Results of my Twitter poll on "the prime cause of disability"

This twitter poll was my experimental response to critics of Neurodiversity who paint it as a movement of people who want to deny the reality of disability as a medical condition.
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. 

Being neurodivergent myself, I have never found even the most rigorously scientifically designed profilers satisfactory. They invariably feel like "Nothing, nothing about my complicated case!". 

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. 

 

Acknowledging the dark side of Neurodiversity: the sociability spectrum

If the "Neurodiversity Movement" is to mature and be taken seriously, it must acknowledge that neurodiversity includes all humans, including those with extreme anti-social conditions

Perhaps it’s time we recognized there is also a Sociability Spectrum: ranging though sociable, asocial, anti-social

I am referring to what psychologists call the Dark Tetrad: Psychopathy, Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Sadism

These personality traits are considered to have substantial genetic components. One thing is sure, these conditions can't all be the fault of bad parenting, trauma or societal barriers

While the neurodiversity movement grew out of the pioneering Autism Self-Advocacy Movement, Autistics were already acknowledging what they called "Autistics and Cousins" though I don't remember  this going much beyond ADD and dyslexia. But the question of hereditary anti-social traits could not be completely swept under the carpet even then:

Autistic villains have been identified too, but out of a desire to avoid further stigmatization, autistics tend to play them down. AS people are beginning to debate and formulate a response to the linking of certain types of crime with “loners”, and to argue that simplistic conflations of good/evil with certain varieties of disability cannot be made.

Neurodiversity: the birth of an idea (p24)

I think the time has come now that autism has enough recognition, acceptance and sympathy that we can debate these matters openly.

In no way does the reality that there is a human spectrum of social, asocial, and anti-social behaviour undermine the significance of the Neurodiversity Movement.

While Neurodiversity is the indisputable fact that no two minds are alike, the Neurodiversity Movement is the first global movement to address this reality from a social justice perspective.

Like any movement, the movement may attract a few fringe elements who want to see Neurodiversity either through rose tinted glasses or through the darkest of glasses.

But the sensible mainstream movement simply seeks

• a re-evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of all Neurological Minorities who have been marginalized by purely negative views of human divergence, and
• greater emphasis on acceptance and inclusion to the greatest extent possible
• and for the support needs of all to be met, whatever the degree of disability

Neurodiversity, being a biological descriptor of all humanity, is amoral. But human society must be moral and ethical to be sustainable. .

Those who are socially responsible must always strive to include those who are asocial, reform those who are anti-social, and for those who cannot be reformed, we have a criminal justice system.

Oddly enough, we still have a society that seems to reward psychopaths, narcissists and machiavellians with high office and wealth.

Perhaps greater Neurodiversity awareness will cause educate the public to recognize such people and cease rewarding their behaviours

But that is another story...