of American freelance journalist Harvey Blume in the development of the term Neurodiversity.  All of which can be traced back to the work of Wikipedia’s amateur “editors”. 

Spoiler: I have 100s of pages of correspondence with Blume and we only talked about Neurodiversity a few times (shown below). Believe it or not, we had other matters that interested us more than petty academic rivalries*.

* To make it absolutely clear, our relationship was collegial not romantic 

To underscore: I am not an academic. I chose not to be. Like anything in life, academia has its strengths and weaknesses. I found it both inspiring and suffocating. The senior academics at my university certainly did not "get" that I was actually creating a new paradigm in disability studies (sorry, Nick Walker, in 1998, mate) which at that time was only understood within the limited categories of: either  Physical, Intellectual or the dilly bag of everything else  "Mental Illness" to which autistics were consigned. It's understandable that at the time, my supervisors did not "get" that I had developed a new paradigm. Neither did it occur to me. But career academics are very discomfited by paradigm shifts, for obvious reasons. And so, to Wikipedia... 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wikipedia is not an academic resource

While we can blame Wikipedia and its amateurs, so much more culpable are any lazy academics who venture to use Wikipedia as a research authority or even as a research gateway.

I would hope the 6 academics have not been relying on Wikipedia's nameless and self-appointed northern "editors" given their dubious qualifications. And that's assuming these individuals even have any. Wikipedia’s scandal-loving amateurs have been playing around with my entries for going on 3 decades now. I long ago gave up trying to set the record straight with them. 

I notice the Sage 6's pejorative allegations have even been inserted into the item on Neurodiversity, and most disgustingly into my actual biography. And they or their agents have even inserted themselves.  I have registered a complaint with Wikipedia, but it seems the good ship Wikipedia is deserted... 

Sexism too?

I cannot help wondering if it is completely beyond Wikipedia's amateur so-called "editors" to imagine that someone who is neither American nor Male can nevertheless be capable of coming up with a "Big Idea" all by ourselves!

Reflexivity

Click to enlarge if not familiar
with the term 

BTW, academics working in the social sciences are required to practice reflexivity and question their own motives. I commend this practice to the Sage 6. 

As a non-academic blogger, Dekker is of course free to throw self-reflection to the winds and write whatever fantasies he dreams up. But academics are liable if they take amateurs on trust because. 

Harvey Blume

If the authors had shown even a modicum of common sense, they might have made some pertinent enquiries. They might have found out that I corresponded with Harvey Blume for many years from 1997 onwards. Indeed I believe I shared this information years ago with Chapman. I need tech support to get back into my archives, but I can't afford it, as I already explained. 

I have retained my correspondence with Blume, which shows, unsurprisingly, that he was a jobbing journo and knew nothing about disability politics or the Social Model of Disability until I educated him to the extent that he was remotely interested. He learned the term "neurodiversity" from me. He wrote about it once or twice and moved on, never to return. He did not cite me, nor, as a generalist op-ed writer in mass media was he required to do so. 

My rivals have even turned Blume's ommission into another scourge to beat me with. It did not bother me in the least at the time. Because, who knew that 20 years later, the Neurodiversity banner would actually go viral?

Sleuths, private eyes, legal eagles are welcome to peruse these documents, even carbon-date them if they want, but I'm damned if I'm going to go to the expense of paying for carbon-dating myself because of this scoundrelly crew.  

Transcript of correspondence with Blume in which I mention Neurodiversity
 prior to his being "the first to publish   

. 

Note: I used the term Neurodiversity freely witih Harvey because I had already talked to him about it on the phone.

Where I said ''that I'm sure I coined Neurodiversity'' I also implied that the concept but not the coinage was probably ''in the air'' aka "the zeitgeist". I said the same thing in my thesis. 

The article with the "Tentative Title" was eventually published as a book chapter by the then Open University Press, now owned by McGraw Hill. Available at https://search.worldcat.org/title/disability-discourse/oclc/39182312

In case it has escaped my learned rivals, ALL paradigm shifting ideas arise from the zeitgeist (Eng: the spirit of the time/era), ie the human discourse of the given time)  but it takes a theorist to name, explicate and analyse them first. They don't come down in a bolt of lightening from the blue. 

Next, may we expect Nick Walker to abandon his claim to the phrase "Neurodiversity Paradigm"? Because not only was it "in the air", but it was based on my coinage. They even drag Kassiane Asasumasu into it, despite the fact that she derived her idea from my coinage as well. Does anyone know if Asasumasu even cited me?  

It seems to surprise my career academic rivals that I did not make a song and dance about my neologism: Absurdly, Chapman seizes on, as evidence that I "did not coin neurodiversity", because I failed to proclaim it it with blazing trumpets.

"Singer did not claim to have coined the term of neurodiversity herself"

  Chapman et al, Sage Journals: Autism,  March 12, 2023       

Unlike my career academic competitors,  I was not all agog for academic glory and fame.  I was simply writing from my heart about my "lived experience". This absurdity says more Chapman's ambitious ego than mine

You may ask: then why did I go back to university at all? 

Because I was a sole parent of a toddler who needed a lot more care than most. Who knew we autism in the family way back then? No-one, not even the pscho-medical professions knew the extent of the autistic spectrum. Thus I was not able to work regular hours, not least because most of the money I earned would have been seized by Australia's punitive welfare system anyway. I was just one of many, mostly females of course, caught in a (well-documented here) poverty trap by government fiat.  Thanks to the pandering idiots of our major parties, the effect was to create a HUGE disincentive to work and employment. 

But enrolling at university meant that I got an extra $AUD 30 a fortnight supplement to the carers pension.  Believe me, it mattered! And it was something meaningful to do. 

My Academic Majors

When people asked me what I "majored" in, I joked - though it was no joke - that I majored in anything scheduled on Wednesdays, because that was the only day my father had free to babysit my child. I could not afford childcare on top of rent. 

The Jane Meyerding accusation

I hope the 6 Sages will not continue to seize on a conversation I had with Jane Meyerding when I asked her if she had ever heard the term "Neurodiversity". It is important to note that Jane is in no way to blame for our conversation being wilfully misinterpreted by these dirt-digging desperados. I consulted her because she had been in the USA mainstream of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement long before me.  And because I had no intention of using the coinage until I was absolutely sure that the word did not exist. By then,  I had already exhausted all the resources of university libraries, the internet and never found a single mention. As a further note, my supervisors would have demanded a citation of the word, if they had any doubt that it was not my original coinage. 

Jane confirmed she had never come across it either, which left me free to use and interpret it in my thesis.

Notice that my defamers interpreted my correspondence with Jane in a twisted and mean-spirited way. Perhaps it is because they imagine I think the same way as they do?  Can we deduce that they do not feel the need to check in with others before they make their self-promoting claims?. 

Blume

It is frankly galling to find Harvey Blume getting equal billing with me in the history of the movement, when he was simply a freelance journalist specialising in interviewing literary figures.  

Blume mentioned "neurodiversity" once, having picked my brain about disability politics, and then moved on to chase other rabbits.  Meanwhile, the development of this concept was my life's work, born out of great family hardship and struggle and my fortuitous discovery of Disability Studies. And it was NOT written just for the sake of personal catharsis, but also because I didn't want other families affected by Autism to have to endure the same. By that time, I had already founded the first of about 8 local and international autism support groups

Nor do journalistic ethics or the laws of defamation appear to daunt the Wikipedia crew,  whose hogwash has been lapped up by my academic rivals. Hardly surprising, since they well know that defamation cases can only be afforded by corporations or billionaires. Which brings me to...

Any billionaires interested in funding my defamation case? 
Don't let me dissuade you. Remember I have original papers. How could we possibly lose?

The Final Absurdity in the Neurodiversity Saga

How could this example of Botha, Chapman, Walker et al's blundering "logic" possibly have got past the learned editors of Sage Publications? 

Having made up their minds, for reasons we can only guess at, that the term Neurodiversity could only be attributed to anyone else but me, the 6 academicians put their heads together to gather the killer evidence. 

Yet despite their advanced research skills, however desperately hard they tried, they simply could not find a shred of evidence anywhere of prior usage.Just as I couldn't when I exhaustively researched my thesis in 1998 (as accredited by the Sydney University of Technology's Ethics Committee).  And BTW, by defaming me, they Sage 6 are actually defaming my University.  About which more later. 

So they came up with this absurdity :

"Unless further archival evidence comes to light, it is possible we will never     know who coined the term neurodiversity"  

(Botha, Chapman, Walker et al)    

 

All I can say in reply to this absurdity is that if it wasn't me,

then it could only have been coined by  

    'Turtles all the Way Down'

 

   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

But now, I leave you with a time-honoured lesson
from our Ancient Sages

     Albeit note the time-dishonoured sexism I have been forced to correct. 

_______________________________________________________

Dramatis Personae

Do any psychologists out there have any ideas about what this reveals?

_______________________________________________________

Bibliography

The Provenance of the Neurodiversity Concept

Judy Singer

*Thesis

Singer, J. (1998).  Odd People In: The Birth of Community Amongst People on the “Autistic Spectrum”: a personal exploration of a New Social Movement based on Neurological Diversity. A thesis presented to the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Social Science (Honours), Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Technology, Sydney, 1998. Submitted September 1998.

Book

Singer, J. (2016) NeuroDiversity: The birth of an idea. Kindle https://www.amazon.com/NeuroDiversity-Birth-Idea-Judy-Singer-ebook/dp/B01HY0QTEE/

Book Chapters

Singer, J. (1999). Why can't you be normal for once in your life?: From a 'Problem with No Name' to a new category of disability. In Corker, M. and French, S. (Eds.). Disability Discourse Open University Press UK https://www.worldcat.org/title/disability-discourse/oclc/39182312

Singer, J. (2002). When Cassandra was very very young. In Rodman, K. (Ed.) (2002) Is anybody listening? Jessica Kingsley Publishers, UK

Singer, J. (2003). Preface: Travels in Parallel Space: An Invitation. In Miller, J. K. (ed). Women from Another Planet? Our Lives in the Universe of Autism 1stBooks Library, New York

Singer, J. (2019) Reflections on the Neurodiversity Movement 20 years on. In Neurodiversity: 20th anniversary of the birth of the concept: Advocacy for positive recognition of human diversity and its future available https://www.etsy.com/ca-fr/listing/701221413/neurodiversity-20th-anniversary-of-the?

Translation available at La Neurodiversité - 20e anniversaire de la naissance d'un concept: Plaidoyer pour la reconnaissance positive de la diversité humaine et pour son avenir https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/688599087/neurodiversity-20th-anniversary-of-the?

Government Publication

Singer, J. (2000).  Disability Employment Services Information Kit.  Department of Family and Community Services, Australian Government publication (Comprises 8 illustrated booklets, half in Easy English and half in Pictorial English, fact sheets and posters. 50,000 copies in print, distributed to every Disability Employment Service office in Australia)

Academic papers

Singer, J. (1999). No Longer Fair Game: Human Rights for Nerds, Weirdoes and Oddballs: The current situation of people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders in the NSW education system. A paper given at the 1999 Conference on Human Rights, Disability, and Education at the University of NSW.

Singer, J. (1999). Uncovering the Neurological Procrustean Bed. A paper given to the "Sydney Disability Research Network". University of Technology, Sydney

Singer, J. (1999). Voice and “Neurological Difference”.   A seminar paper given to the "Sydney Disability Research Network"  UTS

Satirical Pieces

Singer, J. (1998) NT Social Skills Deficiencies: A case study available archived online by Eric Engdahl at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical  https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/

Singer, J. (1998) What to do if you suspect your child has NT available archived online by Eric Engdahl at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical  https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/ 

Debut Appearance of the Word “Neurodiversity”

Singer, J  (1997)  Mentioned by Judy Singer in private email to Harvey Blume. Correspondence archived, pictured above. 

Blume, H (1998)  On the Neurological Underpinnings of Geekdom The Atlantic Monthly: September 1998

Blog

Reflections on Neurodiversity:  Afterthoughts, Ideas, Polemics. Not always serious

What is Neurodiversity? Definitions and discussion.

How NOT to define Neurodiversity:

The words Normal and Natural 
have no place in the Neurodiversity Paradigm 

Well-meaning but misguided...

 

I am appalled to find that the influential journal, Psychology Today, has adopted the above misconceived definition of Neurodiversity disseminated by Stanford University psychiatrist, Professor Lawrence Fung. And that it has been "approved" by a host of their in-house "experts". 

Before proceeding please see my Official Definition of Neurodiversity 

My concept of Neurodiversity was intended to wrest "Neurological Disorders" from the exclusive ownership of the Psycho-Medical professions, to the extent that they practiced under the mindset of what we called the Medical Model of Disability, the idea that disability is located in the body of a contextless individual. Since the 1980s, disabled thinkers and activists, such as Michael Oliver and Lennard, challenged this one-sided model with a Social Constructionist Model. This balanced view sees Disability as part genetic and part constructed by a given society's assumptions, enablers and barriers. e.g. Western societies tend to demand eye-contact, thus stigmatizing many Autistics.Other Societies proscribe it in certain situations: e.g. Indigenous Australians, Ultra-Orthodox Jews. 

Let me make clear: I have huge respect for the psycho-medical professionals. I could not live without my doctors, my medications or my regular sessions with my psychologists, physios, pharmacists, dentists, and other ancillary professions. Why else would I spend about $8,000 per annum on their respective services? And that's after Medicare rebates! How else would I still be alive to harangue you all in my70s? I cannot help observing however, that while psychiatrists are at the top of the tree when it comes to prestige and income, I have found them the least knowledgable and helpful when it comes to understanding neurodivergent conditions. 

So, my intention was to balance the Medical Model with the a Social Model which frames Disability in the context of the intersections of class, gender, socio-economic status, disability, age, etc and gives voice to us as patients, clients, consumers. That is all. 

I know that Dr Fung does great work at Stanford University to afford practical help neurodivergent people. 

But he has no right to redefine "Neurodiversity", which he clearly does not understand. 

Not only is his definition a one way route back to the old Medical Model that wants to define ND in terms of individual "brains" devoid of social context, but it beggars belief that a professor in a science-based profession does not understand basic statistics. Surely...

IF everything is NORMAL, then NORMAL has NO meaning!

Increasingly I am finding that the Psycho-Medical professions are trying to corrall the concept of Neurodiversity back under their own sphere of influence. 

Not that I think they have bad intent. Instead, they suffer from "When-all-you-have-is-a-hammer, everything-looks-like-a-nail" syndrome. 

So, when all you have is psycho-medical training, everything looks like a psycho-medical problem.

 

Meanwhile the general public and the media are awed by psycho-medical authority. Not unwarranted by any means, as I have referred to above. It's just that Neurodiversity is not a Medical Problem. 

Neurodiversity, like Biodiversity, refers to the degree of variability of a specific variable in a specific location. In the case of  Neurodiversity, it refers to the entire human population of the location called Earth. 

Its usage, as I defined it, was simply to name a Social Movement for people who were misdiagnosed, misunderstood and marginalised by categories invented by the Psycho-Medical Model which aligned itself very much with the needs of the 20th century capitalist economy for a standardised, obedient work force. My intent was  

1. to broaden the scope of "Disability", which, in 1990s only included 3 categories:
1. Physical
2. Intellectual 
3. Mental Illness (which included everything else that the medical profession didn't understand)

Clearly another category was needed: Neurodivergences is not "mental illness" even though many of us may have been rendered mentally ill by punitive attempts to "normalise us", and by stigma, exclusion, ridicule and discrimination. 

      2.  to ensure that Neurodiversity was always contextualized by what we now call Intersectionality

Do you know someone who gets histerical* (sic: aka the so far rarely used male equivalent "teste-rical") about "Identity" politics  suggest to them that they should refuse to fill in their National Census, because if will ask them for their:

Ethnicity | Sex or Gender|  Disability | Class aka Socio-Economic Status| Age etc

These intersectional categories determine our degree of privilege or disadvantage. They have always been tools of government who represent society's attempt at distributive justice, ie "who gets what" support in society. 

So let's keep Neurodiversity as a banner term for our Activist Movement
by Neurodivergents for Neurodivergents!

     --------------------------------------------

  

* NB: The prefix "Hys" refers to the womb. When the prefix is not used in a strictly medical sense. it is usually mysogynist in intent. It means "irrationally angry".  You don't have to have a womb to get irrationally angry. I'd say the contrary, otherwise there would be as many female murderers as male 

Explaining Neurodiversity

I am generally credited with being the originator of the term Neurodiversity while writing a sociology honours thesis,"Odd People In: a personal exploration of a new social movement based on neurological diversity" (UTS Sydney 1998). 

I did not define the term, thinking its meaning self-evident. Since then there have been a proliferation of definitions, and as I expected, most people intuitively "get it". But inevitably, some definitions seem to me to miss the point, especially when they take neurodiversity to be a synonym for "neurological disability". 

While I understand that language evolves and changes, I am determined to defend my intuitive understanding of the term vigourously, and have thus unpacked the complex meaning furled within it. 

To read my definition, click on the "What is Neurodiversity" tab above, or here

Contents

1. What Neurodiversity is
2. What Neurodiversity is not
3. What the Neurodiversity Movement is
4. Fundamental Principles
5. Neurodiversity and Conservation
6. The Dark Side of Neurodiversity
7. Neurodiversity and Eugenics
8. Neurodiversity and "Difference vs Disability"
9. The Future of Neurodiversity

If you are interested in going to the primary source, see my republished thesis 

What is wrong with this Wikipedia definition of Neurodiversity?

This is a typical definition of Neurodiversity found at random on the web. There are innumberable such, all referring to "normal" variations. 

First, it's important to be wary of the "passive voice" which confers authority by fudging who is speaking. If there is an omitted "by" in the sentence , it's worth asking "by whom". So... 

Regarded by whom? I submit: by an echo chamber of Wiki editors rephrasing earlier Wiki editors. In true viral mode, these definitions  were then adopted by myriad respectable institutions and replicated ad infinitum. 

Who can blame them? Nobody owns the term. I never defined it either, thinking its meaning self-evident. Nevertheless I will put my oar in based on the intuitive Aha! moment I had while writing the work that contained it.

And for goodness sake, do NOT go to Wikipedia for a definition of Neurodiversity. It seems to be changed almost daily by heaven knows who, and it is clear that most of these people don't "get it", they just mash up earlier misconceptions. 

Neurodiversity is not a judgment. It has nothing to say about Normality or Morality. 

Neurodiversity names a biological reality, the virtually infinite neuro-cognitive variability within Earth’s human population.  It points to the fact that every human has a unique nervous system with a unique combination of abilities and needs. That is all. 

Normality is a socially constructed term originating in the 19th century mostly for the use of the bogus science of Eugenics (see my thesis for more detail on the construction of normality). 

I recognize that words evolve beyond their origins by way of a dialectical process. But for the record, I intended the word 

• to function as an addition to the toolbox of intersectional analysis and 
• to suggest a name for the emerging 1990s civil rights movement of NeuroMinorities

And it should never be used as a synonym for Neurological Disability, so that respect for Nature’s awe-inspiring variability and its challenge to our ethics and practices becomes the latest stigmatized term for “the Other”.

We are not "The" Vulnerable: the dangers of the definite article

Before you talk of "The Vulnerable", ask yourself by what means a significant proportion of the populace is rendered vulnerable

Summary

• I propose that the term "The Vulnerable" is a depoliticized euphemism for people who require social security support due to structural injustice as much as to inherent disability
  
  
• I further argue that applying the definite article "The" to minorities is a powerful method of othering them
  
  
• While some of us may be inherently vulnerable due to heredity, injury, or life stage, as soon as we require government supports and services, this linguistic sleight of hand subtly strips us of our strengths, our agency, our capacity for choice, and our status as citizens
  
  
• Thus reduced to the faceless"Other", we do indeed become vulnerable to stereotype, stigma, pity, and finally compassion fatigue
  
  
• And when compassion for minorities is exhausted, all of us become vulnerable to being divided and ruled by the worst of populist demagogues

---------------------------------

This came to me while I was listening to a presentation by an Emeritus Professor of Sociology who I admire for their life-long dedication to social justice. Though I am in awe of their work, I found my hackles rising as the speech went on. It soon became clear why. It happened every time they used the term "The Vulnerable", as in:

"We" must do more to help "The Vulnerable".

Now I knew this was well-intentioned shorthand for a birgeoning list of marginalized populations too long to itemize: including the many people at the bottom of the socio-economic heap who require require social security to survive: these include people who are: sole parents, disabled, carers, retirees without superannuation, public housing tenants, unemployed, homeless, indigenous, refugees, diasporized, working poor and more. BTW you may notice that many of these groups are overwhelmingly female.  

"Hello", thought I, "I am, or have been, all of the above except homeless and indigenous. But I thought I was part of the concerned and enlightened 'We' attending this symposium, not one of  'Them'!

Suddenly I felt like my sense of competence and belonging was at risk of being ripped away, revealing the tragic mask of "The Vulnerable". 

Can "we" avoid imagining ourselves in the Blue Mask
when we consign others to "The Vulnerable" bin?
Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Well! I was damned if I would allow myself to be consigned to that nameless mass of the wretched of the earth, "The Vulnerable Others". I consider myself and many of my ilk to be smart, resourceful and resilient people who struggle to survive trauma and deprivation, and yet give back to society when we can. Whether via the energy we put into voluntary work, into caring for family, or in the taxes we paid in our working life, before discrimination, (you know the intersections I'm talking about ), unequal wages, carer responsibilities etc shut us out of paid work. 

So what does "vulnerable" actually mean? 

I disregard the concept of "showing vulnerability" as popularised by Brene Brown, since that is a personal choice, not something imposed from above.

From the definition on the right,  it is clear that while people in need of special care - due to youth, old age, or disability-  may be inherently vulnerable to risk, the rest of us rendered vulnerable by exposure to harmful agents or agencies

We are all vulnerable to having something done to us, whether by neglect, prejudice, greed, irrational belief in inhuman ideologies legislated by people with money or power. 

We are all vulnerable to the actions of unregulated enterprises, landlords and employers; predatory pedagogues and priests; inadequate social security entitlements,  the policies of neo-liberal ideologues, the incitements of tabloids, and more. 

People who are already inherently vulnerable are made more so by governmental failure to fulfil their duties of care, whether financial, or through a failure of regulation. 

I'd rather be called by the good old Aussie term, Battler. Because battling to keep our heads above turbulent economic waters is exactly what most of us do. 

Because what happens when everyone is lumped under the rubric of "The Vulnerable"?  I say it lumps everyone under the same heading of "there's something wrong with them" rather than "there is something wrong with society". Hello, Social Model... 

Some alternatives to "The Vulnerable" 

• Battlers
• Social Security Recepients (including those who should be but have been denied) 
• People made vulnerable by social inequities and exclusions
• Structurally Disempowered People
• Socio-Economic Minorities
• Be specific: unemployed people, sole parents, people shut out from labour markets by age or disability prejudice, people who cannot work and cannot survive on an inadequate pension.

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Is "The" the most dangerous word in the English language? 

I have heard it described as such. Don't ask me where, but it certainly resonates.

Obviously the definite article is hardly dangerous when referring to places and things: the garden or the desk in the study 

But when it comes to humans and their collectives (by ethnicity, gender, class, ability etc) history has demonstrated that the danger is real.

Why? Because "the" presumes that the thing being defined is already known, that "we" share a common understanding of its referent, that the meaning attached to it is obvious, self-explanatory, and thus must be universally acknowledged by all sensible people. In short, indisputable common knowledge.

The question is, who defines what this "obvious" understanding is? Who "owns"the stereotype? Too often, the "obvious" is defined by the dominant culture and is used to stereotype and devalue minorities.

For a more indepth contemporary explanation, check out "Linguistics explains why Trump sounds racist when he talks about The African -Americans". (though I think the author is being a little too polite to Trump... )

Thought experiment 1

Look at each item on this list. Shut your eyes. What is the first image, thought, or other sensation that rises in your mind? (Don't censor it. If something ugly comes up, don't feel guilty. Remember, you are just reproducing a socially implanted prejudice. It's not your individual fault. What matters is how you act on a prejudice once you recognize it for what it is)

• The Blacks
• The Feminists
• The Gays
• The Jews
• The Neurodiverse
• The Neurotypical
• The Vulnerable
• The Whites 

If you belong to a minority, you may use those terms positively, yet when used by the dominant culture they are more likely to trigger feelings of how you have been hurt by stereotypes. Even if the dominant culture uses them positively, it’s still dangerous. Who hasn't heard the following? 

I can’t be racist because I admire ... [... the Blacks for their athletic prowess, the Jews for their cleverness, The Neurodiverse for their uncomplaining productivity, the Autistics for their genius with IT, the Aborginals for their wonderfully primitive art...]

In short, a great formula for the exploitation of minorities, lest they try to compete with the dominant culture and excel in any field that has not been alloted them.  

An interesting note: we do not often hear “The Autistics”. Perhaps our culture is wising up somewhat. Certainly linguistic research suggests that this reductionist usage of the definite article is in decline. 

Thought experiment 2

Even worse, look what happens when we make the group name singular, so that a whole minority becomes telescoped into one single inndividual.

Without censoring yourself, what image was planted in your mind by racist cartoons depicting "The Aboriginal" “The Jew”, “The Negro”, "The Blonde". Were they old or young, male or female, dangerously clever or stupidly suited only to menial work, ugly or beautiful?

When referring to human collectives:

• simply leave out “the”
• turn the word into an adjective: the Gay Movement,
• qualify it: a few/some/many/most disability activists

Correction

 

That troublesome adjective "Neurodiverse"

The Adjective "Neurodiverse” has become so popular in common usage  as a synonym for “neurologically different", and is so entrenched in both organizational jargon and personal identification that it seems churlish to quibble that it is linguistical irrational and ultimately damaging to the cause.

To my horror, it’s even in the Oxford Dictionary, doing the work of dividing a group called "US" from a group called "THEM"!

Neurodiversity like biodiversity, is literally a feature of the planet not a synonym for "Neurologically Other"

We humans are NOT Neurodiverse 

Not individually. Not collectively.

The PLANET is Neurodiverse

Just no!

The importance of language

It seems there are two kinds of people in this world

1. Those who believe that language matters and it's important to get it right
2. Those who believe "Never mind the language, let's just get on with the job"

Naturally, I prefer the first mob. (See below for an example of a perfectly useful, necessary and innocuous adjective permanently ruined by misuse. I refer to the statistical term "Deviant")

But I do waver in my linguistic perfectionism from time to time, as I try to weigh the pros and cons of undermining a juggernaut of change. After all, if all the organizations springing up for the "inclusion of neurodiverse people" are making the world a better place, why complicate things with my obsession with linguistic purity ?

How it ends lies with all of you.

My linguistic point

I have been rightly reminded by Martijn Dekker and others, that my earlier statement that we are ALL “Neurodiverse” is wrong. . But saying that NONE of us are Neurodiverse is equally wrong. I hope my argument below makes it clear. Both are wrong, because ND is a descriptor of the planet, never of individuals. 

Logically speaking, Neurodiverse is an imaginary and irrational adjective, somewhat like an imaginary number, (the square root of a negative number which cannot logically exist) 

This usage of “neurodiverse” cannot be based based on "biodiverse", because that adjective only exists for the comparison of ecosystems, as in "The Amazon Delta is more biodiverse than the Sahara Desert"

Since Homo Sapiens has colonized the whole planet, the only thing we can be compared with is another planet with sentient life. Until such time as we find such a planet, the adjective is out on a very lonely limb.

And it is illogical to use Neurodiverse as an adjective to describe an individual.

You cannot Say "Lee Bloggs is a person, while Kim Bloggs is a neurodiverse person" (note my careful use of ungendered names) any more that you would say "Skippy the Kangaroo is a marsupial, but Wally the Wombat is biodiverse"

So, maybe the concept is lost to all but linguistic nerds, but 

Nevertheless, I register a protest

Neurodiverse should not be a synonym for “neurologically disabled". We are all neurodiverse, because:

1. It's linguistically illogical.  We are ALL Neurodiverse inhabitants of the planet, because no two minds on this planet can ever be exactly alike.
   .
2. More importantly, if Neurodiverse becomes a synonym for Disabled instead of remaining a symbol for the incredible wonder of natural variation, it will rapidly acquire stigma,  be devalued, and we would lose its power as a unifying symbol for all

Appendix: The sad case of the word "Deviant"

Once upon a time deviant was a perfectly innocuous statistical term meaning "a quantity expressing by how much the members of a group differ from the mean value for the group". Somehow someone stuck it to the word "Sexual" and it's now sullied for all time. 

One of the fathers of sociology,  Émile Durkheim viewed deviance as an inevitable part of how society functions. He argued that deviance is a basis for change and innovation!

So now so many people think "deviant" means "sexually perverted" that the much better word Neurodeviant has to be avoided, and we must use "Neurodivergent"...

Deviant and Divergent defined

Deviant actually means "a significant standard deviation from the average". That is what the new term "Spiky Neurological Profile" actually means. A "Neurotypical person" has very little standard deviation from the average on a range of cognitive abilities, while "a NeuroSpiky" person with AS ADHD the Dyses etc,  has a range of deviations.

Imagine Kim and Lee walking down the “one true”, socially sanctioned normal conventional path, and Kim deviate from the norm and forges a new path.

Now imagine Kim and Lee walking together on a path, any path, when they come to a cross-roads, split and go their separate paths, perhaps never to meet again.

Is that what we want?

If the Gay movement could reclaim the word Queer as their badge of pride, why not NeuroDeviant?

What do you think?

Probably reclaiming "deviant" is a step too far, too late, I admit, but it's all part of my contribution to the Dialectic of Neurodiversity:

Disclaimer

I don't say there's no such thing as "Disability". But you have to ask yourself what you mean by Disability before you criticise others. Their understanding may be quite different.
Do you mean the Welfare System's definition used to save money by dividing the "worthy poor" from the "unworthy poor"? The United Nations definition? Your personal experience of pride, or suffering, or discrimination? And more

Neurodivergent from what, exactly?

The word Neurodivergent begs the question, "Divergent from what, exactly?".

Neurodivergent 1  describes the significant percentage of  humans who are increasingly recognized as differing cognitively from Neurotypicality.

The adjective neurotypical itself emerged from the Autistic Self-Advocacy movement of the late 20th century. Pioneers of the movement used it to bypass the increasingly problematic term "Normal", while essentially pointing to the concept behind it. It's worth pointing out that the word "neurotypical" should not be read as a diagnostic term, i.e. one that has a specific set of signs and symptoms. It is purely a term developed to provide a necessary polar opposite of "neurodivergent".

Neither should the recently coined words based on the concept of  Neurodiversity be read as scientific terms. They are socially constructed terms intended for advocacy purposes.  This should clear up criticisms that these words are "pseudoscientific". When I first used the word "Neurodiversity", I did not intend it to be a diagnostic term.  I saw it as a banner for a "Neurodiversity Movement" -  a civil rights movement for those of us who had been stigmatized for being "weird, odd, or unfathomable" outsiders. While the word is not scientific, it does trade on the authority of neuroscience and biological science - which stresses the importance of conserving biodiversity -  to argue for a revaluing of formerly stigmatized neuroMinorities 

From my thesis, a summary of ideas from

Lennard Davis, Enforcing Normalcy

Normality is a culturally constructed term  which encompasses a broad range of characteristics that centre around a rarely-achieved Ideal of physical, intellectual and sociable characteristics.

The Ideal itself is undoubtedly based on evolutionary principles, but to some extent can be culturally defined; e.g some cultures value extroversion, others, introversion.

The boundaries of the normal range are fuzzy, and subject to contention. Small deviations from the normal range are often claimed as Identities. Large deviations are viewed as Disabilities. The boundary line between an identity and a disability is fuzzy, and will always be subject to disputation.

Why do we need NeuroDivergent? What's wrong with Neurodiverse?

The adjective neurodivergent became necessary because the adjective neurodiverse is not logically meaningful. Neurodiversity has been a property of the biosphere since the evolution of sexual reproduction. It simply says that all human minds on the planet are necessarily different.

So all humans are neurodiverse!

It's just that some of us have been excluded more than others for our divergence from the ideal.

Neurodiversity is a fact. The Neurodiversity Movement is however an identity politics vehicle for people who were discriminated against for differing from the culturally-defined normal range.

There are degrees of difference of course. Thus "neurodivergence" shades from difference to disability, with a grey area in between.

Our Western free-market liberal culture tends to favour extroversion, sociability, competitiveness, self-promotion, lots of noise and buzz. We also tend to worship youth and fear and shun old age.

Other cultures favour introversion, introspection, quietness, modesty, and tend to respect age. Think traditional Chinese, Jewish and Indigenous cultures.

The latter cultures are eye-contact avoidant in various circumstances, considering it variously disrespectful of status, invasive or manipulative.  From the point of view of egalitarianism, this is a good thing. 

But rather naively, Western culture demands eye-contact as a verification of sincerity, when in fact it can easily be used as a tool of emotional manipulation by psychopaths and con-artists!

Cultures change all the time of course. Not so long ago, absent-minded professors were honoured in our culture, though perhaps we laughed at their eccentricities behind their backs. Then along came Dr Lorna Wing and Uta Frith. Before long, we could easily find our professors' eccentricities dissected in the pages of the DSM IV Bible of Everything that could Possibly Be Wrong with the Human Mind.

And yet, from an evolutionary view, we have an expectation of a range of normal behaviours, based on our primeval survival needs as Homo Sapiens emerging from the African savanna.

We evolved as a dominant hierarchical species, and our responses are still primed for survival in the wild, with high general levels of physical fitness, problem-solving and sociability.

But do our advanced cultures still need the same "hard-wired" qualities for survival?   

The Neurodiversity Movement challenges the notion that we must all be generalists to survive. Neurodivergent people are often specialists with spiky ability profiles. The biological reality is that as a species,  our success has been based on the evolutionary imperative of role differentiation.

Now read on for my reductionist, totally un-academic,  Armchair Evolutionary Pschologist's  take on  "The Normal"

Exit JS stage right, pursued by a Saber-Toothed Tiger
Click below to see how it turned out 

Acknowledgments

The coinage of the term "neurodivergent" is attributed to Kassiane Asasumasu